Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Smoked salmon with horseradish-flavored whipped cream

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Mmm, restaurant food–but that quickly gets old.

My quick-dinner fall-back, which I learned about in the Netherlands, is handfuls of mixed chopped vegetables tossed into the boiling water when I’m cooking pasta. Top with pesto or nuke some chunky red sauce in the microwave.

Today’s NYT has 101 more ideas, including an easy recipe for gazpacho.

The official magical moment is July 21, but….one noted grown-up author won’t win any points toward the Hogwarts Prize for Patience. Less than 24 hours after getting her hands on a pre-release copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pulitzer-Prize-winning highbrow NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani had managed to scarf down her entire bookful and blast out a glowing review, said to have irked JK Rowling enormously.

The Guardian says Kakutani’s review contains “little more than hints.” Not really. I recommend staying away from Kakutani’s survey of plot points if you’re planning to enjoy JK Rowling’s surprises. But surely even a child would understand that.

The magical hopes and feelings of underage readers aren’t really at risk here, despite the indignant hype being spun into gold by big Potter-profiit PR teams.

I think it’s lovely that Rowling has written a book that once again respects and satisfies young people’s magical wishes–and cute that Kakutani couldn’t wait to tell us so.

… adventurer Jim Clash just got his own spot on YouTube where you can watch him get up close and personal with others who “truly push their lives to the limit”…

• Indy 500 speed demons,
• moonwalker Buzz Aldrin,
• Smokin’ Joe Frazier,
• and my favorite Nobel Prize-winning limit-pusher Frank Wilczek, twice!

Elsewhere, Jim talks about his own South Pole adventure, battling frostbite and altitude sickness as he dragged a 110-lb sled for 8 hours a day–burning 1000 calories per hour! That part, at least, sounds very good to me!

1950s kitchen with wringer-washer in background

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Ronni’s bright-red time machine and my beige-y gold one whisked us last Friday into a lovely mid-century twilight zone of stage-settings from the 1940’s and 1950’s.

The remarkable thing about NH’s “Strawbery Banke” is that wandering there lets you side-slip from the many memory-objects on display there into your own private world of forgotten memories.

What a pleasure it was to wander there riffing on memories with Ronni Bennett, who has even more photos in her blog “As Time Goes By”.

Air conditioning, 1959

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I grew up in a (New England) world with no air conditioning. I’m not sure how grownups who spent days in offices managed on really hot days–but little kids with backyard sprinklers did just fine.

Keeping our house cool inside needed different tactics.

First, our windows were opened up wide every bedtime, on the theory outdoors would get cooler before we woke up.

Second, once sunrise arrived, grownups stayed alert for the absolute instant when air outside the house got hotter than the air inside. Bang, bang, bang, those windows got shut again!

This morning in Cambridge, MA, I’m sorry to say, that slam-windows moment came at 8:30 a.m. But at least so far I don’t need the whir of my room air-conditioner, thanks to old New England tactics from long ago.

Staatsoper PDA

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

As of July 3, it’s 34 years and counting for Frank and Betsy–not to mention (wow!) more than 60 years now for Frank’s mom and dad.

I still don’t understand why the long-term love of any two people is endangered by the thought that two different people (whose lifestyle couple #1 might not approve) want to promise to love one another forever.

It’s easier to imagine that Hollywood “marriages” lasting 55 hours set a bad example to couples from more normal origins–but I hate to think that our US Constitution needs an amendment fo protect us from poor Britney Spears. (And isn’t she heterosexual, IIRC?)

The best marriage advice, according to my little brother, is to keep on caring about each other, respecting each other. For my more long-winded but heartfelt version, here’s some advice I wrote way back in 2003.

Love is a wonderful thing, and good luck to us all!

Small impromptu John Lennon tributes

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

In a beautiful riff on growing up and growings older (whose title I stole for this post) David Weinberger writes today:

By December 8, 1980, nothing had gone wrong in my life. My parents were middle middle class, although growing up I thought we were wealthy. None of my desires were frustrated (well, except for prom night, but that’s a different story)…

Another great Weinbergerism on John Lennon there: “What a great blogger he would have been, so eager to be imperfect in public.”

This photo was taken when I accidentally found myself in NYC and part of a spontaneous John Lennon memorial on the 25th anniversary of his death.

To quote John Lennon (and his Quotations Page), “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Fusilli “waves and particles” – Photorecipe

Originally uploaded by funadium

Here’s something I haven’t seen before, over on Flickr–a “photorecipe” that combines food instructions with helpful pictures of each different stage. And, in this special case, with a physics flavor!

The creator, Funadium teaches both cooking and photography in Italy, close to France, but with lessons in English.

Judging from these fusilli, those courses would be delicious.

CERN’s Microcosm garden holds four giant chunks of classic physics equipment. Even if they were unlabelled, which they aren’t, you could guesstimate their chronological sequence using my Star/Wars/Trek Method to diagnose One-ness, Two-ness, and Three-ness.

One-ness: Early members of a high-tech sequence get built on mega-ideas with micro-money, by enthusiasts running on caffeine and pizza. To diagnose one-ness, look for stuff cobbled together. In the CERN garden, their first particle accelerator is built of unshiny sheet metal and old plumber’s pipe on a model developed for Rutherford back in the 1930s. Definite one-ness!

Two-ness: Most great ideas never get past the stage of one-ness, sad to say. But sometimes they do–sometimes the first item was such a big success, you get actual money to do what you love, only better! The best diagnostic for two-ness is craftsmanship plus simplicity. The original wild-eyed dreamer eagerly hires big-unionized workers who already know how to make big shiny things. The goal in stage two is to make something gorgeous that will do all the great stuff you wished you could do at stage one.

In CERN’s Microcosm garden, “two-ness” marks the gorgeously gleaming silver rocket-shippy thing that would look perfect with alien tentacles severed by rayguns mere microns away from the space-maiden’s shiny bikini–but I digress. And this “rocket” is really a CERN bubble chamber formerly known as BEBC, which unpoetically means “Big European Bubble Chamber.”

Three-ness: Three-ness marks the onset of “no more mistakes.” Let’s be responsible here–thousands of people depend on this project’s success. The mark of three-ness is shiny Frankenstein stuff–as if the skilled craftsmen of stage two now get conflicting orders from five different foremen. Let’s build a sphere–no, a tube–ok, a sphere on a tube. Give it lots of portholes–no, give it seams for access–no, both seams and portholes! I’m sure that’s not how the big copper resonator for CERN’s recent LEP experiment got designed, but you have to admit, that is very much how it looks. Definite three-ness.

Giant projects need three-ness, (and four-ness (and five-ness!)) CERN (where are they, ten-ness?) seems to be doing much better on all this than did the Star Wars franchise. No JarJar Binks, yet,–and hey, thanks for that World Wide Web thing, guys, really enjoying that!

There’s a lot of great one-ness that couldn’t get built in the first place if it didn’t have somebody else’s good solid three-ness to build on top of.

p.s. This image is part of a series from a great Fark contest for Star Wars vs Star Trek. This version was uploaded by Fark photo-ninja And-1!

Menton market – candy fruit

Originally uploaded by funadium

I once read on the Internet (so we know it must be true) that being in love is delicious because it gives joy both to familiarity and to surprises.

I think I’ve just fallen in love with some candied fruit that funadium Flickred from a street market in the French town (not village, I’ve been informed) Menton.