Egg Curry et al.

Yum. This looks like a great one-pan meal. Two ways to cook Indian egg curry: hardboiled eggs and sauteed eggs.

Curry Cream Sauce on Eggs on Rice. I think this is one of those weird English cooking things, but I’d eat it. Sort of an Egg Rice Loaf instead of a Salmon Rice Loaf.

(Actually, I can’t find the correct salmon rice loaf recipe on the Internet. It’s pretty simple – you have cooked rice and some other stuff, and then you have a mixture of salmon, cream of mushroom soup, and a few other things. You get a loaf pan or ring mold or whatever, and you put in half the rice, then half the salmon mix, then the other half of the rice, then the other half of the salmon mix, and then you put it in the oven at a fairly low temp. The only annoying bit is that you have to do some funky stuff to keep it from burning, like butter the pan, and then line it with paper or parchment that’s buttered. You can also make it as a tuna rice loaf, but the effort makes it kinda frou frou and deserving of salmon. I’ll have to see if I can get our family’s recipe online. Here’s a super-lazy salmon rice casserole.)

There’s also the simplicity of Uova in Brodetto: eggs baked in tomato sauce. With maybe some parmesan cheese on top, and some olive oil, and maybe some garlic bread on the side for extra. Either way, a very cheap meal, the sort of thing Italian-Americans ate during the Depression.

Of course, I will probably never be doing this by making tomato sauce first, because I would rather use up what I’ve got on my shelf. But it does have a nice recipe for making tomato sauce at this link, as well.

Pickled Eggs. This isn’t real pickling, though; it’s a kind of quick pickle that only lasts a couple weeks. You probably don’t even need to sterilize the jar if your fridge is decently cool and you’re going to eat the eggs within a week.

Nenagh’s Many Street Names

Reading Michael Flynn’s excellent second post on his “Flynncestry” pointed me towards Pigot’s and Slater’s commercial directories of Ireland (1824 and 1841) to see if I could find anything useful, and then I went looking through Google Maps to find the places and see what was still the same.

What I found out was that a lot of the street names had changed after Irish independence. (Pretty normal.) So I went looking for help on referencing the original names versus the new ones.

What I found was this blog post by a Nenaghnian. It turns out that “Connolly Street” is still Silver Street in the minds of most of Nenagh. “Pearse Street” is Castle Street, or the Main Street; and “Kenyon Street” is Barrack Street (the old Garda Barracks were there, and before that it was a UK military barracks associated with the local fort). “Mitchell Street” is Queen Street. “Peter Street” is Kickham Street. “Sarsfield Street” is Pound Street. “Fintan-Lawlor Street” is William Street. “James Connolly Park” is Bulfin Crescent. “Limerick Road” is Clare Street. And “Pierce McCann Street” is Summerhill.

Here’s a post about Nenagh’s existing churches.

The same blogger linked to a great counterfactual post on casting a Batman silent movie in 1927. Lupe Velez as the Catwoman!

If You Don’t Like the Word “Squaw,” You Must Hate the Algonquian Language Family

Yup. Any Native American activist who tells you “squaw” is hate speech is a hater of the beauties of Native American languages.

“Sqw-” is a pretty common root in Algonquian languages for “woman.”

From The Lasting of the Mohegans, by Melissa Jayne Fawcett, via Language Log:

The Mohegan word for woman is “shquaaw” and red is “squayoh”. Blood is referred to as “(um) sque” which also has a related “squ” root. So is the name of Granny Squannit, leader of the Makiawisug (Little People of the Woodlands). The root of her name describes her very clearly. “Squa” mean woman, blood, red, or of the earth. The root “anit”  comes from “manit” or “Manitou”, often spelled as “mundu” is Mohegan-Pequot, which means Spirit. Therefore, Granny Squannit’s name means “Spirit Woman” and implies a connection to the earth and blood.

The reason that English and French speakers called Native American women “squaws” is that the tribes they tended to encounter first, like the Maliseet-Passamaquoddys and the Pequots, used the word “squaw” as their ordinary word for woman or young woman or wife. This isn’t that hard, and there’s no reason that placenames like “Squaw Lake” should be considered offensive. If you wanted to name it after the local tribe’s word for woman, that might make sense too. But doing like Maine, and changing every “squaw” to “moose” would seem to be a lot more offensive to women than letting it alone.

Now, that doesn’t mean you go around calling every lady with a reservation license plate or a Native American surname a “squaw,” any more than you should call every lad on earth with an Irish name, “bucko.” (Which is a lot easier than spelling it “buachaill.”) Also, not every tribe in the US and Canada speaks an Algonquian tongue, so it would be stupid. But it’s not even vaguely the same as calling somebody c–t, which was the urban legend going around.

The Wikipedia page on “squaw” has been rewritten by linguists, so read it now while it’s still sensible.

Philip Johnson: Six Years of “Six Months to Live”

Philip Johnson, the Raleigh seminarian with an inoperable brain tumor, writes an open letter to Brittany Maynard, the newlywed who intends to kill herself before brain cancer can do it.

Philip Johnson thought he only had months to live, but his response was to finally listen to God, and charge after his calling to priesthood. It is now six years later, and he’s still not dead or unable to work. Imagine how much he’d have missed out on, if he’d listened to fear instead of the Lord!

He does have terrible pain. But terrible pain is something he deals with, as many people manage to do. It is difficult, but it is not the end of everything. His life has meant something to many other people, and he has learned to take help from others, too.

He asks her to take courage and love in both hands, and to live.

That is what we all need to do.

 

 

When Sergeant-At-Arms Isn’t a Ceremonial Position

Usually, the sergeant-at-arms for a club (or a Canadian parliament) is a purely ceremonial position that does things like carry ceremonial maces.

Today, Kevin Vickers, an older gentleman who was retired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, shot a gunman who’d already shot two on Canada’s Parliament Hill, in Ottawa: a reservist guarding the War Memorial, and a Parliament security guard.

Obviously, _he_ didn’t think it was all about the ceremony.

A profile of Mr. Vickers.

Today’s attack follows another domestic Canadian jihad attack on Monday, a deliberate hit and run of two Canadian military people’s car in a gas station, by Martin “Ahmad” Rouleau. One soldier in the car died, but the other only received minor injuries. Rouleau was shot and killed by police while trying to escape his car, which he had wrecked in the ensuing car chase.

White House Press Finally Wise Up

The White House press corps have finally gotten tired of having their pool reports messed with by the White House press office (which is just supposed to pass stuff along to press folks on the distribution list, and maybe check for national security issues).

So their new press pool reports are in a Google Group.

Prayers for Harlan Ellison

He’s in the hospital after a stroke, per Jerry Pournelle’s blog, and doing better now. (Scroll down for a picture.) As you might expect with Harlan, even a week after a stroke he’s apparently talking a mile a minute and ruling the conversation. This is pretty impressive, as my grandma had a pretty good recovery from her stroke but was pretty much lying around with no energy at a similar point in time.

I can understand Harlan’s asking a Catholic hospital to cover his room’s crucifix (actually a fairly devout Jewish thing to do, so there’s an interesting psychological insight into Harlan). But I think it’s surprising that the nurses had to improvise a covering (maybe most people like the crucifix even if not Catholic?), and that the covering itself wasn’t particularly respectful. Not blasphemous, but not nice, either.

On the bright side, the hospital got him a Jewish roommate. 🙂

The Lockheed Fusion Reactor. No, Seriously.

And this is why God loves engineers.

Car Vs. Sacristy

Actually, this is in an area attached to the sacristy, but not the sacristy itself. I’m really surprised the stained glass didn’t shatter.

What Naruto Means to His Biggest Fans

Naruto is a world with super-weird worldbuilding and one of the oddest premises of any anime. Ninja children being trained for war? A village full of secrets and lies that come back on the kids? And yet it spends a lot of its time as a comedy???

But Naruto is more about sticktoitiveness than even most of the stubborn shonen heroes we tend to like. It has an incredible richness of character and invention that conquers its formulaic shonen roots. It’s overhyped for a reason.

The Naruto manga will be ending soon, and a final movie will finish off the storyline. Here’s a touching thread where fans talk about Naruto and the power of story, and how they learned to overcome depression, loneliness, bullying, and more. We’re going to miss that knucklehead ninja.

Idiot Judge Endangers Family, Media, Entire City

An idiot employed as a judge in Texas doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, and is determined to catch rain in a bucket and dump it on the rest of us.

Here is the idiot judge breaking quarantine, refusing to take sensible Ebola precautions, bringing it home to his wife and kids, and then going to a press conference to share Ebola with the rest of us.

Kachin Catholics

Myanmar/Burma is mostly Buddhist, but there are a fair number of Catholics in some cities and a pretty good number in many rural or tribal areas, like Kachin. This photoessay includes a picture of some Catholic ladies in Kachin. They are wearing squares of lace as mini-mantillas. Most missionaries here came from Italy, France, Spain, or Portugal, so they follow the pattern of Southern European customs instead of wearing hats.

A brief history of Catholicism in Myanmar, from the local diocese. In English. There are some amazing stories in a short space: hidden Christians, shipwrecks, beheadings, and incredibly hard work.

Sci Fi Journal #1 Is Now on Sale

Science fiction and philosophy had a podcast baby.

Now the podcast has a mighty sibling in e-magazine form: The Sci Fi Journal!

So if you want to read sf stories and sfnal philosophy essays, you are now set. Good price, too.