Signal Boost: The Grey Man – Generations

Jim Curtis’s latest installment in the Grey Man series is now up on Amazon.

A new generation carries on the legacy of service in the latest Grey Man novella…

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Orange Cashew Chicken (with Banana)

This is one of the few dishes that appears at Redquarters and is cooked entirely in the microwave. The recipe is from the late 1980s, when the “nuke it till it glows” school of cooking was peaking and the microwave oven was THE kitchen tool of the future. As a result, you need a microwave-safe baking dish (we use Corningware™). Be aware too that the cook time will vary because of differing power of your microwave’s “High” setting.

Book Review: Milk: A 10,000 Year Food Fracas

Kurlansky, Mark. Milk: A 10,000 Year Food Fracas (NY: Bloomsbury, 2018) Kindle Edition.

Ah, dairy products, a blessing from the gods or an overrated tool of Euro-normitive dietitians who should have known better? Is milk a healthy food or the scourge of the environment? Depends on who you ask, which milk it is, and where you happen to live. Mark Kurlansky provides a detailed, thematic history of dairy products, including the controversies about milk, cheese, ice cream and other milk-based foods. Alas, his political asides drag the tale down from five stars to four, in my opinion.

Long before Music…

The modern choral composer Ola Gjeilo set part of St. John of the Cross’s “Dark Night of the Soul”* to music.

He then composed a companion piece, with words by Charles Anthony Sylvestri. The second piece is entitled “Luminous Night” and the opening verses spoke to me in ways that I’m still sorting out:

On the Road

I’m on the road today. Content tomorrow.

Where Women Ruled…

The imperial abbey of Quedlinburg had an interesting history. The abbess was one of very few people to have a seat on the Imperial Council of the Holy Roman Empire until the empire’s dissolution in 1804. The church was founded in part to firm-up the Holy Roman Emperors’ control over the Harz Mountains and the Saxon frontier, and to provide a place where sisters and daughters of the upper nobility could serve the Church.

Really? A women Only Parking Place?

Howdy, Instapundit Readers! I apologize for being slow to clear comments – Typing and driving is a bad idea.

So, the van pulled into an Autohof in Germany and we parked a little distance from the cafe/coffee shop/restaurant/news-stand/playground. We needed to stretch our legs, since we’d been on the road for several hours and would be driving for a few more. As we strolled to the Hof, the driver pointed to the parking slots right in front of the doors and shook his head. There were the usual handicapped places, and then two, pink, “Women Only” slots.

Not pregnant women, not elderly women, not women with small children, just women.

It Doesn’t Look like a Volcano…

Where’s the Earth-shattering kaboom?

You are looking at a volcano. It is the Kaiserstuhl, on the western side of the Rhine Rift Valley. I was standing on the eastern side, at the base of a ruined castle.

Little Changes

I first went to Germany in the early 1990s. I’d been to Switzerland with a history tour group, but this was my first time more or less on my own in a foreign country. It is amazing how quickly your language skills improve when you are trying to sort out if the meat-in-a-can is something like stew or hash, or if it is a version of Alpo dog food. You also learn which bakeries are open when, and which ones have the really, really good stuff.

Bad Character, Stop That!

I finally realized why the WIP feels like I’m pulling my own teeth, besides the recurrence of a medical thing that is annoying me. Ewoud is not a teenager. But he’s not an adult yet, at least not in his own mind. And a lot of me is saying “write him as an 18-year-old guy,” meaning modern. That would be relatively easy, given Day Job.

But that’s not Ewoud. He’s an 18-year-old medieval man with both parents still living. Very different world, and a very different character.