Category: peregrinations

On my way home

May 29, 2015 • 11:22 am

I’m ensconced in Ronald Reagan Airport, better known (in both senses) as Washington National Airport. I noticed on my way in a brass statue of The Gipper standing in front, and it’s simply a travesty to name this airport after such a dreadful President. I hope some day they’ll change the name back again. The good news is that for some unknown reason I got a TSA “Pre-check” status, enabling me to skip the lines and pass through inspection without removing my belt, my computer, my liquids, and even my boots—or having my buttocks groped. I have no idea how the TSA confers this status, which I get sporadically.

At any rate, I spent last night at my sister and brother-in-law’s house, with a fine dinner of fresh strawberry daquiris, grilled chicken, cole slaw (made with my mother’s recipe), potato salad, and a fine 2010 Chateau d’Arche Sauternes for dessert (courtesy of PCC). It was luscious, but needs a few more years.

This morning I was asked to go through my old possessions recovered from my mother’s house after she died, as they want to give what I don’t want to the Salvation Army National Children’s Center, AMVETS, and Purple Heart. I decided to save my childhood copies of the Winnie the Pooh books (bought in England in 1955), letters from old friends, my high school and college yearbooks, and the two precious possessions shown below.

IMG_0609

The vinyl copy of Sergeant Pepper, as many of you know, was responsible for converting me into an atheist (see the story here), and I’ve shown it before. I’m also holding one of my other beloved possessions: my high school letter (“H” is for Heidelberg American High School, a US Army school in Germany), which I got for wrestling. Athletic letters, awarded for being on varsity teams, were a Big Deal back then, automatically elevating you above nerd-dom and reputed to help you get girls (it didn’t prove too useful!). Does anyone remember the Beach Boys’ classic “Be True to Your School” song, which had this verse?

I got a letterman’s sweater
With a letter in front
I got for football and track
I’m proud to wear it now
When I cruise around
The other parts of the town
I got a decal in back.

(The “decal” would be a decal with the name of your high school, affixed to the rear window of your car.)

Sure enough, I had my mom sew that onto a white sweater, which I wore proudly. Eventually the garment became moth-eaten, and I recovered the letter.

I wrestled in the 103-pound class—can you imagine?

The vino (a half bottle: ideal for rich dessert wines like Sauternes):

IMG_0606

 

Hili announces my 10,000th post (and a further announcement)

March 19, 2015 • 1:40 pm

First, to prove it: here’s a screenshot of the data from the last post:

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 1.17.24 PM

And, the Big Announcement, which has to come from Hili, of course (I’m told she had to be dragged inside to perform her duty):

A: Hili, in a moment there will be 10,000th post on Jerry’s website.
Hili: 10,000 is less important than 10,001.

Hili 10,000

 

At any rate, I read the readers’ suggestions for what to do on this post, and I appreciated them all, but in the end they were either too much work or didn’t strike me as just right.  So what I’ll do is say one thing and announce another.

I’ve been writing on this site (NOT A BLOG) since January of 2009, when WEIT came out, and it’s hard to believe that it’s been six years. I originally planned this, on my editor’s advice, to just be a site where people could come to learn about the book. My idea was that every couple of weeks or so I’d add a new post about the evidence for evolution.

Well, that didn’t work so well.  The site grew—I won’t say “out of control”, but into into a collection of things that I like to write about, including science, boots, food, travels, philosophy—and of course, cats. I don’t plan any big changes, but I have to say that I love writing on the site, even when I drag myself to work wondering what in the deuce I have to say. And I especially love the faithful readers who follow the site and make good comments. I think you’ll know that this site is known for its civil and thoughtful commentary (as well as puns!), and I’m proud of that; but it wouldn’t have happened without the readership. As you’ll see when you read Faith vs. Fact—you have ordered it, haven’t you?—that one of my acknowledgments is to all the reader whose comments helped educate me about the fraught relationship between science and religion.  So thank you all, and, as Maru says, we do our best.

My announcement is this: I’m planning a Big Road Trip this summer, something I’ve always wanted to do. That would involve taking off a month or more and driving across the country, avoiding interstates, visiting my friends, and, of course, investigating regional noms. I’d like to include in the trip brief visits to some of the readers on the route—a route that will be partly determined by who wants a visit.

I’ll probably circle south from Chicago, go across the southern US, and then up through the West Coast heading back east through the Big Empty States. I also want to visit Anthony Hutcherson in Maryland to look at some Bengal kittens.

I’d love to document the trip not only with descriptions and photos of what I see and do, but with information about and pictures of readers and their animals (preferably cats, of course). If you want to say “hi” on this trip, shoot me an email with your location. I already know many of you through either your comments or your emails, and think it would be fun to meet readers in person along with the several friends I haven’t visited in a while.

By “visit,” I don’t mean that people should feed me or put me up: I’m just looking for a brief peek into the lives of some of the readers. I can’t visit everyone, of course, but I’ll try to see some of the people I’ve gotten to know on this site.

So. . . that’s it. As the Furry Princess of Poland says, it’s time to move on to the next post.

India: Off to Khajuraho

December 31, 2014 • 12:00 pm

We’re headed for Khajuraho today, the famous complex of 10th- and 11th-century Hindu temples about 600 km SE of Delhi. They constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and are most renowned for their gorgeous and erotic sculptures. It’s amazing that such carvings are so well preserved after more than a thousand years. After the 13th century the temples fell into disuse and were overgrown with jungle, and were “rediscovered” by a British surveyor in the 1830s.

You can see a panoply of the sculptures, salacious and otherwise, here.

We’ll be taking the overnight train (leaves 8 pm, arrives 6 am), so I get the experience of a sleeper car, and perhaps a “western style” toilet (I forgot to include this in my previous “sign” post):

Sign

I still have a gazillion photos that must wait until my return to Chicago (the pictures of noms are great), so bear with me. To hold you in the meantime, here’s the good Professor in the Indian clothes I wore for my birthday dinner and in the Bengal Club in Calcutta:

P1070210

 

I had an awesome birthday dinner prepared by my host, but didn’t want to disturb the company by taking photos of the delicious Bengali viands. I couldn’t, however, resist photographing the payesh, or Bengali rice pudding on the left, which is traditionally served on birthdays. It’s liberally doused with syrup made from concentrated palm sap, which resembles maple syrup, and can be further condensed to make palm jaggery or sugar.  The sweets to the left are sandesh (a milk sweet, with the ones in the center, shaped like buttocks, filled with palm sap concentrate as well.

P1070537

More solipsism that I couldn’t resist. Here’s a lovely birthday present from my hosts: a shirt made from pure, heavy raw silk in its natural color. It has a roughish texture and a beautiful golden sheen. We took the material to the local tailor about ten days ago, he measured me, and today delivered this beautifully-fitting garment. I was told the price for making the shirt (exclusive of material costs) was 150 rupees: roughly two dollars!

Professor Ceiling Cat likes his new shirt!

P1070539~

 

 

Delhi: lunch and animals

December 29, 2014 • 7:28 am

I’ve managed to download my photos up to today’s batch, but posting them here is interminably slow. What I’ll do, then, is just show you what I had to eat today when I took the bus into Central Delhi for shopping, and the animals I saw along the way.

First, of course, the noms, which I had at one of my favorite restaurants in central Delhi (Connaught Place): the Vega restaurant in the Alka Hotel. It’s upscale vegetarian, absolutely scrumptious, and the place makes a great thali, which is what you’ll see in the second photo.

First course: a tasty savoury tomato broth served with a glass of sweetened and spiced buttermilk. (Note: the food photos aren’t sharp because I took them hand-held without flash, it was dark, and the exposure time was about a quarter of a second.)

P1070479

The main meal is a thali: a typical Indian meal served on a flat metal tray (the thali itself) containing numerous portions of different dishes served in metal bowls called katoris. In the center is your starch: usually breads in northern India and rice in Bengal and the south. It’s all-you-can-eat: servers come by regularly asking you if you want this or that katori refilled.

Here are the dishes in this thali, starting at 1 pm and going clockwise: a dahi vada, a southern Indian lentil dumpling in a slightly sweetened yogurt sauce; dal (lentils); sag paneer (spinach with Indian cheese cubes); stewed tomatoes in a spicy sauce; mattar paneer (peas in tomato sauce, again with cheese cubes); above that katori is a pakora (fried vegetable fritter); at nine o’clock is a gulab jamun, a deep-fried sweet in syrup that is part of dessert; fruits with spices and a bit of salt; tomato, lime, and onion garnish; and, in the center, three kinds of bread, including a crisp papadum (they offered me rice, too). As I said, you can get refills on everything but the sweet.

As always in India, I ate it with my hands—or rather the right hand only, for reasons that will be familiar to those who travel in this land. You use the bread to scoop up the other stuff. It’s a bit messier if you have rice!

P1070480

And the best part for me of the thali at the Vega: a village-style kulfi—Indian ice cream made in small, hand-thrown clay pots (sealed with a strip of dough), and frozen by being agitated in a bath of ice, water, and salt. It’s flavored with cardamon and other spices, has a slightly granular texture, and to me is the world’s best frozen dessert—aside from the burnt-sugar ice cream at Christina’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This kulfi is scooped out of the clay pot with a sturdy sliver of bamboo.

P1070484

Walking to the bus I saw three species of animals all together. Can you identify them? (Don’t overlook the mammal.)

P1070454

How about this bird?

P1070455

The campus at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where I’m staying, is a large patch of forest surrounded by urban Delhi. But it’s big enough to harbor substantial wildlife, including the parrots above, two species of deer (including the sambar), and the species shown below, which, though blurry, is not introduced—it’s native to this area. These are real endemic peacocks, and they (like the deer) play hob with my host’s garden. It’s hard to photograph them as they don’t appear often and they’re quite skittish. But I’m told the males do fly up pretty high and perch on branches.

This guy’s tail looks a bit frayed; I doubt he’ll be getting lucky any time soon:

P1070491

Finally, another blurry songster, which I’m sure some readers can identify but to me is just “another brown bird.” It could be the same species shown three photos above. Enlighten me!

P1070492

 

I’m baaack!

December 27, 2014 • 4:53 am

I’ve just returned to Delhi after 11 days in Calcutta and its environs, including the fantastic terra-cotta temples of Bishnipur as well as Rabindrinath Tagore‘s “spiritual university” town of Santiniketan, where we heard a wonderful Christmas concert of Indian and Western music. It featured Tagore’s songs (he wrote 2500 among his many plays, poems, novels, and paintings)—some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, Indian or otherwise. I’ll try to feature them over the coming weeks. Everything has been documented in photos, but since Internet is slow I may have to wait until my return Jan. 7 to give a full account.

And of course I haven’t neglected food, and I have dozens of pictures of delicacies, as I’ve eaten stupendously well: the best of Bengali cuisine, which is one of the tastiest cuisines of India. Be prepared to salivate.

I see that the website has been kept up well by my colleagues-in-writing. Special thanks to Grania for her many provocative and entertaining posts.

I will be departing again on Dec. 31 for Khajuraho, and back shortly after I return. Professor Ceiling Cat has a Big Birthday on Dec. 30, though, and I’m told that my hosts are having a “do” in celebration, which is very kind. Don’t forget to send presents!

In the meantime, fill me in on what’s happening. I have had virtually no news from the States, and haven’t looked at the internet in 11 days, which must be unprecedented in the last decade.  What is the most important thing I’ve missed?

Speaking of noms, it’s time for a late lunch, and there will be more later, including, I hope, a Caturday felid.

I have landed

October 16, 2014 • 12:31 pm

It was a long flight–9 hours to Munich, a three-hour layover, and then two hours to Sofia. But I’m here, and so far things are looking good. My hosts, who are lovely people, picked me up at the airport and took me to my hotel, and then to a delicious Italian meal (I had gnocchi with goat cheese, pine nuts, olives, and spinach, washed down with a Bulgarian beer). Tomorrow we’re going to a traditional Bulgarian restaurant, so be prepared for pictures of the local noms.

My talk, on mimicry, is part of a three-talk science-and-skepticism afternoon held twice a year in Sofia. That will be on Thursday, for tomorrow I’m seeing the sights and recovering from jet lag.

Oh, and Lufthansa has dreadful airline food; I thought the Germans would put on a better show. Not a sausage to be seen!

I also saw my first Bulgarian cat (in the street), but, curiously, it looked very similar to an American cat. Sadly, it wouldn’t let me get close to it for fusses, so I couldn’t enact the scene shown in the cartoon below (h/t to reader John).

I can’t keep my eyes open, and so to bed. I see I have many emails from readers, and will respond when I get the time.

Cat Cartoon

 

 

Note to readers: peregrinations

October 14, 2014 • 3:12 am

I’m back in Chicago for 1.5 days, but after tomorrow evening I’m not sure how regular my connection to the Internet will be. I will, therefore, ask readers to hold off sending me articles until I return from Bulgaria on Oct. 27.  If you have something that you absolutely need to call to my attention, one email every three days or so is about the right frequency.  I’m finding it hard to keep up with readers’ emails when I travel.

Things will resume as usual upon my return, of course.

kthxbai,
The Management