“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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We’re at the winter solstice, the beginning or middle of winter. It’s hard to fathom a day in the year that has had more impact on human behaviors over millennia. We, in the Northern Hemisphere, will experience it for an instant around 11:38 PM tonight and those in the Southern will have to wait 6 months. Today brings the yearly tipping point for day length, that is, tomorrow’s day will begin to be longer and nights will become shorter. Day length was the metric for our earliest forms of calendaring. If early man did not have enough food stored by now, famine was a likely threat in the months of March-April. Although time is continuous, we are anthropologically moved by seasons and milestones. (It even shows up in some of end-of-budget yearly behaviors.)
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This week, there is lots of buzz about the upcoming Black Friday; the day people abandon civilized behavior for the sake of a deal. For many, it may be the only day that affordable gifts may be within reach, or shoving range. For merchants, the day that books move from red to black, maybe. It is the demarcation from the day of eating stuffing to the season for buying stuff.
When was the last time you dreamed? Not the go-to-sleep dream, but the dream that has a future that is really attractive, one we wanted to be part of? Is that dream still alive? In the universal words of kids in the back seat of the car, “Are we there yet?” Has the dream taken a detour, stuck in traffic, parked in the remote lot, or crushed in a junkyard, fodder for recycling? In this dream, were we the driver, passenger, or someone on the curb watching traffic go by?
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“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
Do you know who he was? To folks like me who love our time in the kitchen, he is considered the “Father of Foodies.” His professional life was as a lawyer and politician, but his fame comes from laying the foundations and building the house of modern gastronomy. His book, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste) , is not on my list of recommended reads, but his insights are timeless. The Julia Childs and Emeril Lagasses and all the wannabees can thank our first “Iron Chef”. His comment above is among others that are relevant far beyond the realm of chopping blocks and saucepans.
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“To the victor belongs the spoils” is the famous quote by New York Senator William Learned Marcy (1786-1857), recited in the U. S. Senate, 25 January 1832. This one sure gets lots of traffic. It brings with it a lot of imagery of the uglier side of politics, graft and an all or nothing perspective. I can recall, as I read world history in high school, images of conquerors doing all the pillaging and other stuff. Certainly, the principle still has legs today, ugly legs at that.
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Last year I lost a friend to heart disease. He had a stroke that eventually proved fatal.
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I’ve often heard the term, “You are what you eat.” I suspect that some of that may be true. If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” you may conclude that we are more corn than anything else.
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How many times have we crossed the Rubicon, our very own River Rubicon? When Julius Caesar crossed the River Rubicon in 49 BC, it was an act of commitment to war with Rome, a point of no return, a decision to follow through without looking back. It was, in fact a decision that changed the course of history and our world as it is today
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You did that on purpose!” I often hear that when someone’s about to get it for a misdeed. It differentiates those actions that are done with intent from those not by mistake or accidentally. So, the word purpose can be used to differentiate a special cause from a random cause. In this case, it takes on the differentiator for indictment, something a prosecutor might want to propose (ironic, that purpose and propose share the same etymological genealogy)
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Your couch. It is mine.
Im a cool paragraph that lives inside of an even cooler modal. Wins
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