Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

There’s a rather interesting piece in the Guardian by a former member of a terrorist group in Britain. Here are several provocative lines:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

No, he is not saying that Islam necessarily leads to terrorism. Rather, his claim is that radical Islamists currently have the best theologians, that terrorism springs from their theology, and that moderate Muslims need to work seriously at presenting a theological alternative but that they are failing to do so. But read the rest of his piece to see what he is really saying.

-Sydney

Catch a bunch of small fish (anchovies and the like). Rinse them. Mix two to three parts fish with one part salt by weight. Then line a large earthenware jar with salt and then fill with the fish. Place a mat over the jar and weigh down with large rocks (this is to keep the fish from floating later on).

Leave the jars in a sunny location for nine months to a year in order to let the fish ferment. Periodically uncover the jar to expose the fish to direct sun (this will help turn the fish into fluid, i.e., to digest them) and will help produce liquid of a superior fragrance. Once the jar has sat around long enough, remove the liquid. There are different ways of doing this, but a particularly good way is to put a spigot on the bottom of the jar, since this way the fluid has to pass through the layers of fish. Strain out the sediment. Leave the liquid in clean jars to air out in the sun for a few weeks to let excess odours dissipate. Then bottle. And enjoy.

In fact, you probably have enjoyed this substance on occasion.

I have four questions:

1) Who came up with the idea of letting a jar of fish rot, okay, ferment, in the sun for a year?

2) And what on earth made whoever did let fish ferment for a year think that it would be a good idea to taste some of the resulting liquid?

3) And when the resulting liquid tasted really vile, what made them think that a little bit added to other food would, in fact, turn out to be really good?

4) What other delectables are waiting to be discovered by somebody brave enough to let various things sit around to various stages of decomposition? I mean, has anybody ever tried, say, the liquid from cow livers mixed with slugs left to ferment six months?

Sydney

Our cat has strange tastes.  She walks by food on the counter, totally not interested, and doesn’t even seem curious to know what we have on our plates.  She regularly watches as I cook, not bothering any of the ingredients spread out on the counter.  Oh yes, and she didn’t eat the bit of raw tuna Nelson gave her recently.  She likes rubber bands, however, and green plants (particularly poisonous ones), and out of pure boredom she takes a bite out of corners of book covers or other pieces of paper.  Today she climbed up into my lap while I was eating challah and seemed pretty interested in it, proceeding to wolf down the bite I gave her.  That’s one straaaange kitty.

Erin

A few days ago we picked strawberries at a local farm, washed them, chopped off the green, and stuck them in our freezer.  The annual produce run has begun!  Gorgeous fruit lying in big mounds on the counter as it dried, bowls of particularly good strawberries stashed around the room–it’s a good thing.  And no, we didn’t carefully freeze each berry on a cookie sheet before bagging them, to ensure that they wouldn’t stick together.  Maybe that works if you have 35 strawberries, but it certainly doesn’t work if you have 35 pounds of strawberries to freeze.

The past week has been a really good one at our house, with lots of gardening, some quiet reading, and good food at our house.  It may sound pretty simple, but after a long academic year with a pretty intense schedule of classes, work, and teaching, simple is more than usually wonderful.

Erin

After a few days of cataloging new books, filing all the new additions from recent classes (yes, yes, and trips to the library book sale), Sydney and I have finally reshelved all of our books over the three new bookcases.  These are, by the way, pretty much all of the shelves we can fit in our apartment, where we hope to live for the next three or four years.  Alarming findings:

– There are more books in Erin’s section than in Sydney’s, and far more than she can brush off as merely Sydney additions to the literature section.  Some of this can be accounted for by the fact that Sydney’s classes average a book or two per term (plus tons of articles), whereas Erin’s average 9-12 books per term.  But he’ll not let her hide from the fact that she’s overwhelming the home library, particularly since she was always the one urging more prudence with regard to book purchases, more use of the library copies, etc.  Yup, I’m totally in for teasing for a few years now.

– There just are not that many free shelves left.  We would set up a book rationing system, but we’re now done with classes and heading into dissertation stage.  Who knows what kind of books that will require?  Here’s hoping for a one-book dissertation for each of us!  But, oh wait, they don’t really encourage that sort of thing in my discipline anymore, favoring instead a theme that is traced through several authors, and Sydney has his heart set on writing a dissertation about a guy whose opus spans 26 large volumes . . . in Latin.  Gulp.  Okay, so books in the closet, books in dresser drawers, etc.

– After looking at book spines all day, we’re totally distracted from the reading lists we’d built up all spring.  Now we’re wanting to read things totally unrelated to our work.  Think our departments will understand?

Erin

You know how you’re always advised to dress nicely when traveling, so that you get good service?  Well, make sure that you also wear something that you can run in.  I thought I would dress nicely to see Sydney again and look all professional when striding through the airport.  But since my first flight landed about five minutes before my second flight began, and I was given the impression that I was supposed to try to catch it (!), I ran through the terminals in O’Hare, arriving about two minutes after the flight left.  So much for being unobtrusive, barrelling down the halls in a long silver skirt.  Oh well.

Erin

After 2 1/2 weeks away from Ithaca, I’ve come home to husband, cat, and my grown-up life.  As much fun as it was to be a kid at my parents’ place once again, it’s nice to be back in my real life, where I have a purpose or two to keep me busy.  I was getting pretty lazy at my parents’ place, so it was definitely time to come home.

Despite unexpectedly having to catch a later flight (poor Sydney was caught without reading material the one time he really needed it), we still got home from Rochester at a decent hour.  And what a reception!  Sydney had bought more flowers for the steps leading up to our house, as well as cut delphiniums spikes that loom dangerously over our largest vase.  He’d also built three more bookcases in my absence, so I was spared the mess of watching him do carpentry in our living room.  And, gasp upon gasp, he’d done laundry and vacuumed the floor.  I was impressed!

Erin

Aww, honey, we have some weather in common!  My county in Iowa is under a tornado warning for the next few hours.  Of course, we were all outside, enjoying the cooler weather and watching the clouds gather.

I didn’t realize how unusual the dramatic thunderstorms in Iowa were until I moved away, when I would wait with anticipation for a real thunderstorm, and then be disappointed each time.  In Iowa the clouds get green (yup, tornado weather) and pile up, and then they sweep across what is, after all, a gigantic farmland sky in dramatic fashion.  It’s so nice being back for thunderstorm weather 🙂

Erin

New things to learn: not only does New York State have tornadoes, we have an average of six of them per year. Tompkins County has had five tornadoes in the last 57 years.

It is rather ominous-looking outside. Also, I find it interesting that there is constant thunder, i.e., no breaks, just a constant rumbling.

Sydney

I didn’t know we had tornadoes in New York. But there’s a tornado warning for our county for the next twenty minutes. I do know the weather’s been, shall we say, interesting …

Sydney