Wednesday

Late, but still. Let’s digest.

Writing: In this space, just scroll back. Coming up with a plan for some more organized blogging in this

space next week. So much stupidity out there.

I’ll be in Living Faith next week – Monday, I think.

Book due in the beginning of February. Probably should start thinking about it.

Cooking: As I keep telling you, with only two of us here most of the time, and one of the two out and about quite often, cooking is not a daily activity these days. But I did make something great this week – this recipe of short ribs. I’ve never prepared short ribs before, never eaten them in a restaurant, and never understood why they merited attention – I mean….chunks of cow ribs, right?

Okay- I get it. Partly the recipe, partly the cut – this was delicious. Sorry, ribless cow.

I halved the recipe – I spent twenty bucks on two pounds of short ribs, came home and saw that the recipe was for more than twice that and thought – well, we don’t need that much and no way am I going back out, and no way am I spending forty bucks on meat for a meal for us – and it was, as I said, plenty for two – and a lunch for one more.

You can look forward to a report on this in the next few days: I promised my son that I’d attempt a Spanish omelette/tortilla – I think I’ll be following this fellow. Hence, the two bottles of olive oil in the photo below – all the recipes say that the frying of potatoes must happen in olive oil, and I didn’t have a lot, so I had to supplement and here you go.

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Reading: Harlem Shuffle, as described here.

Next up, the typical change of pace: Going to Church in Medieval England. Just started it, and I think it’s exactly what I need to be reading right now. As I keep telling you – read history to keep you sane and grounded in crazy times.

If nothing else, it reminds you of the persistence of weakness in the Church and that there was and never has been a “golden age.”

In terms of reading, generally clearing the deck, readying for this.

Watching:

As I wrote about earlier in the week, we’ve been watching the HBO/BBC 5-part series Chernobyl. We finished it last night. Given the limitations of format – television, with its narrative-shaping requirement (as noted by a commenter on that post) – I found it worth the slightly-less-than-five hours of my time. Good performances – with, I think, Emily Watson, if not the “worst” – the least interesting, but that is probably as much due to the shallowness of her composite character than anything else.

The most effective aspects?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the vignettes, the smaller stories in which we get a glimpse of the impact of the disaster: the pregnant woman whose firefighter husband was one of the first at the scene and paid the price; the young conscript whose duty it is to kill any animals that are found alive in the zone; the heartbreaking brief scenes of Life Before.

Also quite good was the way in which the series explained what happened. The point of it all was to highlight the way in which dishonesty and authoritarianism led to the explosion, and in fact, when it happened, hardly anyone understood what had triggered it. And so, as the series progresses, we are experiencing the mystery through the eyes of those involved in managing the response – which means we don’t see the whole picture until the end, when they’ve finally been able to put it together themselves.

And I must say, science teachers everywhere could learn a lot from Jared Harris’ Valery Legaslov explaining the chain of events at the trial of those in charge.

A+. Even I could understand.

All of which is interspersed with a painful fleshing-out of the quick look we had in the first episode of the moments of the explosion, bringing home the arrogance, pride, impatience and fear that were ultimately responsible.

As I said, not a bad use of time – although here’s an article to explain some of what it got wrong.

Listening:

No more Mendelssohn for a bit – that recital was Sunday and went well. We’re moving on to nailing down some Beethoven and Ginastera, and starting to explore some Bach prelude and fuge and (gulp) this Saint-Saens piano concerto. What? Where am I supposed to get an orchestra, for pete’s sake?