Mawnin

I'm sitting at the dining room table, much of the effluvia of Sunday Brunch all around me, the gentle sound of Ellis Marsalis doing Love for Sale drifting in from the living room. This morning we had the excellent local brand of bacon that we found a couple of weeks ago (in keeping with a family tradition, we have not spoken loudly about this in the store, as they seem to pick up on these utterances and stop stocking them), as well as waffles, coffee, and home-made apple fritters. The fritters were easy enough to make, though the apples were a bit hard to slice -- my fault, as I picked a gihugic apple to start with. I thought the food processor could be used to make thin slices, but didn't realize that for our food processor, thin means thin -- wafer thin, wispy thin. So I grabbed a bowl of water, and sliced it by hand, dunking the before and afters into the water to prevent oxidation from turning them brown while my wife mixed up the batter and I pressed on with the rest of the brunch. A bit more effort than anticipated, but it was worth it -- quite good, particularly with syrup and cinnamon sugar.

As always, some interesting and thought-provoking material in the Sunday papers. There was an article in the Washington Post about people who are using novel methods to help their young children deal with the stress of their father (usually) being away to war -- life size posters of the person (Flat Daddy) , or small stuffed dolls with the person's image on the face part (Daddy Doll). I'm always impressed by that kind of creativity. Almost always, I think 'Gee, I wish I could help with that', and almost always, I don't. Usually, there's a reason -- the posters, for example, cost fifty dollars each. I could afford one or two of them, but I convince myself that only contributing to one or two would hardly help. I am envious when others find a way to get their company to help in a big way. I'm thinking of an article I read where a man, whose son was grievously injured in Iraq, wrote an email about it that was circulated among coworkers in IBM, and the email eventually made its way to the chairman of the board, who arranged for the company to donate something like ten thousand copies of their translation software for use in Iraq, in recognition of the son's sacrifice. Geez, I think, how come I can't arrange something like that?

We also found out, courtesy of the Post's Outlook section, that Monica Goodling, the assistant to the Attorney General who resigned, no reason given, and who refused to testify because she feared self-incrimination, is a graduate of Messiah College, a local college. That surprised us, for a couple of reasons. First, Messiah is a small school, and the idea that someone graduated from there and ended up in a fairly prominent position is startling; usually, Messiah graduates end up as first assistant manager in charge of home loans at an area bank, though only after doing two or three years working in down-trodden areas helping build health clinics or as actual religious missionaries. For one of their own to make that leap is pretty impressive. Which leads me to the other reason -- that someone with the depth of religious conviction that she probably had -- as you might guess from the name, Messiah is a religiously oriented school, but its not oppressive about it; you don't find religious screeds everywhere, and, of course, they don't have Truth Squads keeping the faithful faithful, unlike certain other - ahem - religions -- to get into that kind of trouble is startling. Hearing that she came from Messiah made me assume she had firm, fairly inflexible religious values, which might well have spoken to why she was chosen over other candidates for a position in a faith-based presidency. I gather that she wasn't all that pure of heart, though, since she apparently pushed out qualified but non-Christian people in favor of others who were Christian though possibly not as qualified -- but still, I feel sorry for her -- much more so than for her boss, or her boss's boss.

I was pretty surprised to hear that the Supreme Court had ordered the EPA to review the effect of greenhouse gases, as I was fairly sure they couldn't do that. I would have bet that the Supremes would say that they didn't have the authority to review the actions of the EPA, especially in a Bush administration. Turns out that they didn' order any such thing, but they did come close-- they said that the EPA has the authority to do such reviews, which opens the door for the EPA to be sued if they don't do it. Whats also interesting is the breakdown of the vote -- as I recall, it was 5/4 -- because the Chief Justice said that Massachusetts, which brought the action, didn't have standing to do so, couldn't show that any injury was brought to it because the EPA either acted or failed to act, and had no clear course of recompense if they could show injury; the justice who wrote for the majority said that not only did they have standing, but as a State they had a special standing; they most certainly could show injury, and they did have a clear course of recompense. Makes me wonder if they listened to the same case.

We went looking for a replacement for our 1991 Buick Regal, which is beginning, a bit, to show its age. My wife said that her first choice would be a hybrid, so thats what we looked at, primarily, checking out the Honda Civic hybrid, the Toyota Prius hybrid, and then also the Hyundai and Kia lines. We also looked at Saabs, just for grins. We did not even slow down going past the Hummer lot, though my wife did say that her goal was to change her gas mileage, and a Hummer would certainly do that. I must say, I was impressed by both the Civic and the Prius -- they're gotten bigger (as have we), the prices are acceptable (there's about a five thousand dollar bump from a non-hybrid to a hybrid), and the mileage is amazing -- about 40/50 for the Civic, and about 50/60 for the Prius. We need to write down what our priorities are, and examine some basic assumptions, but I do believe we'll be getting one of those in the not too distant future.