View From the Heart, Alwin Hawkins excellent weblog, turns a year old today. Alwin does a wonderful job of mixing links with anecdotes and stories from his life, and I’m happy to see him reach this milestone. Today he tells us it’s all been worthwhile.

It’s been all about food. The last two weeks, that is. It all started with Thanksgiving, which my girlfriend and I spent at the home of some mutual friends. The very same friends that introduced the two of us and became responsible for my current euphoric state. My friends were cooking all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, and then some. I was in charge of dessert and wine. I made three cheesecakes: pumpkin, of course, along with chocolate caramel pecan and apple caramel sundae. I made them all from scratch, including the caramel, but stopped short (this time) of making the cream cheese. Wine was a few bottles of the very tasty Beaujolais Nouveau and some white port from Mount Pleasant Winery in Missouri. It was a fantabulous night.

Then I had to cook for a lot of people. The theater group I do most of my work with has an opening night reception for each play it puts on. Usually it’s finger food things, fruits and cheeses and the like. I was doing the reception this time, and the play seemed to call for more. It’s called Dearly Departed, and it’s a comedic look at a southern “white trash” family dealing with the loss of their patriarch. Finger foods were right out – I had to do a full southern style pot luck. So I cooked for about a hundred people, using every pot and pan I had (some of them three times). Fried Chicken, macaroni and cheese, okra, hush puppies, banana pudding, fruit salad, deviled eggs, punch, cookies, peanut brittle. I used my two volumes of the White Trash Cookbooks (despite the titles, they are really very good, very informative books – highly recommended) heavily in choosing just the right recipes. The reception was Friday, and it went very well. But Saturday I faced a trashed kitchen.

I cleaned as best I could, for Sunday was another day of cooking. What was envisioned as a post-Thankgiving Thanksgiving meal, it was scaled down to include just me, my girlfriend, and my excellent friend Kim. Longtime readers and people who know me might recognize the oddity in that, but it was really very nice. My kitchen was still half-trashed, but I forged ahead and baked a ham (and then glazed it), made cornbread stuffing, mixed vegetables, baked sweet potatoes, and the most wonderful Cornish game hens I’ve ever had. I followed a recipe for the Chinese delicacy Tea Smoked Duck, adapted for Cornish hens. Though a bit involved, the cooking was very easy. A rubbed marinade, steaming in the wok, and smoking in the wok. Instead of wood chips, the smoking agent is black tea (I used Lapsang Souchong), uncooked rice, peppercorns, brown sugar, cinnamon sticks, and anise. Someone once told me that this dish was best left for the restaurants, as the smoke would stench up the house for many days afterward. But I lined the wok with foil and wrapped the overhang around the lid, sealing in all the smoke. And that did the trick. And the taste was out of this world.

So now my kitchen’s a disaster again. Luckily, I can live off leftovers for a few days, because it’ll take a few days before I can really shine the place. I’ve got auditions tonight and tomorrow for the next play I’m directing, Christopher Durang’s wickedly funny Baby With the Bathwater, opening next February 2.

Well, it hasn’t been all about the food. In other news of the weekend, the events set in motion on Day Zero have led to my kindred spirit becoming my kindred housemate.

You’ll notice a couple changes at the end of each entry of this weblog. First, I’ve consolidated each post’s permanent link with the timestamp. If for any reason you wish to link to a specific entry of mine on a web page of yours, click on the timestamp at the end of the entry to get that entry’s permanent URL. Second, thanks to a neat tool called BlogVoices, you can add your voice to mine by commenting on specific entries. Your comments will be available to future readers. To add your voice, or to read the voices of those that came before, click on the word “Add” folowing the timestamp. So long as this feature doesn’t slow down the loading of the page, I’ll keep it.

Our eyes see three primary colors: red, green, and blue. All of the colors we know are blends of those three. Colorblind people are missing one or more of the receptors, severely limiting their color perception. On the other extreme, tetrachromats have four -- an extraordinary mutation found only in certain women. Current research asks if these women’s brains can take advantage of this extra “dimension” of color.

Could a parasite passed to humans from housecats cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder? There’s some very convincing evidence that schizophrenia is caused by an infectious agent, and E. Fuller Torrey, one of the giants of schizophrenia research, thinks he may know the source.

Yesterday I spent my lunch break painting set pieces at the theater for the Town & Gown Players. The theater’s phone rang, and I had the following conversation:

Me: Town & Gown
Male Voice: Hello, Mr. Players?
Me: Excuse me?
Male Voice: Are you Mr. Players?
Me: Oh! Yes… I’m he.
Male Voice: Hello, Town, I’m Greg and I have a special offer –
Me: Town? Oh, no. That’s my lovely wife. I’m Gown Players. Thanks for calling, but the Players household isn’t in a spending mood today. G’day!

I guess telemarketers see all sorts of strange names, but really… Town & Gown Players?

Cold, dry winter nights bring conditions perfect for listening to far-away AM radio stations. After a late night at the theater the other day, I drove home while listening to a far-right call in talk show from Cincinnati. The female co host discussed how the current election “crisis” was foretold in the bible using the bible code. The male co host advocated, should Gore assume the presidency, and armed revolution in the streets, proclaiming the upcoming fight the “Second Battle of Athens.” Very inflammatory, you betcha. I wondered what he meant by the Battle of Athens. I went through the Greek history I’ve got stored in my head, but couldn’t think of a pivotal pro-democracy battle fought in Athens. It turns out I didn’t have to think so far back, nor so far away. In 1946, in Athens, Tennessee, a corrupt county government was overthrown by force by a group of former GIs, after fighting a bitter political struggle. Even though I taught US History myself, I’d never heard of this event. A successful armed rebellion on US soil? Only 50 years ago? I’m surprised the NRA doesn’t trumpet this battle in its Second Amendment defense.

I’ve been listening to the arguments before the Florida Supreme Court. Gore’s side had the first hour, and the justices were aggressive in their questioning. The justices sounded well prepared and clearly recognized the importance of the case. Gore’s lawyers took the questioning well. Bush’s lawyers are currently wrapping up the second hour, and it sounds like they’re using a script written by Bush himself. They’ve been talking in contradictory circles, and the justices are simply skewering them. The lawyers have stuttered, stammered, hemmed and hawed. Several justices have had to demand that the lawyer answer the question, when dodging yew or no questions. It’s been amazing to listen to. I’m curious to see how the spin machines handle it, and (even though it seems clear) how the court decides.

Work is a bear right now. Coworkers are mighty grumpy. We’ve released some major changes to our software this week, as beta, to a couple long-time customers and a new one half the continent away. I’m striving to keep a handle on things, but it’s a lot to manage. Meanwhile, I’m in a play this week as well.

The AAA (formerly known as the American Automobile Association) is the second largest member organization in the country, behind only the Catholic church. With so many members, you can guess that the club wields a lot of political power, and you’d be right. But did you know that they use that power to lobby for more pollution, more sprawl, and less safe cars? I didn’t either. I’m a lapsed member, and you can bet I won’t re-up any time soon.