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Culinary Diplomacy (and other adventures)

The mostly-book blog of a wandering non-profiteer. Hear more about my start-up life on Twitter, or follow my travel and kitchen adventures on Instagram. Older travels and juvenalia can be found on my previous blog.

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.

Raymond Chandler vs. Atlantic proofreader (via explore-blog)

Classic.

(via penamerican)

The large-mesh net political scientists and most historians use to troll for political activity utterly misses the fact that most subordinate classes have historically not had the luxury of open political organization. That has not prevented them from working microscopically, cooperatively, complicitly, and massively at political change from below.
—
One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.

James Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism

Nikhath Digest: May 13 - 19 →

nikhathdigest:

Arts and Culture
Why I Despise The Great Gatsby / Kathryn Schultz / New York
A well written and enjoyable act of apostasy.

Men Of Words, Men Of Deeds / Samuel Freedman / The New York Times
A remarkable example of coaching, and leadership.

Thousands Under 90
You deserve…

A little light Sunday reading…

spoiler alert

Still waiting for it…

My custom has always even to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. That old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must dwell on, because I know more than I know and must learn it from myself—that same good weight worries me these days.

But the fact is, I have never found another way to be as honest with myself as I can be by consulting with these miseries of mine, these accusers and rebukers, God bless them all.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

discourseontheotter:

~Sara Ahmed

d’aww.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Four Quartets came up at a quizbowl tournament I moderated this weekend. It seemed due for a return. (April is the month of re-reads?)

That moment when you realize too late you’re simply going to have to read straight through to the finish but have more pages left than subway stations, and so find yourself standing on the platform shedding public tears at the fates of fictional characters. And then you reach the final sentence, close the spine, collect yourself, and finally step out into the evening chill to walk the last steps home.

How to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant. That is what her mother always did. After every calamity of any significance she would fill the atmosphere of the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls or brownies, or with chicken and dumplings, and it would mean, This house has a soul that loves us all, no matter what. It would mean peace if they had fought and amnesty if they had been in trouble. It had meant, You can come down to dinner now, and no one will say a thing to bother you, unless you have forgotten to wash your hands.

Marilynne Robinson, Home