orichalcum

Charoset and Sex: A Recipe - About Passover and the Song of Songs

Barack Obama is hosting the first White House Seder attended by a President tomorrow evening.

A poem about opening the door for Elijah

Today is also Birkah Ha-Hammah, the Jewish Blessing of the Sun, which happens only every 28 years and marks the time that the sun appears in the same position in the sky that it traditionally did on the morning of its creation. This is the 2nd such occasion in my life time; I might hope to see two more. One of the texts sometimes recited is

( Psalm 19: )

Happy birthday to hellpossum, lisa_bee, and a_dodecahedron! Happy Megalesia to all of you - the festival of Cybele, the Magna Mater! May there be music and yummy food awaiting you, but hopefully not the ritual sacrifice of male genitalia on an altar.

And for those who celebrate it, have a wonderful first Seder of Pesach today, full of yummy food and stories.

Me: "So tonight, we get to have a special meal and hear a special story, which it's important that we remember."
Mac: "Can Thomas be in the story?"
Me: "I don't really think Thomas the Tank Engine was ever a slave in Egypt."
Mac: "Thomas or a spaceship is in the story."

That of course, made me think of _The Life of Brian._ :)

The Washington, D.C. City Council has just voted unanimously to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages in D.C.

And the winner for the best quote of the day is Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal: "I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don't think that's so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I've been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you."

Rainbows are breaking out all over. Well, except for the majority of the country where it's snowing or raining hard. But on top of the clouds, there are rainbows. :)

Yay for the first state legislature to pass marriage equality! I'm especially pleased about this because, as I said to CP, it proves that incrementalism works. 9 years ago, the majority of the people and legislators of Vermont were extremely unhappy with their Supreme Court's decision to mandate civil unions. Now well, the state hasn't collapsed morally, it's gotten a lot of extra tourism (some of it from our wedding, _because_ of being a civil-union state), and folks have gotten used to their married gay and lesbian neighbors. And so now the last step can be taken - and it's really hard to complain about "a few activist judges" when the legislature passed it by votes of 25-3 and 100-49.

In largely random celebration, here's a crossover fanfic that shouldn't work nearly as well as it does: "A Death in Bohemia": Sayers/Buffyverse crossover. Rest assured, there are no inappropriate or bizarre relationships, but some quite good and appropriate dialogue - and you could see this happening so very easily. This is especially for hca, whose game last weekend I was sorry to have missed.

And here is a joyously happy Youtube video featuring the Antwerp train station, and, um, music. Totally SFW, although requires sound - make sure to watch past 2:18.

Also, in More Reasons Why I Love Our President, he made the following comment yesterday in Turkey: "One of the great strengths of the United States," "is that while we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

I want to have American ideals again!

So, I was double-checking my Sephardic charoset recipe, as well as the more traditional Ashkenazi one, and started wandering around the net and discovered two cool things:

1. I can get pomegranate molasses, which has been used as the sweetener/glue for Middle Eastern charoset for, oh, 2600 years or so (references to it in very early texts) at the local Middle Eastern market, a few blocks away from me!

2. I am now sad about the pistachio recall, because this springtime charoset recipe from the Jew and the Carrot looks really awesome. OK, yes, totally untraditional, but yummy! And hey, the blood oranges can be symbolic.

I wonder what nuts I could substitute easily that would work well - pecans or walnuts, like with a more trad charoset? Peanuts, for that PB&J matzoh feel? Almonds are a bit exp.

Jamie Oliver, the "Naked Chef" of tv fame, had his third child today. "Petal Blossom Rainbow Oliver" joins his older daughters, Poppy Honey and Daisy Boo.

Mr. Oliver, there is a difference between _nicknames_ and legal names the child will have to deal with permanently.

So far, anti-marriage equality crusaders have been able to paint the pro-marriage equality states as the "scary radical fringe" of America - Taxachusetts, San Francisco values, those wacky hippie Vermonters, etc...

But Iowans? No one looks at Iowa and thinks "coastal weirdos." They think "heartland." And furthermore - because of the silly uber-importance Iowa gets in the presidential primary system (we have Obama because of Iowa), no politician considering running for President will dare attack Iowans as immoral people.

This does mean that an anti-marriage-equality amendment may wind up on the ballot in 2012, which is probably good for the religiously conservative Republican candidates. But it's really hard to see how a unanimous verdict in _Iowa_ doesn't fundamentally change the optics of the debate.

Iowa will be an interesting case study for gay marriage tourism, I suspect, as unlike Massachusetts or Connecticut or Vermont it's not normally a major wedding destination.

Random things for a Friday:

I attended an awesome lecture by Anthony Grafton, a Princeton history, professor yesterday, hearkening back to an LJ debate of a few weeks ago. It was about how the Protestant Reformation (mid-late 1500s) humanists Isaac Casaubon (who went to my father's high school!) and Joseph Scaliger researched and were strongly influenced by Hebrew texts and scholarly traditions. Casaubon, in particular, became fascinated with using a greater knowledge of Jewish ritual in order to better understand the New Testament. For instance, he translated and provided the first extensive Christian criticism on a copy of the Passover Haggadah, because he wanted to figure out which parts of the Seder service (since the Haggadah was compiled after the destruction of the 2nd Temple) Jesus would have used in the Last Supper, and which were later additions.

Casaubon is also famous for having written possibly the nastiest and most influential book review in Western history: 800 pages of detailed scholarly takedown of the first 173 pages of the Annals of the Venerable Cardinal Caesar Baronius, the Vatican librarian who tried to prove that Christianity was unchanging from the time of Jesus (complete with bishops, ecclesiastical hierarchy, and all seven sacraments) to his own time (1600 or so). Casaubon claimed he couldn't even stand to finish reading the work, and so focused his ire in his review on just the first 173 pages. My medievalist friends should be especially pleased by this takedown, as Baronius is the inventor of the term "Dark Ages."

( Read more... )

In the Bodleian today you can see Casaubon's edition of Maimonides, covered with commentary and marginal notes in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

So, that was nifty. In other news, prenatal appointments the second time around are (at least if all is going well), ridiculously boring. Pee into a cup, get weighed, get blood pressure, get your belly measured, hear the heart beat, nope, no questions. Things that remained exciting and like measures of progress the first time around are just kinda dull now, especially since I know I _don't_ (thankfully) have gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia.

Amusingly, though, apparently 2.5-3 year olds of both genders reacting to a mom's pregnancy by inventing the baby in _their_ tummy is common enough to be in the standard ob/gyn textbooks. My doctor advised me that it sometimes lasts for 3-5 months after the actual baby is born, and that we should get Mac a doll for right after the birth, so he can take care of "his" baby while we take care of the Manticore.

Obama Depressed by BSG Finale (Spoilerific! Obama won the 2008 election, among other things revealed.)

D&D players save "periapt" from linguistic extinction!

And, in amusing Mac moments of the day, this week is multicultural week at his school, and when I picked him up, his teacher informed me that we were encouraged to dress him in clothing of his cultural heritage and bring in food* from his culture. Mac, listening, chimed in, "I want to bring in mac and cheese!" Somewhere, my Jewish/Irish/Scottish ancestors rolled over in their graves (and my mom and grandma from New Jersey laughed quietly to each other.)

*What makes me sad is that the food has to be store-bought and not contain any nuts, for fear of allergies and so forth. I make lots of foods relating to my cultural heritages -but the fun part is _making_ them. What am I supposed to do, give Mac a box of stale Manischewitz macaroons or haggis in a can?

Also, Mac was again mildly musically impressive/intriguing. I had Itunes shuffle on in the car, and a random instrumental piece from the Aladdin soundtrack came on. Mac listened for about 40 seconds and asked me, "This is Beauty and the Beast?" (We don't have the Beauty and the Beast music on Itunes at all, actually, but he's seen the movie a few times.) I was fairly impressed that he picked up that it was by the same composer, though.