Last Links I Like

For now, anyway.

It's a short but tough list, with Newtown and Hurricane Sandy.

• "What Books are 'Just Right' for the Young Reader?"--Room For Debate, namely they mostly said whatever the child wants to read, which was influential in our letter the kids plow through Potter (NYT)
• Nicholas Kristof, "Looking for Lessons in Newtown"--a refutation of common excuses for those who are anti-gun control
• Teaching meditation to children
• For young survivors of violence, recovery is possible
• Gun ownership as the antithesis of free society
• "Holidays without God"--Room for Debate
• "8 Books to Inspire a Happy Mama", including Momma Zen, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, Peace is Every Step, The Conscious Parent, Talk So Your Children Will Listen, Life is a Verb, Four Word Self Help, and Simple Abudnace
• Everyday stressors and "Possible Thinking"
• "Is There a Toy-Class Divide?"  Yes.
• A book on American minutiae for Russians
• Discovery and the art of being still
• 26 Facts on Finland's education system
• Book review, "Far From the Tree," a compassionate look at difficult parenting
• Simple ways to make your child feel special
• Storms affect children differently than adults
• A wonderful article on Waffle House and weather disasters
• Including the child with special needs

Yes, More Links I Like

From January through March

• One of the best articles about bullying and weight and parents--esp the do's and don'ts list (NYT)
• "A child is a person, not a project," says mom of son who died of Tay-Sachs
• The tsunami survivor who lost her whole family . . . and wrote a book (Guardian)
• High job-satisfaction for teachers? (NYT)
• Table for Two . . .Women (NYT)
• Recipes for Easter breads (NYT)
• An experiment in avoiding chemicals
• "A Letter to Victoria Secret from a Father"
• Jedi religion, performing marriages in Scotland! (BBC)
• The Steubenville Rapists and misplaced sympathy (Guardian)
• More on sleep and weight
• Cookie recipes for Passover
• Turning the edutainment paradigm upside down
• Myths of the Devil's Chord
• Persian foods for Passover
• "When Exercise Stresses You Out"
• "Hands free" summer--unplugged.
• Make-up-less day in Texas high school
• "'Dating' Other Mothers" 
• Make up your own words! (Guardian)
• "Digital Era Redefines Etiquette" and new definitions of impatience 
• "Why Should Married Women Change Their Names?" (Guardian)
• Demolishing Shakespeare's house, history of historic preservation in UK (BBC)
• "The Last Fall" (Karen Maezen Miller)
• Scholars conclude more Holocaust horror than we realized (HuffPost)
• Hot toddy recipe
• Math in gym class (NYT)
• 100 words every high schooler should know
• God, Farmers, and the Super Bowl
• Julia Grant and her slave
• I loved the graphic of the article "Can the Republicans be Saved?", with "GOP Laptop"--a typewriter; "GOP Twitter"--a megaphone!
• An article about historical "second sleep"
• America's most controversial anthropologist and the ethics of studying indigenous peoples
• On the day Latin was critical for breaking news (BBC)
• NSFChildren--"Blizzard Etiquette"
• Frank Bruni op ed on "The Land of the Binge"--food, tv, exercise, politics, everything
• A very entrepreneurial Girl Scout
• Brand naming weather
• "The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying" (Guardian)
• Poetry and cancer
• "3 things your daughter needs from You":  info about her body, respect for her body and its abilities, know she can talk to parents about anything. (HuffPost)--I'd say, sons, too.
• Let them eat King Cake
• The amazing archive of a Holocaust ghetto (BBC)
• An Incredible Journey
• "Eat like a Mennonite"--chem free eating
• Ancient Jewish life in Muslim Empire
• The 7-year walk, following earliest humans (BBC)
• A dying nurse seeks to teach the living
• Downton Abbey a la FB
• After rape . ...on honor and virtue (NYT)
• Frank Bruni on the agonies of each age
• Room for Debate--what the fight over guns is really about (NYT)
• The Hokey Pokey, by Shakespeare
• 
  

Yet More Links I like

From April through June etc . . .

• Parenting and technology--"When I see Josie clutching her grandmother’s Kindle to play Angry Birds for the 10th straight time, or I watch my son stuporously soaking up a cartoon, I’m really seeing myself as a kid — anxious, needy for love but willing to settle for electronic distraction to soothe my nerves or hold tedium at bay. And if experiencing this blast from the past weren’t troubling enough, I also get to confront my current failings as a parent." (NYT)
• A teacher reflects on teaching, upon retirement--"First, accept that meeting the individual learning needs of 110 students every day is simply impossible. No matter how many benchmark tests you administer, how precisely you think you have identified each student’s Achilles heel, how much you love them — you can’t control when they went to bed (or didn’t) the night before; what they ate for breakfast (or didn’t) that morning; whose parent just went to prison or lost a job. Life doesn’t get measured very well on Quia tests, when you get right down to it."
• "I’ve often thought that the single most devastating cyberattack a diabolical and anarchic mind could design would not be on the military or financial sector but simply to simultaneously make every e-mail and text ever sent universally public. It would be like suddenly subtracting the strong nuclear force from the universe; the fabric of society would instantly evaporate, every marriage, friendship and business partnership dissolved. Civilization, which is held together by a fragile web of tactful phrasing, polite omissions and white lies, would collapse in an apocalypse of bitter recriminations and weeping, breakups and fistfights, divorces and bankruptcies, scandals and resignations, blood feuds, litigation, wholesale slaughter in the streets and lingering ill will."  (NYT)
• A fun exploration of regional accents and language usage
• A writer reflects on his son's autism (Guardian)
• Frank Bruni, on the impact of the SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling (NYT)
• Frank Bruni, on religion and the Boy Scouts (NYT)
• Two blogs on old age and dementia (NYT)
• On analysis of the mysterious Voynich manuscript (BBC)
• Recipe for Mary Todd Lincoln's "Courting Cake"
• An Israeli program to keep Holocaust memories alive (BBC)
• The coffee klatch of death (NYT)
• "Worst End of School Mom Ever" --"We are limping, limping across the finish line, folks. I tapped out somewhere in April and at this point, it is a miracle my kids are still even going to school. I haven’t checked homework folders in three weeks, because, well, I just can’t. Cannot. Can. Not. I can’t look at the homework in the folder. Is there homework in the folder? I don’t even know. Are other moms still looking in the homework folder? I don’t even care."
• Nellie's revenge!  The actress from Little House on the Prairie's success (NYT)
• An experiment on high-density living
• Paul Krugman's op ed "Sympathy for Luddites" on jobs
• On the educational practice of grouping kids by level (NYT)
• A life-saving article, "Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning"
• Civil War reenactors' alternate universe (Slate)
• Pareidolia, or seeing faces in inantimate objects (BBC)
• Battling cancer together
• "What Not to Say at the Bedside"
• Baby fat:--"In our weight-obsessed culture, parents may try to restrict a robust child with a hearty appetite because they assume that enjoying food and eating a lot means she will get fat. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t work." (NYT)
• Fat and gut bacterium
• "The Courage of Teachers" in the tornado in OK and elsewhere
• "How American Became a Third World Country" (Guardian)
• Smithsonian gets a slave cabin
• "Is the NRA Un-American"
• Talking with kids about sex --Room for Debate
• Sleep deprivation and education (BBC)
• Antibiotics and back pain
• No rich child left behind
• Is the US inherently violent?  NYT op ed
• Great book list for kids of 1970s and 1980s
• Jane Austen, Game Theorist
• Do you "like" cancer survivors?  Don't.

More Links I Like

More great reads . . . .from July!

• One of my all-time favorites, a must-read for parents or anyone who "compares and despairs"--Glennon Melton's "Quit Eating Your Avocado at Me":  ""I am telling you that I decided right then and there that this mother was feeding her child avocados AT ME. And that also she had matched her child's clothes that morning AT ME. And also that she had likely disciplined her child effectively for years AT ME. And that as icing on her (likely homemade and gluten-free) cake she was enjoying a lovely, peaceful, well-planned, healthy lunch AT ME. I felt judged. I felt like her approach to parenting was maybe developed solely to shine a big old spotlight on my "not good enough" parenting. She was parenting AT ME, I tell you!"
• An argument for Zeus?? (NYT)
• On Jerusalem, the cookbook--I would love to read this (NYT)
• "I do not want my daughter to be nice" I see the point, but I think nice is still ok (NYT)
• A dark expose on assisted living (NYT)
• Beautiful (and not as creepy as it sounds)--a journalist live tweets his mother's last days (Buzzfeed)
• "Can Sewing Change Your Body Image?" (Guardian)
• A modern version of white women and their black cooks, more on Paula Deen (NYT)
• What your bed says about you--just make it! (Karen Maezen Miller)
• Changing definitions of cancer, esp DCIS (NYT)
• "Profiling Obama" navigating racism in America and Trayvon Martin verdict (NYT)
• A modern exploration of an 1852 article on the heat wave (NYT)
• "Hating on Fat People Just Makes Them Fatter" (NPR)
• The Guardian:  100 best non-fiction and 100 best fiction
• Full moon's effects on sleep (BBC)
• A touching missing twin story (NYT)
• On cento verse:  a quilted poem on cancer (NYT)
• Another article on white women and black cooks (NYT)
• "I'm tired of reading to my son, OK?" (NYT)--esp if it was the Bearnstein Bears!
• Famous but misattributed quotes (Toni Bernhard)
• Exploring Islam with children (UU)--a good book recommendation
• Mormons, the Web, and doubt (NYT)
• On Trayvon Martin here and here (NYT op eds by Charles Blow)
• Arthur Miller on the heat  of 1927 and another person on the heat wave of 1953 (NYT) and modern ways to beat the heat (Guardian)
• Alternatives for back pain--or not (NYT)
• Genes and weight (NYT)
• Living with debating death with dignity--a scholar's personal experience (NYT)
• Great PSA video "Am I Suspicious?" by Howard University students
• Jewish history in Rome (NYT)
• On a TED talk where a doctor asks forgiveness of fat patients he blamed (NYT)
• A controversial look at Teach for America
• How not to be intimidated in a doctor's office (Toni Bernhard)
• Brooks and Collins on being old (hilarious!  NYT), responding to Oliver Sacks
• Don't let the kids stay up late! (BBC)
• American Births--so expensive! (NYT)

Links I Like

Some things I've read that resonate . . . (yes, FB friends, these are the links I've shared there.)

• "3 Books Offer a Way to Cut the Cord" (NYT):  "“This is not your computer — I know it has your name on it, but this is my computer (or your school’s computer). I’m your parent, and I reserve the right to see everything that’s going on there. You need to be on the computer in an open place. I have the right to know what your homework assignment is. You can’t be in your room with the door closed. You can’t take it to bed with you. You can’t collapse a screen when I walk by. We have a code of conduct and we expect you to stick with it: Don’t be mean, don’t lie, don’t embarrass other people, don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, don’t go places you’re not allowed to go. Don’t post pictures that Grandma wouldn’t love. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t approve of.” from The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner-Adair

• "What Should a 4 Year-Old Know?"  Know they are loved, know they are safe, know they can color outside the lines, etc.  A good list for all ages.

• "Always Go to the Funeral" (NPR):  ""Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing."

• "For Whites (Like Me):  On White Kids" (HuffPost):  I really liked NutureShock for its discussion of the uselessness of general liberal responses to race such as "everyone is equal" and "we're all the same", mentioned in the article, but like that book was frustrated that the article gave no guidance just responded about "pat answers" being a cop out. I think they'd be a start, though, since as the article mentions white families have such trouble talking about race. We started talking about race directly right after I read NurtureShock, esp because the kids are bi-racial. But those conversations are hard because there's no guidance. I've come up with something along the lines of each person's race is very important to that person and it's important to respect that and learn more and realize how that changes how they experience the world, just like they are proud to be half Chinese and how being immigrants has affected their grandparents. 

• "It Gets Better" on Momastery:  On life after the last child starts school!

• "13 (Better) Questions to Ask Your Child About School":  What was the best thing you did at school?  What didn't you have at school today that you wished  you had?  Who did you sit near in class?  in lunch?  Whose locker is near yours?  Etc etc etc

• "George Saunders's Advice to Graduates" (NYT):  Kindness.  It's all about kindness.  And "failures of kindnesses."

• "How to Fall Forever into the Night Sky" (NPR):  A new way to imagine our place in the universe.

• Frank Bruni on death with dignity (NYT)

• On doctors discriminating against people with mental illness

• On 500 new fairytales discovered in Germany (Guardian)

• Evangelicals do something useful (NYT)

• Interesting history of abortion in American, including colonial times

• Fascinating profile of "The Weather God of Oklahoma" (NYT)

• Sleep loss and weight gain (NYT)

• Hundreds of artexhibition catologues available FREE online!

• "Addicted to Prayer" (NYT):  benefits even for atheists!

• Interesting discussion of the legacy of Jaws (NYT)

• Book Love and finding the lost gems of childhood--"One Book in . . ." (NYT)

• Camping (lack of electric light) resets body clock (BBC)

• Toni Bernhard's "A Not-To-Do List for the Chronically Ill"

• "Evolution punishes mean people" (BBC)

• High heels for kids?  Ugh (NYT)

• ICU PTSD (NYT)

And that's just August.

In the Papers

Some recent good reads . . . .

Poetry and Cancer--here and here
Why the Boy Scouts suck
Bodies, gender, and popular culture--what to tell your children
Startling article on ADHD drug addiction
On King Cakes during cabbage season
Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice
Secret archives of the Warsaw Ghetto
Guy Fieri's recommendations of places to eat in CT
Tales of travel and vegetarian dining
A cat's trek home
Eat like a Mennonite, without plastic poisons
Darwin and the Cloud Forest
Jewish Life in a Muslim Empire
Walking around the World
Chinese in NYC essay
Protecting Your Privacy on FB

In the Papers

Haven't done an "in the papers" in such a long time.  This is short but what I've found today:

• on forgotten mathematician Emily Noether, who established the theorem that is the basis of modern physics
• on some positive effects of consistent minimal dark chocolate consumption
• getting ready for 50 for Passover in 9 days! from the incomparable Joan Nathan
• Recipes for Health:  vegetarian burgers with Martha Rose Shulman

Life in a Bed, Or What I'm Reading

This time around (as opposed to last time), I can hold a book and it makes all the difference. I'm much happier being able to read than to watch tv, though I have completely caught up on "Glee" episodes and started watching the new "Upstairs, Downstairs."

Otherwise, I'm reading, both off and online, including:

Books

• Sally Gunning's Satucket books, such as Widow's War, Bound, and The Rebellion of Jane Clarke, related but not exactly sequels, set in colonial Cape Cod. It's like a historic house docent tour come to life, which is particularly appealing to me as I sit out my first several tours.
• other colonial history, including Carol Berkin's Revolutionary Mothers, and the opening chapters of No Idle Hands, a history of American knitting

Magazines

• I've blown through all the back issues of several food magazines (Saveur, Food Network, Vegetarian Times), Martha Stewart Living, Shambhala Sun, Smithsonian, random things (Early American Life, Time Magazine on pain from Gommie, Family Tree on civil war relatives, Civil War Times on Southern women's bread riots) and . . .
• Archaelogy, which I put under a separate heading because I've read so many of them and would be glad to discuss: "bog bodies" of northern Europe; the geography of the ancient sites of Ireland as relate to the agricultural holidays of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa, and Samhain; "Timberhenge" near Stonehenge; a Uighur site on an island in Siberia; Afghanistan's Buddhist remains along the Silk Road; Ottoman palaces in Albania; the rich burial of Chinese Lady Dai; the 18th-century ship found near the World Trade Center site; the ritual uses of the Nasca lines; the reconstruction of a colonial coffeehouse at Williamsburg; a battle between Hamilcar and the Greeks on Sicily; using archaeological techniques to trace current illegal immigration habits through the Sonoran Desert; an addendum to NAGPRA, about Native American remains and grave goods; Warner Herzog on cave art; traditions of Aboriginal rock art, including "x-ray" style that is distinctive and Europeans shown with hands on hips; fleet wrecked by hurricane near Florida that would've altered Spanish colonial expansion; ancient Korean love letter found on mummy; Salado pottery as expression of "poor woman's cult" in American Southwest; excavating a Bonaparte "palace" in New Jersey; excavating the effects of Order 11 and the burning of parts of Missouri by Union soldiers; the renewal of elaborate architectural stepwells of Gujarat that are almost a thousand years old; and, finally, a joint Israeli-Arab community excavation of an Ottoman khan, or inn, by local schoolchildren.

Online

Huffington Post

• "Why 'Do You Believe in God?' is the Wrong Question to Ask"
• "Do You Need to Believe in God to Pray?"
• "Are You Part of the Mindfulness Revolution?"
• "Ten Timeless Tips for Teaching Kids about Money"
• "Reconsidering the Nature of Life with Autism"
• "Talking about Death: We All Want to, But We Don't Know How"
• "What Barbie Would Look Like If She Were a Real Person"
• "10 Teachings on Judaism and the Environment"
• Good Enough Really Is Good Enough: 7 Steps To Overcome Perfectionism
• Better than Advil? or, cherries for inflamation
• World's Largest Lego Tower
• "10 Most Challenged Books of 2010", including Tango Makes Three
• "Royal Wedding, Lego-Style"
• Using Your Hands to Lift Your Heart
• "Can a Tree Consciously Experience the World? Maybe"
• "Learning to Embrace Autism"
• "Prince William's Royal Wedding Groom's Cake"
• "Catholics More Supportive of Gay Rights than General Public"
• "Novel Ways to Think on Grief"
• "Making End of Life Care a Family Decision"
• "Teaching the Difference Between Good and Getting Better"

New York Times

• "A Couple's Knot, Tied Tighter By Dual Diagnoses", a touching post about two young parents facing dual late-stage cancer
• "Is Sugar Toxic?"
• "Economist's Argument for More Children"
• "Teaching Children to do Good"
• "The Hypocrisy of Parenting", on eating habits
• "Overcoming a Parenting 'Sabbatical'", another article about SAHMs entering the workforce
• "Tips on Having Twins"
• "Are You Your Child's ATM?"
• "Panda Dads and Parenting Goals"
• "Custody of Your Child if You Die"
• "The Child Becomes the Parent"
• "Giving Doctors Orders" by Maureen Dowd
• "Time to Make the Matzoh"
• "Frankly, My Dear, 'The Windies' Do Live For This", on Gone with the Wind fans
• China's New Museum
• NYTimes Autism Special
• "A Fighting Spirit Won't Save Your Life"
• Afternoon Tea in New York
• "The Jedi Path", a book Mama got me for Christmas
• "Does the Mediterranean Diet Even Exist?"
• "Dust is Gone Above the Bar, but the Legacy Lingers", relics from wars gone by
• "For New Mass, Closer to Latin"
• About memory competitions
• "How to Beat the Salad Bar"
• NYU Food Library
• "Reading at Some Private Schools is Delayed"
• Royal Wedding Viewing in NYC
• Turmoil of Teacher Layoffs
• 9/11 Memorial Misuses Virgil Quote
• "The Best Part of Parenting" by Anna Quindlen
• "When Class meant Brie and Pears"

Salon

• "An Agnostic Looking for Love in the Bible Belt"
• "Class-System Melodrama as Comfort Food"
• "How Do You Parent the Texting Generation?"
• "Modern Poetry Made Less Terrifying"
• "What He Gave Me Before He Died", from a hospice volunteer
• "How We Talk About Disability" by Emily Rapp, whose other posts are wonderful too (like "When It's Wrong to Fight for Your Son's Life")
• "How I Became A Hillbilly," by Felisa Rogers, on scavenging in this economy
• "My Life as a Gay Grandma"
• Durian: The Stinky Fruit
• "My Month of No Snark"
• Historian tweets about Civil War
• "I Shouldn't Have Left the Finances to My Husband"
• "How 'Dungeons and Dragons' Saved My Life"
• "Middle Earth According to Mordor"
• "Will My Autistic Son and I Look Like That?"
• "I Blog so My Kids Will Know Me When I'm Gone"
• Mormon Mommy Blog Obsession

Other

• Zen Isn't by Karen Maezen Miller
• "Meditation Practices in the Wake of Tragedy"
• Tonglen Practice to keep those who suffer in your heart

Recipes

• Chickpea Vegetable Soup
• DIY Cooking Handbook
• Tender Beans, Without Soaking
• Haroseth
• How to Cook White Fillets
• Secrets of the Bean Pot
• Slow Baked Beans with Kale
• Making Empanadas from Scratch
• SPAM!!
• Mandelbrot
• Orange Blossom Egyptian Limeade
• How to Make Your Own Yogurt
• Guilt-Free Desserts
• Vegetable Frittatas
• Quesadillas
• Going Vegan for Lent
• Popcorn with Mark Bittman
• 7 Ways to Make Lentil Soup
• The Soup Matrix and More Soup Matrix with Bittman
• "The Zen of Beans"

What I've Been Doing in Bed

Now that I'm spending more time downstairs, even if horizontal on the couch, I wanted to let you know what I did in bed for 2+ weeks, mostly with my 'droid "R2D2" and my tv.

And yes, I love to read recipes. Even if I know I'll never cook them.

Thinking about Cooking:

• "French Food at Home": Swiss Chard Tart, Honey Pears, Baked Apples
• "Nigella at Home": Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins, Bread and Milk, Chocolate Croissants, Pussyfoot, Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake, Big Pasta Bake with Mushrooms and Herbs, Eton Mess, Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake, Alcoholic Hot Chocolate, Chocolate Cheesecake, Triple Chocolate Brownies, Chocolate Caramel Crispy Cake, Chocolate and Peanut Granola,
• "David Rocco's Dolce Vita": Pasta Pizza, Frittata, Pasta with Ricotta and Cherry Tomatoes, Arancini, 5-Minute Sauce, Pizza Dough, Foccacia, Chocolate Risotto, Drunken Spaghetti, Gelato Affogato, Spinach Risotto, La Ribolitta, Pasta with Butter and Cheese, Tiramisu, La Cecina, Mango Panna Cotta, Polenta
• "Molto Mario": "Heels" with Green Ricotta
• "Sara's Secrets": Vanilla Cupcakes, Peanut Butter Cupcake with Chocolate Chips and Chocolate Frosting
• "Giada's Everyday Italian": Mozzarella Pockets, Mascarpone Cupcakes with Strawberry Icing, Italian Ice, Lemon Mint Cake, Stracciatella Semifreddo, Citrus Semifreddo, Farro with Cheese, Apricot Bars, Homemade Cranberry Granola, Chocolate Raspberry Brownies, Penne in Almond Sauce, Orange Iced Tea, Citrus Cream Smoothie, Breakfast Tart, Almond Pancakes
• "Barefoot Contessa": Lemon Curd Tart, Easy Apple Tart, Penne all Vecchia Bettola, Brownie Tart
• Party Popcorn with Honey Nuts, Rum Raisin Tiramisu
• "Rachel Allen Bake!": Tarte Tatin, Chocolate Cake, Walnut Cake with American Frosting, Basic Cookies, Chocolate Cake, Lemon Tart, Peanut Butter Blondies
• "Melting Pot": Vegetable Couscous
• "Ask Aida": Ginger Rum Poundcake
• "30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray": Broken Spaghetti Risotto, Baked Pasta Fagioli, Pine Nut-Orzo Salad
• "Spice Goddess": Spiced City Cake, Healthy Roti, Lentil Cookies
• "Aarti Party": Pistachio Pops, Massaged Kale Salad
• "Jamie at Home": Zucchini Carbonara, Strawberry Jam with Rice Pudding, Shortcrust Pastry
• "Indian Food at Home": Kashmiri Pilaf, Kashmiri Tea
• Daisy Martinez: Chocolate Chili Cake

In the Papers (Or on Huffpost, Daily Beast, The Onion, Motherlode, The NYTimes, Karen Maezen Miller, Shambhala Sun, Salon, NPR, KAF blog)

• Mindfulness for Kids
• Marxist critique of Mindfulness
• 4 Myths of Mindfulness
• Green Burial
• Death and Dying
• Pseudo-care and other people's crises
• Blogger: on autism and being a resident "alien"
• Mindfulness and pain
• Walking Meditation
• Making ice cream with a machine
• movie Soul Kitchen
• Sabbath Unplugged
• Citrus-Almond Poundcake
• author David Mitchell's new book on 1799 Japan
• restoring the Morgan
• Parents and college freshmen
• Dexter and sports fishing
• Redshirting kindergarteners
• The I Hate to Cook cookbook reissued

• Ottoman Empire food
• Immigrant cooking in the LES
• Bedsharing for married couples
• Bean Pot
• Vegetarian Torte
• Strawberry Vinegar Shrub
• Grain Pot
• Laura Linney profile
• 18th-century ship in NYC and more
• KAF: breakfast cookies, whole wheat sandwich bread
• Critique of Beloit college freshmen list
• New book on archaeology
• On church and food
• Refutation of the term "Chick Lit"
• Dreaming in Chinese book
• NYTimes Rosh Hashana recipes--France via North Africa
• Cooking with rosewater
• Roger Ebert's new cookbook
• Mark Bittman's sweet couscous
• Southern cocktails on Salon
• Losing your childhood home
• NYTimes Turkish Bean Salad
• Is religious belief evolutionary?
• Dora the Explorer cocktail
• KAF zucchini muffin
• NYTimes vegan three bean salad
• Mary Louise Parker and pot
• From the Onion: Mom locks door!
• NYTimes: Grilled Lebanese Flatbread
• NYTimes: Cooked Grains Salad
• Aqua Fresca recipe
• Eat, Pray, Love and Modern Orientalism
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy everyday
• Unable to watch/read kids in peril?
• Children and Pop Culture Illiteracy
• A son as Snow White
• Sending a child to college (Motherlode)
• When the Courts Scrutinize Parents (Motherlode)
• "Unlabors of Love" by Karen Maezen Miller
• De-Stress your home via the monastery!

Watching (plus all those cooking shows in the first section!):

• Ponyo
• My Neighbor Totoro
• Avatar
• Open Range
• Star Wars
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Land Before Time
• A League of Their Own
• "The Big C"
• "The Real L Word"
• "Pillars of the Earth"
• "Spartacus"
• "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and "Orange County" (and I saw 10 minutes of "Jersey Shore". Ugh.)
• "Sherlock Holmes"

Good for a . . . .

(in the papers, etc:)

• Laugh: About the ingenuity of squirrels. (Pop has said that rats are just one fluffy tail away from being hand fed in the park!)
• Bigger Laugh: Check out 4th of July cakes at Cakewrecks
• Moment of inspiration: Cooking from the beach, the Nordic way

In the Paper

Just a few things, several of them poignant:

• Everybody eats rice
• Cookbooks on doing it yourself
• "Stunning" stats on the growing acceptability of "gay and lesbian relations"
• In favor of a classical education--grammar, logic, rhetoric (the Trivium)
• Nurse Brown, in yet another touching post on life on the oncology ward
• Your brain on computers
• Childhood accidents and the rise in risk for the rest of the family
• A rabbi talks on dying and "December" times
• On the inadequacy of language for the death of a child
• And a happy diagnosis for columnist Kristoff

Plus a few more, added late:

• Beware the Big Shaggy!
• When being a foolish doctor is good
• And I can't even read this article on "incidentaloma" when routine medical scans have glitches that cause well people to be ill
• And Dana Jennings on "pushing back at cancer"

In the Paper PLUS

From the NYTimes:

• Read more about happiness and age: "In measuring immediate well-being — yesterday’s emotional state — the researchers found that stress declines from age 22 onward, reaching its lowest point at 85. Worry stays fairly steady until 50, then sharply drops off. Anger decreases steadily from 18 on, and sadness rises to a peak at 50, declines to 73, then rises slightly again to 85. Enjoyment and happiness have similar curves: they both decrease gradually until we hit 50, rise steadily for the next 25 years, and then decline very slightly at the end, but they never again reach the low point of our early 50s." So, those of you in various places on the age continuum, is it true?
• Of pets and partners: "Do you greet each other with excitement, overlook each other’s flaws and easily forgive bad behavior? If it’s your pet, the answer is probably yes. But your spouse? Probably not." For the whole article, see here.

PLUS other interesting reads:

• HuffPost on the good of meditation, plus three myths (not your typical place to read about meditation, but maybe that's what makes it interesting for newbies).
• Another post on three, here the three teachings of Karen Maezen Miller's teacher--I found these particularly striking as I sat in the doctor's waiting room for 1 1/2 hours, thinking a lot about life, time, self.

In the Paper

A quickie:

• Using Facebook to grieve for a son
• Parenting Dilemma: How to Punish Someone who Wrecks a $180K Car?
• "The clutter on the fridge door tended to predict the amount of clutter elsewhere." An intensive anthropological study of middle-class, American families with 2 working parents.
• man who has been going to Sardi's for almost 80 years
• Choking hazards and warnings on food for kids
• A restaurateur who hates children's menus (how would you feel about being forced to eat dead bunny? or raw fish?)
• About two books on health, one a history of 100 years of diets

In the Paper

I'm very behind in my reading and even more in my posting about what's in the papers:

• Dexter and nuts--it'll make a parent's heart stop. But Dexter, of "Cooking with Dexter," is fine.
• Mmmm, check out some of these smoothie ideas--orange and dates, anyone? And my blender is still out from the fresh ice cream earlier this week.
• Mmmmmm, homemade pizza.
• Depressing news about the teacher job market: stay where you are, Mama Teacher!
• One more thing my kids can't do: climb Mt Everest at age 13!
• LOVING Maureen Dowd on Kagan: single vs. unmarried and rumors of lesbianism.
• I've said this for a long time (at least since teaching at a college in NYC): let's have a respectable alternative to 4-year degrees.
• Bangkok: because of my family's close ties to Thailand, I've been following all the reporting on the protests (really, is that a strong enough word?). And while relatives have reported that life in Bangkok is fairly normal outside that zone and that uprisings like this happen (approximately 18 since Ma and Gong were born there--that's like one every three years!), I still worry about the state of things, especially when I read articles like this, by the reporter Thomas Fuller who was interviewing that general when he was assassinated.
• Nuts and Cholesterol: does peanut butter count?
• Mmmmm, spring vegetable soups!!!
• Enemies in Childhood Can Be Good--hmmm, would knowing that have made junior high easier?
• Cell Phones and Brain Tumors--things that make you go, "hmmmm."
• Cooking at the White House: The Pastry Chef (check out the two recipes for granola bars and cheesecake) and Rick Bayless serves a State Dinner
• Non Appetit, Or I liked Gourmet Better, too.
• "Is Your Cat Normal?"--only if eating plastic bags (incl. litter-box liners!), tin-foil yogurt lids, any kind of string or plastic, is!
• How to write condolences: a first-hand account.
• Three totally unrelated accounts, in their way, of modern American Judaism: on liberal Zionism and the death of the widow of Yiddish author Chaim Grade and a celebration of the author, Sholom Aleichem, who gave us Tevye.
• Spelling Children's Names/Naymes/Naimes/Namz
• Fashion's first family meets Buddhism
• Gardening upside-down (we have tomatoes!)
• On the "outlaw of Amherst" (and just try not to sing all her poems to "The Yellow Rose of Texas!")

In the Paper

Here, very briefly:

• Google tips
• Safe surfing
• Chinese Jews
• New Delhi food by taxi
• Wilma Mankiller obit
• that lady with the red glasses
• Tagine
• Eating classics in NYC with kids
• taking pictures of food