Recipe for Uzbek Soup (Moshhorda)

Posted on February 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

Following is the recipe for the Uzbek soup our couchsurfer visitors prepared for us last night.  It was beyond wonderful.  Our visitors, biologists from the St. Louis area, were a delightful couple who have traveled extensively throughout Uzbekistan, Khazakstan, Russia, Mongolia, and environs. She is fluent in several languages and is a conservation biologist with a current specialty involving Asian bustards.  He is a post-doctoral researcher whose specialty involves investigations into genetic coding related to birds’ vision.  Absolutely fascinating people!  And can they cook!

Fortunately, we had most of the ingredients except bell peppers and plain yogurt; we did without the bell pepper and substitute Greek yogurt.  I would have happily gone out to buy any missing ingredients, except for the fact that we were iced-in with 3/4 inch of ice on everything, including road surfaces.

The following dish is a very common Uzbek dish. She also gave me a lot of information about breakfast in Uzbekistan, Khazakstan, Russia, and Mongolia for my project involving common breakfasts around the globe.

Moshhorda (a common and hearty Uzbek soup)

Yield: 4-6 servings
Prep. and cook time: 1.5 hours

Ingredients:

  • 5 oz. beef cut in small cubes
  • 1 cup mung beans
  • ½ cup rice (brown rice can be used)
  • 1 medium onion or shallot (she used shallot…I would, too)
  • 1 tomato
  • ½ green bell pepper
  • 1 medium carrot
  • 1 large potato
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 4 tbsp canola oil
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tbsp salt (add and subtract according to your own salt intake)
  • 8 cups of boiled water (keep boiled water ready in case you will need to add more)
  • extra 3 cups of water to boil mung beans

Directions:
Make sure beans are clean and washed thoroughly multiple times. On medium heat using a small pot or a sauce pan boil 3 cups of water and mung beans until beans soften and green shell slightly breaks. Drain the water and set aside.

While beans are still boiling you will have time to get your other ingredients ready. Cut the meat, bell pepper, carrot, potato in equal 1″ to 1/2′ cubes. Potatoes need to be put in cold water to keep them from turning darker in color. Tomatoes and onions need to be julienned. Mince garlic cloves.

Heat oil in 5-quart stock pot in medium high heat. Add meat, stir fry it until golden reddish color. Add onions, salt, black pepper and cumin. When onions are golden yellow, add tomatoes and garlic. Stir fry until tomatoes are finely mushed. Add bell pepper, carrots, boiled mung beans. Stir fry for another minute and pour ready boiled water into the stock pot. Once the soup starts boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low. Add potatoes. After 10-15 minutes add washed rice (wash rice thoroughly right before adding to the soup).

Cook until rice is ready. As soon as rice is cooked, take the stock pot from the heat. Soup is well served with cilantro and dills. Also, adding plain yogurt or sour cream is highly recommended.

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Frozen to the Couch

Posted on February 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

Our couch-surfers had hoped to spend the day in Hot Springs yesterday, visiting Hot Springs National Park, indulging themselves in treatments at the bath houses, visiting the galleries, and otherwise behaving like interested tourists.  Instead, they spent the day at our house, hoping the icy roads would thaw enough to permit them to see what they had come to see.  It was not to be. Even their attempt to take a short walk around the neighborhood was derailed by ice as slick as glass, resulting in slipping and sliding and falling.  The choice was clear: the couch called.  So, we spent the day together at our house.

The day started for me as it almost always does; I got up very early, about 3:30 a.m.  I had prepared congee the afternoon before, expecting we would eat an early breakfast before they headed out.  They opted to sleep in, though, so the congee breakfast was more like a brunch, around 10:30.  Instead of cooking ground pork and frying shallots, I put pork fu (dried shredded pork) and packaged fried shallots on the table to flavor the cooked congee, along with sambal oeleek and soy sauce.  All of us liked it.

A bit later, after their aborted effort to take a walk, we nibbled, eating cheeses and deli pork and turkey accompanied by flour tortillas, tomatoes, olives, and a few other odds and ends.  It was excellent.

They offered to cook dinner for us, which we gladly accepted.  They prepared an Uzbek soup, which I believe they called moshurda, which consists of water, a bit of browned beef, rice, carrots, tomatoes, shallots, mung beans, cumin, and salt.  When I get the recipe from them, I will post it; the stuff was incredible!  Traditionally, in Uzbekistan, it is served with a dollop of Uzbek-style sour cream; we didn’t have any, so we used what we had, Greek yogurt.  I can’t say enough about how wonderfully flavorful the soup was. Mimi (the woman), spent considerable time living in Uzbekistan while pursuing her research interests in bird conservation.  She is learning the Uzbek language and is fluent in Russian and Mongolian (and, of course, her native English), and is learning Kazakh and Spanish.  Her knowledge of Uzbek and Mongolian cooking comes from personal, hands-on experience. Matt is no less impressive in his intellect and his accomplishments.

As they were cooking dinner, they talked about their joint travels around Russian, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan, including their experiences drinking milk-based alcoholic beverages, milk-based hard breakfast “snacks,” and traveling by train and car in an environment utterly different from what we are used to.

After dinner,  we decided to sit in front of the fire and watch a movie.  We finally settled on The French Connection, the 1971 classic with Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider.  Janine went to bed after a while, but Matt and  Mimi and I stayed up through the end, sometime after midnight.

As usual, I was up early, at 4:30 this morning. I’ve washed a load of laundry, washed last night’s dinner dishes, cleaned up around the kitchen, hard-boiled some eggs, and posted to this blog.  And now, at 8:15, I’m still waiting for everyone else to get up.  I’m hungry!

Posted in Couch Surfing | 1 Comment

Accepting the World on its Own Terms

Posted on February 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

As I sit and ponder whether my life, or any human life, fits on this planet, it occurs to me that I’ve been pondering the wrong question. It’s not about meaning, it’s about acknowledging that there is only one clear way to fit into a jigsaw puzzle. You fit where the surrounding pieces leave you a properly-configured space. You can try to fit into another place in the puzzle, but invariably the fit feels forced or the space is so unlike your shape that you just can’t  be comfortable there.

All the effort trying to fit in those slightly misshapen spaces, though, wears on the shape you started with and it wears on shapes you tried to go but didn’t fit. Then you realize you just have to fit where the fit’s best.  You accept the world on its own terms, because you can’t dictate the conditions of the deal.

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Forty-Eight

Posted on February 17, 2015 by John Swinburn

Curiosity is a wonderful thing until paired with greed.

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Ice Surfers

Posted on February 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

Our couch surfer guests arrived last night just after 8:00 pm, having driven in from Little Rock through freezing rain. They escaped the worst of the storm, but after they had been here awhile, it followed them to our house. Freezing rain, icycles hanging from the gutters, ice forming on the leaves of plants outside the front door. We stayed up talking until well after 11:00 pm. By then, ice had begun forming on the driveway. This morning, they had planned to go visit Hot Springs, the national park, get a spa treatment, an otherwise just enjoy the day. My guess, though, is that they will be here most of the day, if not all day. The roads probably are treacherous. Either way works for us. They are nice, interesting people. Hosting couch surfers is an experience I wish I’d started doing years earlier.

I’m anxious for daylight; I won’t feel comfortable venturing out to test the extent to which the driveway is slick until I can see.

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Killing Trees

Posted on February 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

A few days ago, as I was doing some very informal research for a piece of fiction I’ve thought about writing (involving the commission of murder by intentionally cutting down a tree so that it will strike the intended victim—more about why this came up below), I stumbled across an account of a young woman’s horrific death in September 2012 in Kew Gardens. A large branch, described as twenty feet long and twelve inches thick, from a Cedar of Lebanon tree planted in 1730 crashed down from sixty-six feet above, killing the woman. A jury of inquest ruled that the woman’s death was an accident; her parents had blamed her death on Kew Gardens’ failure to properly trim the tree and its failure to post warnings about, or set up fences around, trees from which branches might fall. One of the expert witnesses engaged by the parents claimed the branch came down because of “summer branch drop,” an event that occurs when heavy rains fall after an extended dry period, which weakens branches. While the incident occurred following a downpour earlier in the day, another expert rebutted the claim, saying the summer of 2012 was among the wettest on record and the limb fell later in the year than “summer branch drop” events typically occur.

Subsequent research revealed that it’s not terribly uncommon for people to be killed by falling branches or falling trees. A University of Alabama study reported that 407 fatalities from wind-related tree failures occurred in the U.S. from 1997 to 2005. The most recent fatality I found reported took place last December, when an eight-year-old girl who was laying in a hammock attached to a termite-damaged tree died when the tree fell. Another of the more recent news articles I came across was about an actress, Molly Glynn, killed by a falling tree as she rode her bike on a trail in suburban Chicago in 2014.  An earlier death in 2014 occurred when a neighbor’s two-thousand pound palm tree toppled over on a man in East Los Angeles while the man was talking with the neighbor. Another death, in 2012, occurred in Bali when a durian tree fell on the house of an eighty year-old woman. A forty-five foot Corsican pine fell on an eight year-old girl in Surrey, England in January 2003, crushing her to death.

The idea for a murder-by-falling-tree scenario finally became plausible to me as I paused my channel surfing the other night long enough to watch a segment of ABC’s 20-20 program which dealt with tree-cutting/tree-falling mistakes that resulted in trees falling on houses, cars, barns, etc.  What triggered the idea that my idea was plausible was a scene in which a couple of guys, absolute pros, cut a huge pine tree so that it fell between two structures that were only a few feet apart. If they had not been so precise, the tree would have destroyed one or both structures.  Then the program showed a guy who owned property with a house he wanted to demolish; and he decided to do it by felling a tree.

Aha! The idea of murder by precision tree-felling was born! I just have to write convincingly about the face cut, the back cut, and avoiding cutting through the “hinge” on the tree after making those cuts. That, plus some other minor stuff… Look for it in your bookstore.  But be patient.  Be incredibly patient.

Posted in Wood, Writing | Leave a comment

Forty-Seven

Posted on February 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

I’ve found that, when my mind is tightly closed—sealed so well that nothing can get in—the best way to crack it open is with a dose of undiluted humility.

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Forty-Seven

Posted on February 16, 2015 by John Swinburn

Brutally cold nights; hot, arid days; water a necessity that is simply unavailable. I hope it’s just a fantasy that will never come to pass.

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Fairytales on Acid for Demented Adults

Posted on February 15, 2015 by John Swinburn

The Seven Dwarfs (Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Quee, Snick, and Whick) arranged to meet for lunch one sultry February afternoon at an Argentinian steakhouse on The Kurfürstendamm in Berlin.  They invited Goldilocks and Santa Clause to join them, anticipating both would offer a unique perspective on the problems facing the dwarfs. The dfwarfs thought, too, that Santa and Goldilocks might be experiencing the same issues.

Always interested in enjoying a typical German lunch on someone else’s nickel, Santa Clause accepted their invitation in anticipation of ordering halibut ceviche. Goldilocks habitually accepted all lunch invitations in the hope she might stumble across an acting gig in the process.

None of the Seven Dwarfs wanted to be the first to admit, aloud, to the purpose for the gathering.

“Look,” Quee said, finally breaking the silence, “we’re running out of possibilities. Hollywood isn’t hiring, sales of fairy tales and their ilk are down to alarming levels, and there’s just a general disenchantment with fantasy and whimsy. From my vantage point, that leaves just one option for us to have any hope of generating sustainable income, and that’s crime.  The only question is what kind, isn’t it?” He scanned the eyes of the characters around him, searching for signs about their feelings on the matter.

Santa Clause was the first to respond. “You know I hate the idea of abandoning our principles, but goddamn it, the War on Christmas has damn near bankrupted me.  I’ve got to boost revenue or I’m going to be laying off another set of elves in a month or two. Quee, I’m all in. We just need to agree on the most lucrative crime with the least risk.”

Even before he spoke, Plick’s scowl betrayed his disgust with Santa’s comments.

“First, there is no War on Christmas. Santa’s just buying in to the bullshit he hears on Fox News. Second, he abandoned his principles when he refused to deliver toys to children in Havana.

“Santa’s failures notwithstanding,” he said as he studied the faces gathered around the table but conspicuously avoiding eye contact with Santa, “I’m in just because we all know we’re struggling and things can’t go on the way they are. We have to do something.”

“Well,” Goldilocks said, “I am not in such bad shape…”

His white fluffy eyebrows twitching wildly, Santa interrupted her. “Plick, you don’t know squat about why I didn’t deliver to Havana. I didn’t refuse.  The goddamn sleigh broke down and they don’t have parts in Cuba, thanks to the embargo. Get your goddamn facts straight before you start making accusations against me! And as for the War on Christmas….”

“All right, all right, cut the crap,” Whick snarled. “We’re not here to fight, we’re here to talk strategy. Goldilocks, you were about to say something?”

Goldilocks smiled weakly at Whick. “Thanks. As I was saying, I’m not in such bad shape as the rest of you, thanks to my contract for the Sleep Number commercials.  So I don’t think I ought to be part of the decision process and I’ll certainly not be part of any scheme you all launch.”

“Well isn’t that just peachy,” Santa growled, “you stumble into a a short-term gig and the problem doesn’t impact you,  huh? You just wash your hands of the problems confronting the rest of us. You’re what I call a bleached-blonde fair weather friend.”

Goldilocks responded to Santa’s rant by throwing her vodka tonic in his face. Santa wiped his beard on the sleeve of his white-trimmed jacket and grinned. “Goldy, with your temper, I’m surprised you haven’t been transformed into bear fecal matter by now, hah!”

“Santa,” Goldilocks replied, “Rudolph has more class in his big red alcoholic nose than you have in the whole of your stunningly corpulent body.”

Just then, Sinbad the Sailor waved at the group, as a waiter delivered a large order of poached leprechaun-on-toast to the table and pointed him out as their benefactor.

“Maybe we should invite Sinbad to be part of this discussion,” Glick said. “He may have some useful insights about this matter. It’s always wise to get a sailor’s perspective before setting sail, if you know what I mean!” Glick’s face twisted into a self-satisfied grin.

Plick and Flick simultaneously rolled their eyes.

“Hell, it can’t hurt,” Quee said, motioning to Sinbad to join them and ignoring Plick’s and Flick’s denigrating expressions.

YEAH, I got just as tired of writing this as you got reading it. Just killing time before our couch surfers arrive.

 

Posted in Absurdist Fantasy, Fiction | 2 Comments

Remembering Lost Daydreams

Posted on February 15, 2015 by John Swinburn

March 8, 2009 was the day I acknowledged I would never be in a position to achieve my lifelong dream of having a “place in the country.” For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished I had a few acres of land with a decent home, a place where I’d have a tractor and a barn and a workshop, a place where I could create a private oasis, a retreat.

That Sunday we drove from Dallas to Denison, Texas to indulge my pipe-dream.  We looked at a house on four acres, a four-bedroom, three-bath house that needed work. One bedroom and one bath were poorly constructed add-ons and would need to be demolished. The place had a two-car garage, a huge concrete-floor workshop—easily big enough to store the Kubota tractor and assorted implements that came with the house—and a storm cellar. Two wells, one surface well about thirty feet deep and the other one deeper than five hundred feet, provided backup water service; the house was supplied by a county/rural water utility district.  A mixture of mature oaks and pines, along with a scattering of smaller fruit trees, sheltered the waters of a small pond behind the house. The house, particularly, would have required some work.  But I saw the potential in it. My wife was not so enthusiastic. She was the realist that day; even though the place was priced very low at $165,000, we didn’t have the money to buy it outright and we couldn’t simply sell our house and move there because we had a business to run, a business located almost ninety miles from this “place in the country.” The reality that my hopes for a place in the country was not a dream, but a fantasy, had been hidden behind my wishes for a long time, but that day it slammed me in the face, hard.

We drove home in silence. But after we got home, we talked about the future and our plans.  We agreed we would curb our spending, dramatically, and we would sock away as much money as we could and then, in three years, we would sell everything we own, buy a roadworthy vehicle (maybe a camper) and hit the road.  We would become gypsies, vagabonds.  We would explore. We would stop when the mood struck and rent a house or an apartment, perhaps get a job to supplement our savings, and then move on again when the urge came on. We both were happy with the decision.  It was a decision about the future we both wanted to make.  In my case, it was a second best future, because my place in the country was not part of it; but it was a good alternative.

Somewhere along the line, those decisions got derailed, though.  I blame myself for that. I just couldn’t wait the full three years. Two years into it, I stopped socking away money and curbing spending the way we had agreed we would do.  And I was so unhappy with our clients that I reached the decision that I had to get out, to get away from them, the office, the work we were doing…everything.  That’s when we made an alternative decision, a decision to take a one-year sabbatical.  And that one-year sabbatical turned into two years, then into a decision to just retire and sell our house and move.

So, just shy of three years after we decided to retire in three years, we retired. I don’t have my “place in the country,” but the place we live feels a little like a place in the country.  I don’t have acreage, nor a tractor, nor a barn, but at least I retired early, at fifty-eight, to a place with a slower pace and the illusion of rural seclusion.  We haven’t hit the road much, but we still talk about doing shorter road trips than we had agreed on earlier, before plans changed, occasionally. My wife, who was never comfortable with the idea of a rural life, is satisfied that we are reasonably close to city amenities. She’s happy her sister moved close by; I’m happy with that, too.

All in all, I’d say I’m happy with how things have turned out thus far.  But if I experienced the sudden windfall of winning the lottery (unlikely inasmuch as I don’t buy tickets), I’d buy my place in the country, which would be my retreat, not where I’d live full-time.  There, I’d park my small, manageable RV, a RoadTrek RS Adventurous, when I was not on the road.

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Forty-Six

Posted on February 15, 2015 by John Swinburn

Understated passion is always in fashion, at least that’s the word on the street.

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Dribs and Drabs

Posted on February 14, 2015 by John Swinburn

It’s a bit early for the neighbors to be at the barbie, Graeme thought, as he opened the back door to the wooden deck off the living room. The scent of wood smoke and seared meat filled his nostrils. Once outside, he realized almost instantly something was wrong. Thick black smoke poured into the southwestern sky from a hill about three miles south. The smoke rose straight up into the sky, spreading into a horizontal band as it reached the low clouds just above the top  of the hill.  Oh my God, that looks like it’s Bambi Dixon’s place!

Graeme Bisterman, an Australian retiree who had lived in the Arkansas woods just over a year, had seen what wild fires were capable of.  The smoke he saw billowing from the dense pine and hardwood forest a few miles away triggered his memory of the fires near Perth that robbed him of his home and his family just three years before.

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Gusts shrieked and howled outside. Caren could feel the cold on her face through the door as she grasped the knob. She stiffened as she turned it, bracing for the numbing blast of arctic air.  Nothing, though, could have prepared her for the brutally frigid slap across her face when the icy wind hit her.  Frost formed instantly on her eye lashes and she felt as if a film of ice swept across the surface of her eyes. The pain was like a swarm of angry bees simultaneously injecting their venom into her ear lobes.  As she started to take in a deep breath instinctively against the cold, the sensation was like shards of fiercely cold glass shredding her lungs.

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The kiss was intended as a friendly peck. Her warm lips against the back of his neck, though, felt to him beyond sensual; they felt erotic and electric. In his mind, that kiss was the long-awaited prelude to a night of hungry kisses and mutual exploration of every inch of their two bodies.

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Ben watched  as the rock sailed through the air, slowly it seemed to him, toward David’s head.  The “Crack!” as it hit his friend’s head was loud. He saw David’s head rock backward, then spring forward, as David stumbled backward and fell on his back.  “David, are you okay?!” As Ben ran toward him, blood gushed from David’s forehead onto his hands that, by then, were clutching the wound.

Ben screamed at the two boys who had thrown the rock and were then running as fast as they could in the opposite direction. “Look what you did!”

Eleven year old boys don’t know what to do when they’re a mile from the nearest adult and blood is pouring from a wound. The dilemma is amplified when one of the boys, the one bleeding profusely, is slipping into unconsciousness.

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Forty-Five

Posted on February 14, 2015 by John Swinburn

I will refrain from remarking about the crass commercialism that has, for years, hijacked February 14. I will not say that Hallmark et al have cleverly woven into a celebration of love a suggestion that failure to spend appropriately is a sign of love gone stale.  I will withhold comments about the use of guilt to pry money from the pockets of people who can ill afford to pay Cupid for his stunning love nest but who spend recklessly, nevertheless, out of devotion to capitalism gone awry.  Instead, I’ll just keep mum on the topic.

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Risk

Posted on February 13, 2015 by John Swinburn

The idea of risk had been on her mind quite a lot lately.  How much safety, security, certainty would she be willing to risk for happiness?  How much exposure to danger and ugliness and turmoil would she be willing to tolerate if she had an opportunity to achieve emotional or spiritual or physical ecstasy? The answer, she told herself simply, was I don’t know.

Why had this odd topic been on her mind?  An answer would have revealed more than she wanted to share.

This much she would say, though. “I know we all need our secrets.  We all need the privacy the world seems urgently engaged in destroying. My secret is not deadly, not lethal, nothing involving physical pain or torture or anything so unappetizing.  But it is a secret that carries with it emotional turmoil,the limits of which have never been tested.”

She felt close to vanquishing the beast, to overcoming the lust, the drive, the physical attachment that had drawn her into this awful, potentially ruinous risk. Maybe I can clear my mind, my heart, my coursing blood, of this risk, she told herself.  Maybe the implicit rejection, the lack of notice, the ignorance of connection will wash this dangerous slurry away from me in a flush.

But there it was, the coarse little seed of poison, itching to escape and grow into an impenetrable weedy web that chokes out the sunlight the way the ocean chokes a swimmer’s breath. She was almost ready to risk entering the water.

 

 

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Forty-Four

Posted on February 13, 2015 by John Swinburn

If you find it difficult to find something positive to say to a stranger to help him or her have a better day, you should be the next recipient of the positive words of a kind stranger.

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Last Night’s Living

Posted on February 12, 2015 by John Swinburn

Last night, we went to the Garland County Library for a program sponsored by the library and the Hot Springs Jazz Society. I expected it would be a good program.  It was better than good; it was spectacular.  The poets who read their (and others’) work were: 1) Chuck Dodson, host of Wednesday Night Poetry (now at Maxine’s); 2) Kai Coggin, an exceptionally talented poet who’s gaining national notoriety; and 3) Maria Kuntz, a very popular high-energy poet who was instrumental in getting Hot Springs noticed for slam poetry.  The musicians were Chuck Dodson (also a piano player and song-writer); Clyde Pound (an exceptional keyboard player); David Higginbotham (a bassist with amazing skills); and Jay Payette, a drummer/percussionist whose talents are phenomenal (I think I finally “got it” as to the importance of percussion because of the way he played last night).

The audience was made up, predominantly, of geezers my age and older, a real shame, as I think younger people would have enjoyed the evening.  But, so did the geezers.

Clyde Pound, who served as sort of the master of ceremonies along with Chuck Dodson, introduced me to a jazz pianist/composer who, unfortunately, died young (in a scuba-diving accident): Esbjörn Svennson. My god, he was an exceptional jazz musician! One of the pieces they played, Goldwrap, really took me by the soul. I can’t say enough good things about it. So, I’ll let a few of the photos I took say more than I can. I wish I’d gotten good photos and quality recordings of all of last night; these folks were stunning.

JazzPoetry1 11DavidHigginbotham 11ChuckDodson11Kai

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Forty-Three

Posted on February 12, 2015 by John Swinburn

I feel sorry for Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor who has been suspended without pay for six months for an exaggerated tale of reporting under fire from Iraq. I don’t approve, but I think it’s possible his memory really might have morphed into a lie.  He deserves sympathy and empathy and support.  He does need to be away from the news, but he should not be pilloried, especially by people whose sins are far more egregious than his.

Posted in Ruminations | 1 Comment

Practical Magic

Posted on February 11, 2015 by John Swinburn

Every so often I come across a bit of software or technology or related online magic that captures my interest to such an extent that I drop virtually everything else I’m doing and focus on learning more about it.  Lately, “every so often” has become “with almost every breath I take.” If I don’t document, now, the stuff I’ve stumbled upon in recent days, I’m afraid I’ll forget where to go back to look for it. All of this is to say this post is for me (as they all are), but you might find something interesting here, too.

  • WriteWords Frequency Counter is a website that counts the number of times each word is used in text that the site user copies and pastes to a dialogue box on the site.  It’s impressive and can identify word overuse, a good tool for writers.
  • 750 Words.  This is a site for aspiring writers, a place that intends to help writers get in the habit of writing every day.  I already write every day, but not necessarily 750 words every morning.  I’ll have to explore it a little closer.
  • MailChimp offers both free and paid email services.  It includes the complimentary use of a number of newsletter templates, all of which can be customized.  It’s impressively easy to use and I suspect I’ll be using the free version (good for lists up to 2000 emails), to promote some of my writing (when it gets to that point).
  • Google Forms, is a simple application that permits the user (I presume he/she must have a Google account, which is easy to set up) to create and distribute surveys.  I have been using FormSite (I still have a few months left of a paid subscription), but will switch to Google Forms when I need/want to do surveys of any kind in the future.  I found it interesting to learn that Google also has a paid version which allows the user to send surveys to existing lists of people compiled by Google.
  • Another freebie, SurveyMonkey, also has a paid version that is more expensive that Google’s paid version, but also allows the surveyor to be more precise in who they send the survey to. But, back to the free version, it’s a very, very simple tool and I suspect I might use it again, too.
  • Screenr is a website that allows the user to capture what’s showing on the computer screen, as well as record voice at the same time, and then “screencast” the results.
  • If you want to calculate how many days (or minutes or seconds) between dates, there’s a website that will do if for you.  It’s called TimeandDate.com and it’s a website that I’ve used for years (especially when I was orchestrating international conference calls; was good to know times when all participants likely be awake), but I didn’t know until just a few days ago it had the ability to calculate lapsed time between dates. I was curious how many seconds I’ve lived (give or take a day’s worth); the calculation I got said I’ll have been alive 1,934,928,000 seconds at the the end of the day.
  • Rasterbator.net is just for fun, but I am impressed with how much fun I can envision having with it.  The site produces a massively enlarged version of any photo you upload, returning the photo to you in the form of multiple PDF files that can be assembled into a giant wall-sized version of the photo you uploaded.  It is cool in the extreme.
  • Printfriendly is a that enables the user to make any website you visit suitable for printing.  The print-friendly version won’t necessarily look like the one on the screen, but it will be far easier to read on the page, in many cases.  I tried it on my blog and was impressed that the print version is much easier to read that if I simply tried to print the web page directly.  It has an add-on for Google Chrome (the browser I use), which enables me to simply click on an icon to bring up a true print-friendly website.
  • ThisToThat is a bizarre but amazingly useful little website application with which you select two different materials you want to glue together and the application identifies the best types of glue to use.
  • PicMonkey is a very easy to use and versatile photo/image editor.  It’s not PhotoShop, but it’s free and a cool app.
  • Sync.in is an interesting online writing collaboration tool.  I haven’t used it yet, but I am glad to know it exists.
  • Scribblemaps is said to allow the user to make notes, etc. on maps.  I haven’t used it. It’s on this list because I want to return to it and check it out.
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Silliness on Steroids

Posted on February 11, 2015 by John Swinburn

I’m not sure what possessed me to think about the idiocy of competitive eating at this hour. Not that it matters, of course, as almost everything I post at this hour arises from thoughts with no logical connection to the time of day.

At any rate, there it is.  I’m thinking about how utterly silly and potentially destructive competitive eating contests are.  Who can eat the most hot dogs in ten minutes? How many pepperoni pizzas can a team of gluttons consume in twenty minutes? How many gallons of ice cream will contestants eat before they begin projectile vomiting?  It’s absurd.

Despite its inherent stupidity, it has become a ‘thing’ that attracts our attention.  I’ve always thought these food contests were dumb. I just haven’t, until now, committed my disdain to the keyboard; at least not that I recall.  The popularity of competitive eating may be on the downswing; I haven’t heard much about such contests lately.  I hope so.  I hope this post coincides with the demise of the homage to moronic gluttony.

And that’s all I have to say, for the moment, about that.

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Forty-Two

Posted on February 11, 2015 by John Swinburn

The amount of risk one is willing to take to achieve something—a desired object, a target, an accomplishment—is a measure of the importance of the objective.

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Couchsurfers

Posted on February 10, 2015 by John Swinburn

We’ll be hosting a couch surfing couple next week, for two days, while they explore the biology of the surrounding environs.  A couple of early-career Ph.D. biologists with a particular interest in birds, these two folks seem (electronically, at least) to be very interesting people.  We look forward to meeting them and learning more about them.

They will be the first couch surfers we’ve hosted since moving to Hot Springs Village.  I love the idea of couch surfing.  The one experience we’ve had as guests was outstanding.  The experiences we’ve had as hosts have been equally interesting and illuminating.  Couch surfers tend to be people who are interested in meeting people with diverse backgrounds and diverse interests. I’m sure there are plenty whose primary interest is in saving the cost of lodging, but I suspect the proportion who are in it for the experience is far greater.

 

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Forty-One

Posted on February 10, 2015 by John Swinburn

If you get a frosty reception, you’re treated coolly (or coldly) by someone.  If you get into a heated argument, tempers flare. But if you’re cool as a cucumber, you’re imperturbably calm. Intriguing, isn’t it, that words suggestive of a range of temperatures can describe emotions? Some people run hot and cold in their relationships, often resulting in a conflagration that burns all the fuel feeding the embers, requiring something new to rekindle the flame.

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Slaughter of Tradition

Posted on February 9, 2015 by John Swinburn

My tendency to abandon tradition in the kitchen has become a more intensely practiced habit of late than in the past. Lately, breakfasts have been the subject of my passion for twisting what has long been socially accepted as satisfying and right into an initially uncomfortable aberration.  What I’ve done does not always amount to wholesale pillaging of traditional foods, though. Instead, I’ve just followed my taste buds along a parallel path.

Yesterday and today, for example, I had steel cut oats for breakfast.  Instead of flavoring them with sweets, e.g., sugar or dried fruits, I used sambal oeleek and soy sauce, which worked exceptionally well with the flavor of the oats.  Actually, I much prefer the savory version to the more typical stuff.

The popular refrain, “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper,” is widely attributed to Adelle Davis, the popular nutritionist and author who advocated for unprocessed foods, among other dietary issues.  Regardless of who originated the phrase, it makes sense to me, though habits are sometimes hard to break.  Toward a modified version of the phrase, I’m thinking about turning my tradition of rather light breakfast, heavier lunch, and yet heavier dinner on its head, or at least on its ear.  Perhaps I’ll explore a somewhat heartier breakfast than I’ve been used to, arising as a prince.  Then, I’ll adorn myself with a crown for lunch, when I’ll have a feast fit for someone of my stature, then remove it and wear my tattered rags while I eat a spartan dinner.

This plan, of course, is subject to the approval of my favorite spouse. Without that, the plan collapses into a quivering bowl of soy-soaked oats.

My dinner last night, after having a Mexican food lunch at Tarasco’s in Dardenelle fit for three princes and two kings, consisted of a tin of King Oscar brand kippered herring, jazzed up with a little jalapeño paste, followed a bit later by the remnants of my wife’s dinner the night before, a small piece of New York strip steak. I didn’t need the steak; it was just wanton food-lust allowed to run amok.

Today’s lunch consisted of a tin of Ocean Prince brand kippered herring, jazzed up with a squirt or two of sriracha sauce, and the last remaining roma tomato. If I can persuade myself to continue on the path of last night’s dinner and today’s lunch, my walks and hikes and roaming around should be adequate to take off the pounds I need to lose.

I’d like to slaughter the tradition that has become so centrally ME: eating more than I need just because I enjoy the flavors.  I can enjoy the flavors without over-indulging in them, methinks.  Yes, time to slaughter that tradition.

This stream-of-consciousness blather brought to you by Idle Time in Retirement and Endless Desire to Exercise His Fingers.

 

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Hard as Nails and Half as Sharp

Posted on February 9, 2015 by John Swinburn

More than occasionally I come across people I quickly decide are as hard as nails and half as sharp. These are people about whom I make a snap judgement based on a single encounter, maybe not even an encounter with me but an encounter I witness with someone else. That quick experience and snap judgement colors the way I perceive them. I consider them harsh, hard-hearted, dim-witted, neanderthals.

As I think of the way I judge those people, silently for the most part, I wonder how many of them—or how many others—judge me the same way. I’m sure I’ve been just as much of a horse’s ass, behaved just as poorly, exposed the rough edges more than I should have done.  So, surely, others who don’t know me or know very little about me have made the same characterizations about me.

One would think, then, a person would learn to withhold judgments.  That is a lesson worth learning.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Among all the chaff in the “good” book, there is wheat. Hypocrisy is an illness of intellect.

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Forty

Posted on February 9, 2015 by John Swinburn

The hardest advice to take is to reveal yourself, the real you. Let the blemishes rise to the surface. Expose the cracked and broken edges. Stop hiding the curled and misshapen pieces of your personality. But then, who will love you?  Who will care? Who will look beyond the flaws to the core within? Accept that it’s possible no one can, no one will, no one wants to.

And that’s when the hardest part starts.  That’s when you have to fight the demons just to stay alive, just to keep yourself from strangling the child who never matured.

You’re glad you can’t share this with anyone. It’s toxic and dangerous; no one deserves this but you.

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