A happy Thursday
Mar. 24th, 2006 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidIn appreciation for an unexpectedly nice day.
It started with breakfast, which was leftover tilapia fillets that had been steamed over onions, scallion, zucchini, and red chard. For some reason, greens and fish were just what I wanted, plus the fish had turned just ever so slightly pink from the stems of the chard, which was pretty.
During lunch I went up to the Old South Meeting House for the last of the Benjamin Franklin-themed lectures, this time about him and that classic American bird, the turkey (I didn't take notes, so this will likely be disjointed). Columbus and later explorers found turkeys, both wild and domesticated by local tribes, when they arrived in the Americas, and soon sent breeding pairs back to Spain because they were such good eating. There was some linguistic confusion about what to call them, since they were recognized as being related to (insert old world birds here). So in English, we go the turkey, while in German, it's apparently called hindi, and the Indians (of the subcontinent, which got turkeys within a century of them being brought to Spain) called them (in some language or another) peru. Far away bird, indeed.
So. Turkeys were imported to Spain in the early 1500s, and very much appreciated, not just because they were in vogue as a new world food, but tasty too. They spread around Europe, reaching England before the Pilgrims set sail in the early 1600s. Ironically, Pilgrims were known to eat turkeys imported from Britain. The only extant letter about the first Thanksgiving, while mentioning fowl in general, does not mention turkey at all (venison is mentioned; perhaps next year I should try a haunch of venison instead of the traditional meal, which is an invention of the 1800s).
Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by electricity, doing many experiments (including the famous kite one). However, he couldn't come up with a practical use for it (how times have changed!), until, for a picnic to celebrate electricity and electricians, he decided to kill a turkey by electricity. Yup, Ben Franklin electrocuted turkeys. And he thought the meat much more tender that way, too. He had many opportunities to compare, since he went on to perfect his turkey-killing by electricity.
The famous mention of turkeys by Ben Franklin is in a letter to his daughter, wherein he is a proponent of the turkey as the national bird, rather than the eagle. However, Franklin had been on the committee that decided the national bird, and hadn't mentioned it then. This letter was about rhetoric; he knew it would be published. His daughter had written him about a new military group being started that would be hereditary in nature, and this response was to try to nip any USian group based on primogenture in the bud (he was the 14th of 16 children, and the last son).
I sat at the back, where I could appreciate the effects of the wavy glass in the windows, distorting the advertisement across the street. It's amazing how little change in a face can change it far from modern ideals of beauty.
After work, there was time for a quick workout at the gym and buying the coworker's novel before catching the commuter rail out to Brandeis. I felt a bit rushed, but made it to the train with minutes to spare, and a new book to read for the trip.
Dinner was at Sherman, the first meal there in over a year. There's now a little section of commercial kosher foods up by the cashier. It seems a bit odd to have them in the kosher cafeteria (since the kosher line would be open any time this food is available), but I suppose if the menu doesn't appeal, then students can use points this way instead. (I'm such a dinosaur: when I was there, there were literal meal tickets, little numbered squares for each breakfast, lunch, and dinner to rip out, and it was definitely a use it or lose it proposition. (Thank goodness the hours have changed since I was there, too; dinner ended at 6:30, which wouldn't have worked at all, but now runs until 8.)) It was odd eating there; I know it's me getting older, but the students looked so incredibly young. At least I had a fun book to distract me (so far, so good; actual plug likely once I've finished (and have time enough to post)).
Next, over to Spingold to pick up tickets to Things Beyond Our Control (Jesse Kellerman). I met up with Jason, and we had time enough to meander through the art gallery and discuss Othello before this play started. It was interesting to hear his take on things, and he was interested to hear what I'd thought. We agree that Emilia is key to the play, and he told me that though they'd started with a very different relationship between her and Iago, it had changed over the run of the play, morphing into the D/s dynamic I saw. The set had been even more minimal in original conception, and apparently I'm not unusual in taking the first 10 minutes or so of a Shakespeare play to have the language truly make sense. Interesting stuff.
I wish I could say the same about the play. It's by a new playwright, but I still don't understand why it was chosen to be produced (other than name recognition, perhaps). I can't actually critique the play as a whole, because we left during intermission. Nothing much had happened in the first half, no progression at all, and it had taken an hour and a half to do that. The scene changes took too long, the women playing lesbians were unconvincing at best (and the dialogue didn't help), and there was entirely too much peach pie. I'm surprised that this got staged as is, rather than being workshopped into something better. I couldn't help being entertained by Jason's reactions to the mostly-leaden script and drawn-out staging. It didn't matter that the play was so bad; I still had a fun time. (Plus hearing about what plays I'm likely to see next year is just neat.)
I want to replicate the balance of new stuff, exercise, shared time, whatever it was that made me so happy with the day.
It started with breakfast, which was leftover tilapia fillets that had been steamed over onions, scallion, zucchini, and red chard. For some reason, greens and fish were just what I wanted, plus the fish had turned just ever so slightly pink from the stems of the chard, which was pretty.
During lunch I went up to the Old South Meeting House for the last of the Benjamin Franklin-themed lectures, this time about him and that classic American bird, the turkey (I didn't take notes, so this will likely be disjointed). Columbus and later explorers found turkeys, both wild and domesticated by local tribes, when they arrived in the Americas, and soon sent breeding pairs back to Spain because they were such good eating. There was some linguistic confusion about what to call them, since they were recognized as being related to (insert old world birds here). So in English, we go the turkey, while in German, it's apparently called hindi, and the Indians (of the subcontinent, which got turkeys within a century of them being brought to Spain) called them (in some language or another) peru. Far away bird, indeed.
So. Turkeys were imported to Spain in the early 1500s, and very much appreciated, not just because they were in vogue as a new world food, but tasty too. They spread around Europe, reaching England before the Pilgrims set sail in the early 1600s. Ironically, Pilgrims were known to eat turkeys imported from Britain. The only extant letter about the first Thanksgiving, while mentioning fowl in general, does not mention turkey at all (venison is mentioned; perhaps next year I should try a haunch of venison instead of the traditional meal, which is an invention of the 1800s).
Benjamin Franklin was fascinated by electricity, doing many experiments (including the famous kite one). However, he couldn't come up with a practical use for it (how times have changed!), until, for a picnic to celebrate electricity and electricians, he decided to kill a turkey by electricity. Yup, Ben Franklin electrocuted turkeys. And he thought the meat much more tender that way, too. He had many opportunities to compare, since he went on to perfect his turkey-killing by electricity.
The famous mention of turkeys by Ben Franklin is in a letter to his daughter, wherein he is a proponent of the turkey as the national bird, rather than the eagle. However, Franklin had been on the committee that decided the national bird, and hadn't mentioned it then. This letter was about rhetoric; he knew it would be published. His daughter had written him about a new military group being started that would be hereditary in nature, and this response was to try to nip any USian group based on primogenture in the bud (he was the 14th of 16 children, and the last son).
I sat at the back, where I could appreciate the effects of the wavy glass in the windows, distorting the advertisement across the street. It's amazing how little change in a face can change it far from modern ideals of beauty.
After work, there was time for a quick workout at the gym and buying the coworker's novel before catching the commuter rail out to Brandeis. I felt a bit rushed, but made it to the train with minutes to spare, and a new book to read for the trip.
Dinner was at Sherman, the first meal there in over a year. There's now a little section of commercial kosher foods up by the cashier. It seems a bit odd to have them in the kosher cafeteria (since the kosher line would be open any time this food is available), but I suppose if the menu doesn't appeal, then students can use points this way instead. (I'm such a dinosaur: when I was there, there were literal meal tickets, little numbered squares for each breakfast, lunch, and dinner to rip out, and it was definitely a use it or lose it proposition. (Thank goodness the hours have changed since I was there, too; dinner ended at 6:30, which wouldn't have worked at all, but now runs until 8.)) It was odd eating there; I know it's me getting older, but the students looked so incredibly young. At least I had a fun book to distract me (so far, so good; actual plug likely once I've finished (and have time enough to post)).
Next, over to Spingold to pick up tickets to Things Beyond Our Control (Jesse Kellerman). I met up with Jason, and we had time enough to meander through the art gallery and discuss Othello before this play started. It was interesting to hear his take on things, and he was interested to hear what I'd thought. We agree that Emilia is key to the play, and he told me that though they'd started with a very different relationship between her and Iago, it had changed over the run of the play, morphing into the D/s dynamic I saw. The set had been even more minimal in original conception, and apparently I'm not unusual in taking the first 10 minutes or so of a Shakespeare play to have the language truly make sense. Interesting stuff.
I wish I could say the same about the play. It's by a new playwright, but I still don't understand why it was chosen to be produced (other than name recognition, perhaps). I can't actually critique the play as a whole, because we left during intermission. Nothing much had happened in the first half, no progression at all, and it had taken an hour and a half to do that. The scene changes took too long, the women playing lesbians were unconvincing at best (and the dialogue didn't help), and there was entirely too much peach pie. I'm surprised that this got staged as is, rather than being workshopped into something better. I couldn't help being entertained by Jason's reactions to the mostly-leaden script and drawn-out staging. It didn't matter that the play was so bad; I still had a fun time. (Plus hearing about what plays I'm likely to see next year is just neat.)
I want to replicate the balance of new stuff, exercise, shared time, whatever it was that made me so happy with the day.