good food isn’t fast best low country fish sandwich fast food isn’t good
With the rain from Hurricane Isaias shutting down most of the things you can do on the island where we live, we made the most of it with a trip to one of our favorite bookstores, The Bookstore on the Hill, in Richmond Hill, Georgia.
It’s an hour away but worth the trip though inflation has hit and all hardcover books are now $5.00 and all paperbacks are $3.00.
And going to Richmond Hill has the added plus of lunch at Fish Tales at Fort McAllister Marina where they promise good food and good fun.
For my money, the fish sandwich – grilled white fish or mahi mahi on a fresh roll with lettuce, tomato, onions and pickle – is the best fish sandwich in the Low Country.
The problem is that Fish Tales isn’t in the Low Country.
Once you cross the Savanah River into Georgia, you find yourself in what they call, The Coastal Empire.
Still the best sandwich on the coast.
Few signs of a hurricane by lunch time
Fish Tales isn’t the biggest place though I am not sure we have ever had a long wait for a table (and if there was a long wait, we go down the street to Bubba’s Bistro) and I am also pretty sure, once seated, that there has been a long wait for our order.
But for those diners who DO experience a wait for their order, Fish Tales has a sign over the hostess station.
was hugely impressed name every species of bird tattooed on her leg
Every once in awhile, I have to take a break from pointing out that the king has no clothes on and other aspects of trying to save the world and just goof off.
Readers of these essays know that a regular part of my Saturday morning reading is the Blind Date column in the Guardian where the, as the paper says, we fix up two Guardian readers.
The paper selects two readers who have requested a Blind Date and set them up at some posh restaurant for a free dinner.
Participants are asked to respond to a list of questions after the date and their responses are cobbled into the weekly column.
I am drawn to their responses as well as to the menu at these posh restaurants as well as the opportunity for me, while writing this down, to use the word, posh.
In today’s column, Holly, 42, a horticulturist, meets Graeme, 47, a forest manager, went on a Blind Date and when asked the question, “What were you hoping for?“, Holly responded, To meet someone interesting and fun, while Graeme (also love to guess how some of the names are pronounced) responded, Really, just a fun night with minimal awkwardness was my fairly low expectation before the meeting.
To the question, “What do you think Holly made of you?”, Graeme said, “I reckon she was hugely impressed I could name every species of bird she had tattooed on her leg.”
Talk about answers to questions that ask more questions than they answer.
Remember, this is the feller, Graeme (see in the way terms of address for Grandparent’s come about, my wife is Grammy, but I digress) said he was hoping for a fun night with minimal awkwardness.
Yet somehow he managed to examine his date’s leg, tick off and identify the species of bird tattooed on her leg, while seated (I guess … or was this later) in a posh restaurant.
If you look at the photo with the article, it shows that Holly’s arms are covered with species identifiable tattoos of birds, but does not show her leg.
Graeme and Holly on their date …
Then asked, “Most awkward moment?“, Graeme said, Holly destroying an aphid, which had landed on my forehead, with a firm thumb squish. I should make clear that the poor aphid wasn’t in the lovely restaurant; it was outside an entirely different place, which had hanging baskets.
Not, I point out, checking out his date’s leg … but maybe that wasn’t in the lovely restaurant.
Maybe we just leave this right there.
I will say that Graeme, when asked if they would meet again that he was hugely looking forward to doing so (though it must be pointed out that Holly said, We live quite far apart, but we’ll see …)
So Graeme is out there, hugely attracted to the adverb, hugely, and we will hope for the best for him and Holly as we go forward on our own with our own efforts to enjoy life with with minimal awkwardness.
As a postscript, the restaurant, The Palmerstonin Edinburgh, did not disappoint.
Our couple, in their effort to enjoy a fun night with minimal awkwardness were hugely rewarded with a menu that offered such delights as:
Pappardelle, summer girolles, tomatoes, basil, goat’s curd and parmesan Goat’s curd, friggitelli peppers, basil and pine nuts on toast Burrata, roast black figs, honey, hazelnuts and Marsala Grilled squid, cucumber, grilled peppers and tomatoes Pig’s skin ragu and parmesan on toast Berkshire pig head salad, dandelion, radishes, shallots and sweet mustard dressing
And for dessert:
Uva fragola sorbet Alp Blossom and membrillo (Bavaria, Germany, unpasteurised cow’ s milk) Sinodun Hill, strawberries and honey (Carmarthenshire,Wales, pasteurised goat’s milk)
I know a lot of people who claim to make the same claim.
I grew up in the State of Michigan and I was and am proud of the fact that, in the words of Wikipedia, Michigan was the first Anglosphere jurisdiction in the world to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes.
The Michigan State Legislature voted to do so on May 18, 1846, and that has remained the law ever since.
Although the death penalty was formally retained as a punishment for treason until 1963, no person was ever tried for treason against Michigan.
Thus, Michigan has not executed any person since before statehood.
According to one online source, the State Constitution of Michigan is the ONLY Constitution in the world to specifically outlaw the death penalty (Michigan Constitution, Article IV (Legislative Branch) Section 46 that says in one short sentence, No law shall be enacted providing for the penalty of death.
Last night I was shocked and sickened to hear from my Wife that the United States was planning to execute someone on live TV.
Is this what we have become?
Is this the United States?
This morning’s newspapers were filled with reactions.
State-sanctioned killing as entertainment! Yes, the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy has arrived at an horrific new moral nadir.
Can we repeat that bit again?
The part about the world’s supposedly greatest (or formerly greatest) democracy …
But being so closely allied to a country that now wants to turn the execution of a human being – no matter what their crimes – into a live entertainment event, promises to redefine depravity.
Meanwhile, it’s hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event.
But there we are. We have arrived.
I have to wonder if this is the work of those tortured souls in the current administration who endeavor to come up with ways to further shock us and have to go further and further into depravity to come up with something new.
As Mr. Paley put it:
Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer.
Then I woke to today’s news …
Are those tortured souls in the current administration yanking our chain and right now laughing over a diet Coke at the angst they have created.
Is this all designed just to get us to take our eyes off the ball and look at the latest shiny object while those tortured souls in the current administration sell off or destroy something else?
Or is this truly how those tortured souls in the current administration feel?
They want to watch the execution of a another human being.
Then, regardless of WHY those tortured souls in the current administration have released this plan, there are those folks, those good Christian folks, those good Christian folks who embrace the efforts of those tortured souls in the current administration, falling in line to voice approval, even glad anticipation of watching this on their television sets at home.
It’s hard to contemplate a more audacious appeal to American society’s darker angels than this looming entertainment event.
But there we are.
We have arrived.
Mr. Paley closes with:
This represents a significant lurch in the US from civilisation towards savagery.
You can’t choose your family. But you can choose your friends and allies. And you can also tell them firmly when they’ve careened off the ethical rails.
Actions speak louder than words.
And this planned livestreamed execution says it all about what is happening in America today, opening the window ever wider on the Trump administration’s moral vacuity and its paucity of human decency.
In short, this planned livestreamed execution says it all.
does this bother you? desperate need of mending? feel need to fix it?
Based on the article, Experts Agree: Nobody Knows What ‘Bimonthly’ or ‘Biweekly’ Means By Nitsuh Abebe in the New York Times Magazine where Mr. Abebe writes:
There are also usage guides for “biweekly” and “bimonthly,” but most of their advice just face-plants right back into uncertainty. Merriam-Webster suggests using “semimonthly” for “twice a month,” which doesn’t much clarify “bimonthly” unless people know you’re doing it. An English professor named Michael Adams told CBS News that we should bring back “fortnight,” the old shortening of “14 nights,” so that we “don’t have to worry about ‘biweekly’ or ‘bimonthly’ meaning two things.” But two weeks and half a month are not the same: A semimonthly paycheck arrives 24 times per year, a fortnightly one 26. Every “biweekly” or “bimonthly” explainer seems to arrive at the same drastic conclusion: Abandon these words. They are hopelessly compromised. Just say “twice a month” or “every other month” or whatever.
The trouble is that deciding what is “correct” does not really resolve ambiguity. There is, for instance, solid agreement that bi- will for some reason affect “annual” in the opposite way it affects “monthly,” giving us “biannual” (twice a year) and “biennial” (every two years). This does not remotely stop people from confusing the two: Clarity solves nothing.
My question is: Does this bother you? Does it feel like a tiny piece of linguistic machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending? Do you feel a need to fix it?
I enjoyed reading the article very much as it was focused on words.
But that last quote.
Does this bother you?
Does it feel like a tiny piece of machinery has snapped off and is clanking around in desperate need of mending?
Do you feel a need to fix it?
I really need to ask these questions of just about everything today.
Because …
So many things bother me.
So many tiny pieces of machinery have snapped off and are clanking around in desperate need of mending?
I feel a need to fix these things.
And I don’t want things to bother me.
I don’t want to feel anything is in desperate need of mending.
I don’t want to fix anything.
Just let me go to the beach and I am good.
Maybe in a fortnight or so I will be ready to get back into letting things bother me.
the brain camera records all such moments with sounds scents emotions
But when we walk, the environment changes every moment and our senses are continuously being alerted. Around each corner of a city block, around each bend in a country road, there is something new to greet the eyes, the ears, the nose. Even the same walk, the one we may take every day, is never the same from one day to another, from one week and season to another.
This is true not only in the country, but anywhere at all. In New York City, a group of executives meets every weekday morning to walk from their homes in Brooklyn Heights to their offices in downtown Manhattan. Their way takes them through quiet streets of old brownstones, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, then up and over the Brooklyn Bridge with its cathedral arches supporting the weblike drapery of cables, then down into the tight skyscraper canyons of the financial district.
As it happens, Bill, a photographer, had his camera with him, being a convinced member of the school of photography that believes you get your good pictures only on foot—in his own words, “A photographer must walk if he is to be a photographer at all.”
He got some excellent pictures.
But even if he had not had his camera to record them, they would be his forever, on the indelible film of his mind. The camera of the brain records all such moments, and records them, moreover, in their full orchestration, with the accompanying sounds and scents, most of all with the accompanying emotions.
From The Magic of Walking by Aaron Sussman (Fireside: New York, 1980).
