I love shopping at Meijer’s. None of the three stores in our area is very close, maybe 5 miles or so, but the trip down Platt passes by Bombay Grocers (source of peeled garlic for paste), the dump, and the cheapest gas station in town. Added on todays trip was Gordon Food Services, right across from Meijer’s, for those 5 gallon jugs of red wine vinegar and soy sauce. Feeding our ‘shrooms habit https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/1238
But Meijer’s always abounds with bargains, and today they were in the meat department. Now I have a freezer stuffed with meat all catalogued in my 3 ring binders, each species in its own special bag in the freezer. Unless our electric goes out and all melts, we can eat (well) for years. But boy, look at that pack of ham hocks! Not even on sale, but you can always use a ham hock, and here were 4 of ‘em in a pack! Then, wow, lookit the size of that pork butt shoulder! Beats some of the customers. And the designation makes me worry about the effects of industrial agriculture (how did butt and shoulder get so close?). But it’s more than 50% off, so 7 ½ pounds of it goes into my basket. Not to be outdone is the ham display with slabs of no unquestionable origin close to 10 pounds beckon. They’re already cooked you see, so easy to manipulate once home. I learned at Easter this year, thawing out a ham from ’99, you could do things with these huge chunks of meat besides thaw ‘em and then serve them with pineapple. So at these prices, I had to have one. Your receipt at Meijer’s includes a tally of your savings, and mine were enormous, plus I got a $3 off coupon for hair products.
Home, I was exhausted after this Herculean effort at food gathering. Meat wasn’t all I got. So several hours passed before I started organizing things. I also had a 4 ½ pound pack of boneless thighs from Busch’s the day before to deal with. See here my gleaming instruments of destruction.
The vacu-sealer is key to the whole process, generating shrink sealed packages of labeled wonderfulness. The scale, which I was weighed on as an infant, assures precision. And you wouldn’t want to argue with that knife.
The thighs were easy, two per pack. Ham hocks went one per pack.. Neither Kathy nor I could see us consuming 7 ½ pounds of pork shoulder butt, so cloven in twain it was. Our first butt to hang in the smoker will be a mere 4 pound number. The hard part of dividing the ham was getting the bone out. I have a “boning knife’ but its slender blade is effete against this task, which requires brute manual force. The meaty femur will make a wonderful addition to some Dutch split pea soup recipe. The rest is all sandwiches and chunks. Sure good eatin’. Thank you, Fred Meijer
A man should know his meat. While I’ve yet to stand witness in the slaughter house, at least I have the satisfaction of taking the output to comestable portions, as the vacu-sealer hums its song of approval.
This is going to be some hard stuff about the COVID vaccines. It grew from an exchange on a U of M Alumni Society forum. So first I must tell you something about the Alumni Society. Kathy and I became life members of the U of M Alumni Association last June. I believe she and I both qualify: Kathy with her 3 post graduate degrees, 2 post-doctoral fellowships, and 20 years of employment then me with a bachelor’s, master’s, post-doctoral fellowship, and 34 years on faculty. Plus we both started attending U of M football games with our families in the early 60s, me in ’64 and Kathy even before that. True Blue. So we never felt the need to join some sort of organization to prove to the world we’re proud to be part of 634,888 worldwide U of M alumni, largest alumni group in the world. Go Blue!. But we’ve done some things through the Alumni Society, taking a nice cruise from Scotland to Norway 3 years ago, and always consulting the site when we were travelling over the time of a football or basketball game. Expat alumni in cities all over the world congregate in certain bars to watch the game and it was always fun to be in a crowd like that. Last year they floated a special offer for lifetime membership and we decided to go for it. There are many benefits (see table below) and we immediately enjoyed out blue fleece jackets. There are online forums for many different interests. I mainly looked at the travel forum, where member shared tips and questions.
Yesterday was posted the following question in the form of a survey:
“Will you travel abroad once vaccinated?”
Answers as of noon today
Yes! (26)
90%
No! (3)
10%
I did not answer the poll as I don’t wish to qualify. Instead, I posted the following brief comment:
“won’t get vaccinated unless forced. I like the nucleic acids God gave me.”
Which got one snide reply lamenting ignorance about vaccines, likely steeped in religious fundamentalism and dark age attitudes.
But another guy posed an intelligent question. He’d even taken the trouble to look me up. I looked him up. A chemical engineering grad, so he must have some smarts:
How does the vaccine alter said nucleic acids? According to my research, you are Dr. Ike, distinguished emeritus faculty at the medical school. You have a responsibility to explain what you mean by this comment. Otherwise, it may appear that you are spreading misinformation.
To which I replied:
The vaccine is a nucleic acid, a strand of messenger RNA with the same information COVID uses to make the infected cell manufacture spike protein, which is what the virus uses to latch onto and penetrate lung cells. The lab-made mRNA is packaged in a nanoparticle made of polyethylene glycol (same stuff as anti-freeze). The injected particles penetrate human cells, where the freed strands of mRNA latch on to ribosomes, the protein complexes where information on the RNA brings in amino acids, building blocks of proteins, each one having a unique 3 nucleotide code expressed in the RNA, and the assembled amino acids forming a protein, to act either as a structural component of the cell or as an enzyme, catalyzing complex chemical reactions. It’s an elegant and surprisingly simple system. Read The Language of God by U of M’s own Francis Collins*, now head of the NIH, and certain future Nobel Prize winner. By having the spike protein made by the host we’re trying to protect, rather than just injecting spike protein like older vaccines worked, makes all arms of the immune system recognize this foreign protein and gear up to be able to attack it should something similar reappear. It’s a molecular biology tour de force and the groups that developed it are in for their own Nobel someday. The injected RNA is eventually degraded. However, every cell has a small amount of the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which can take a strand of RNA and manufacture a strand of DNA with the same information. DNA is very stable and can integrate into DNA that’s already there, i.e. our chromosomes. Only transformed cells – cancer cells – make much reverse transcriptase. The late Michael Crichton, an M.D., knew of this phenomenon and used it in the plot to Jurassic Park, explaining how the supposedly safe all-female dinosaur clones became able to breed. Having a new gene that made us able to make coronavirus spike protein wouldn’t be all bad. It would be like getting a constant immune booster against COVID. But that would work only if the spike protein of the constantly mutating coronavirus didn’t change much. But that’s a whole ‘nother story. Having foreign DNA nestle someplace in your chromosomes could alter expression of the gene it sits next to, possibly even transforming the cell. These are not the vaccines of our youth, which were just ground up, killed or otherwise altered fragments of the organisms we wanted to be protected against: smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, etc. In my own humble opinion, this new technology is too big a risk, however miniscule, for what could be a marginal, short lived benefit. Hence my earlier comment. Hope this all helps.
I’ve been delinquent in my pledge made months ago to dive deep into these vaccines and really learn what they are all about https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/1029. I have learned a little more, hence my answer above. After posting that reply, I decided to do a formal search to see if there really might be a problem with reverse transcriptase and RNA vaccines, or if it was just something from an old science fiction novel and movie. I employed my three favorite engines – Medline, PubMed, and Scopus – looking for publications that reference these two search terms together. Surprisingly few things popped up. Scanning titles, I saw nothing addressing the problem directly. Of the 16 references Medline produced, one – a January review of COVID treatment and prevention, looked like it might at least address the problem, but was in a journal the library didn’t get and couldn’t be accessed online. So I have interlibrary loan pulling it for me. I’ll see what it says. Meanwhile, I’ll remain a member of the COVID vaccine resistance. Another set of unread articles on my computer concern vaccination and travel. With Kathy retiring in June, travel is something we want to do much more of. We may end up having to submit just for that. Well, at least the vaccine doesn’t come with a tattoo, yet.
So if any of you readers are U of M alums, here’s why to sign up for a life membership. No letters of recommendations required, but we’d be happy to supply you one if asked.
* see Francis Collins, still technically a Professor of Medicine at U of M, where he discovered the genes for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington’s chorea (which claimed Woody Guthrie), before leaving to head the Human Genome Project then be appointed by Obama to head the National Institutes of Health, as he mounts his red Harley to take him on the 15 minute commute from Chevy Chase to his office at the NIH in Bethesda. Oh, and he plays the guitar, sometimes in a rock band, and sings with opera singers. He is a devout Christian.
When I awoke around 3 yesterday, the weather report forecast another perfect spring day in AA, 75 degrees and sunny with enough wind later in the day to keep things interesting. Dinner on the deck was a must, so I kicked things off by pulling out of the freezer a couple chunks that arrived from Kansas City Steak a few days ago. My American Express had a deal with them so why not? I picked a cut I wasn’t going to find in any local store, a big slab of “picanha”, popular in Brazil, derived from the biceps femoris of the cow (big muscle back of the thigh).
Nice apron of fat, which is of course where the flavor comes from. I got a about 4 meals worth. This would be the debut. The order came with two packets of their steak seasoning, one of which which I decided to deploy. Cut into ~2” chunks, they skewered nicely. Since the Brazilians like their steak on a sword, I figure it was appropriate.
While Kathy corrected papers all morning – she’d gotten down to less than 100 for the rest of the term – I got busy prepping dinner. I’d managed to throw together everything by 1:30 when I took off for my haircut. It was pretty easy peasy. The potatoes were the most fuss. I parboiled then cooled them. I warmed ¼ C duck fat and 2 T olive oil in the same pot, threw in 2 T garlic paste and 1 t rosemary, emulsified everything, then added ½ C parsley. I threw the potatoes back in the mess and made sure everything got coated. They’ll sit in the pot till I skewered them and threw them on the grill. The recipe’s at the end. The rest were just skewered vegetables: a sweet onion and 2 peppers. Not quite ready by then were the ‘shrooms – Kathy’s favorite – which had to marinate a while before being skewered https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/1238. I brought a couple nice cabs up from the cellar to wash this all down. Intercept is from Charles Woodson’s vineyard. Yes, that Charles Woodson. Both his cab and red blend are highly rated and good values. We stock upon them whenever we go to Meijer’s. The Yalumba was inexpensive and bought on a whim, curious about South Australia and liking the tractor on the label. If we do get to a second cab, we tend not to be so picky. Plus it has a screw top cap. Easier to close for later.
Here was the spread, all skewered up and ready for the flames.
I have 2 Weber grills and a Pit Barrel smoker. I do most of my grilling on the little Go Anywhere number, with its 10X16 grate. It sits on top of my 23” kettle. But this spread would require more grill space. Fat on the steak sure makes it tasty, but oh does it feed the flames. The internal temp shot past 1350 quickly, already at well (1650) when I first measured. Had to take it off and let sit while the vegetables got done. Kathy had set the table as if normal people would be eating there, complete with place mats, steak knives, and forks. But it was all finger food to me, so we sat in our rockers and watched the sun set, surveying northwest Ann Arbor for any signs of trouble. All was quiet. Came time for dessert which usually features 2 kinds of dark chocolate: Nibbles from San Diego https://nibblechocolate.com/ and a Señor Murphy’s chocolate chili bar from Santa Fe https://www.senormurphy.com/store/detail/chocolate_bars/organic_chocolate_chile_bars_3_pack. But we’d nibbled away all the Nibbles , and our next order had yet to arrive. We still had a nice plate.
And we debuted a little something I’d found on sale at Plum’s.
Both went very well with a red.
The Mel Torme Spotify channel provided our soundtrack. But we could just as well have put on John Prine and Mac Wiseman
Nayef Kazzaz was a fellow with us ‘14-‘16. He came to us from King Saud University in Riyadh courtesy of King Muhammad bin Nayef. I don’t know if they were related. My Division welcomed such types, as they came totally paid for, thanks to King Nayef. Nayef had been smoothed by a 3 year internal medicine residency in Cleveland at University Hospitals of Cleveland, and spoke smooth vernacular and medical English. He still couldn’t present a patient’s case to save his soul, but possessed a bouncing enthusiasm that carried him through the rough spots, and he was a pretty good doctor overall. He even dove into the lab with my young friend Jason, and excelled. His last year, he spent time with me learning procedures. Friday afternoons, we were in my “injection clinic”, poking every manner of moving joint, sometimes with the benefit of ultrasound guidance. Now and then was thrown in a labial salivary gland biopsy (“lip biopsy”), which he relished. He also joined me on Tuesday mornings in the Medical Procedures Unit for percutaneous muscle biopsies, gruesome penetrations made tolerable by the miracle of conscious sedation. Nayef was joined on these outings by Vellore (India)’s son, Viju, who matched his enthusiasm. Such occasions were heady experiences for this old man. Nothing like youngsters hanging on your every word thinking what you’re doing is great. Such is the life blood of academic medicine, and why we stay with it so long. I called them my “little brown boys”, but not to their faces, of course.
When Nayef landed a new position at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, the good news appeared to me on Linked in, with a chance to respond, which I did with brief congratulations. Nayef quickly came back to me with thanks and a query into my current situation. I sent him a few sentences, but afterwords realized the people of whom I spoke to him about as my role models might be unknown to him. I felt compelled to look up his email and elaborate. Here is what I said.
I realized after that Linked in exchange you may not have a clue who those “role models” of mine were. Both are scopy buddies of mine. Roy Altman was the first rheumatologist in the USA to perform arthroscopy. He flew from Miami to Colorado in the late 70s to hook up with Toronto’s Bob Jackson at a ski resort for a weekend. Bob had learned from Makei Watanabe while team Canada’s physician for the ’64 Olympics. He traded arthroscopy lessons for English lessons and came back to North America to transform arthroscopic surgery. He, unlike his peers, had no problems with rheumatologists. He even gave me encouraging words when I met him at a meeting once. Roy went back to Miami and was the only arthroscopist in those parts for quite a few years, helping to teach a bunch of the local orthopods . He’s been a prolific writer and active editor, still at it at age 83 at UCLA. We’re working on a paper on hyaluronic acid right now. Lanny Johnson did almost as much as Bob Jackson to propel arthroscopic surgery forward, and from the perch of a little office in East Lansing, where he’d gone to school and was an athlete (swimmer). The big academic centers didn’t know what to do with him so he had to do it himself. He invented the motorized shaver, which transformed arthroscopic surgery. He wrote a huge two volume textbook, which is still a definitive reference. He ran little courses out of his office that I took with my first (and only ) scopy protegée Ken O’Rourke in the early 90s. We still stay in touch. He was instrumental in me getting another chit on my CV. I sent him my article in Rheumatology (Oxford)* and he thought orthopods should see it. Orthopods don’t read Rheumatology (Oxford) but they do read Arthroscopy, so Lanny convinced their editor to accept a letter from me describing the Rheumatology paper so orthopods could link to it. I got the editor of Rheumatology to quietly make my article open access (normally costs $4225.00) so outsiders could see it without a charge. Whew! Nothing like that ever happened when I was working.
I can’t talk about role models without mentioning my mentor, Chicago’s Bill Arnold, who taught me ‘scopy ’85-6, at the behest of his former mentor at Duke and my then current boss, Bill Kelley. I brought Bill out of retirement to be co-author on several articles, but he’s asked to opt out of anything more so he can just enjoy being retired. And maybe that’s a role model thing too, showing there can be life without medicine, completely without medicine. Somedays, I feel like that, but then a contact comes like your Linked in announcement, and I’m back in the game.
It was a real shame I couldn’t get ‘scopy back up ’17-’18. The orthopods were in huge opposition and no one on our side seemed to want to lend any kind of support. I think the potential is tremendous. You definitely have the right stuff to have been good at it. Viju too. What a wrinkle that would have put into your final year! If you do read over my article, do more than just look at the pictures and feel wistful for what might have been, realize this is all still possible and would be a unique and huge addition to your skill set. You were never shy about taking on new things and mastering them. Even in the lab, per Jason! Parking that enthusiasm and adventurousness in service to the needs of your new rheumatology clinic would be like using your Ferrari only for trips to the grocery store. I hope they will give you a chance to do a little of your own thing so you can make like one of the renegade groups of my youth – the MC (Motor City) 5 – and “kick out the jams! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fpgQGmHFWE” You have the potential for great things, young man, and I hope you go for it. I stand ready to provide whatever support possible. Go blue!
*Ike RW, Arnold WJ, Kalunian KC. Arthroscopy in rheumatology. Where have we been? Where might we go? Rheumatol (Oxford) 2021;60:518–528. Epub 2020 Dec 1 https://doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keaa560.
Leon Russell pervades through all my preferred Spotify channels, and none are the ”Leon Russell” channel, which surely exists. You can never go too far without hearing a Leon Russell tune, which is o.k. because all Leon Russell tunes are cool. He brought his considerable talents to LA from Oklahoma City in the 60s, became a valued member of the famed “wrecking crew”, a group of musicians that provided backup to acts ranging from the Beach Boys to Frank Sinatra. His role in putting together Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” got him international attention and he branched out on a solo career, with two lovely albums from which came several hits. Here’s one of my favorites “Hummingbird”.
He continued to perform and record. I regret I did not follow, or go see him when he came to nearby venues. My loss. He died November 13, 2016 in of “natural causes”. I was in Washington D.C. at a meeting when I got the news. I set the Spotify channel to Leon Russell as I ate my dinner I my room. RIP Leon. He continues to come at me from all directions on my Spotify channels, so I don’t imagine I’ll ever say goodbye to Leon, as his talent shall always be with us.
Berated for my sins, I strove to address them. Here is how.
Hello friends
When this weekend a third very good friend told me how my handling of batch e-mails was violating standards of digital etiquette, I realized it was time to change my ways, and tell you about it.
For all the Zoom e-mail traffic since last July, I’ve sent stuff out to you all by just copying the email column in my databases and pasting in the “To” box. Hit send and presto, you’re all informed. None of you have complained yet, but here’s what my friends say. One gets so annoyed by being on the receiving end of a batch e-mail, he has a program on his computer that subsequently blocks any further traffic from the sender of any batch e-mails. I’ve been caught several times. The first consequence of batch emails is that incoming feels like junk mail, and it often is. Secondly, placement of your email on a batch list means all recipients can see it, and you might not be in to that much sharing. Finally, all those open emails provide routes for viruses and malware to enter. Who would want that? Eeeweue. Talk about cooties! There’s probably more, but that’s what my friends told me about.
Fortunately, there’s a solution that will allow us to continue our relationships in complete safety. When I send out the next batch email (this one), if I park all your addresses in BCC, you’ll receive your notice individually, and won’t be able to see who else got it. Now that’s privacy. I hope that all you nervous nellies out there find that comforting. Big brother has taken one step back from controlling your life.
Not problems we had to deal with back in the day. I mainly worried about in which ditch Maneikis had deposited the case. Joe Walsh feels our pain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLaQUU_VLMk.
Driving to the grocery store is usually a mundane activity which I nevertheless enjoy. But today gave me an epiphany, one I had to share with my friend from the ‘burg, Forrest Hummel (named Steve Layne by his parents, corrected by his peers in Jr High). Forrest and I share a love for music, he with the far more encyclopedic knowledge and collection, plus experience as an actual rock star singing lead for our class’s band Korrosion (previously Fourth Reich). Here’s what I said;
Hey Forrest:
Man, I was heading to the grocery store and punched WCBN, the student station, ‘cause you never know what you’re going to get. Today “Sunshine of your love”! Kathy wasn’t with me so I cranked it up. I realized they couldn’t play this live! There are two guitar tracks, a steady rhythm then Eric’s cosmic picking. They would have had to have a second guy in the shadows, and I don’t think they did that. Did Korrosion ever play this? ”Power trio” is 3 guys last I checked. The DJ segued into “World of pain”, carrying me to my parking place at Busch’s. Having misplaced my earbuds, I was deprived for the duration of my brief shopping spree. Back in the car, it’s” SWALBR”, then a pause to explain it’s the 50th anniversary of Disraeli Gears (wrong, it was released in ’67 when we still were in high school) then read an excerpt from a Rolling Stone record review. He finished with “Outside woman blues”, pointing out how well the arrangement followed the 1929 Blind Joe Reynolds original. By then he was up against 5 o’clock and had to turn it over to some chika interviewing a sensitive Pollack author.
Home, Kathy was done with her day’s teachings. I asked her to excuse me to my headphones, where I am now listening (at high volume) to Disraeli Gears (Deluxe Edition) on Spotify. Much more stuff than on my high school vinyl. Man, did we have the music or what? I don’t think you were among the crowd that ate up the heavy stuff. How we loved it when Cream or Led Zep laid a new one on us. Then, of course, Mountain. RIP Leslie West.
I wonder if today’s kids ever experience that excitement for a new record we used to? I guess there are still timed releases, digital. But you don’t line up at a record store for a digital release. Such a loss. I’m happy to say I still remember the feeling. Didn’t we sometimes stand in line? Maybe that’s why I still hang on to those obsolete vinyl discs. I still remember the thrill when I first touched them.
Remember, it’s all about the music.
So there I left it. Here are links to the Cream songs I mentioned, plus a bonus;
Sunshine of your love
world of pain
SWLABR
outside woman blues
Mississippi queen (not Cream). Cream’s success left many hungry for more hard, guitar-heavy, blues-based rock. Leslie West with his group Mountain satisfied immensely. He died this year and his old albums bear listening much as do Cream’s. Happy I till have some.
Be sure to turn up your speakers to LOUD (11 if you have settings).
Tim has been my colleague since ’88. His Garden City MI working class upbringing has been refined though Harvard, U of M med school and residency (including a chief residency) and a San Francisco fellowship. He married a dermatologist who’s smarter, better looking , and far more successful (measured by paycheck). Both are still incredibly down to earth and good friends. Tim’s been a great colleague. We even share authorship on a paper* describing an intervention of Tim’s design. See us here in ’94 applying it to a patient. I’m the guy with the ‘scope. Tim’s leaning against the wall between me and the patient surveying it all. We’re all wearing goggles to protect against the UV light.
A patient taking psoralens, a compound that’s sensitizing to UV light (used to treat psoriasis and also employed by John Howard Griffin as he strove to darken his skin for Black Like Me), was subjected to UV energy directed by a needle arthroscope (maneuvered by me), and the fried synovium (joint lining tissue) indeed changed for the better as determined by biopsy 4 weeks later. The intervention bogged down trying to find ways to direct it all around the joint.
Both our wives are named Kathy, so we have that in common, in addition to each girl being a superior person to our lowly selves. Tim, like me, loves to cook. We’ve never had a head-to-head competition, but I’ve gathered from his descriptions of his own ventures, he goes a little more elegant than me. He graced us many years ago with a simple recipe that we’ve employed many times, always with great satisfaction. The recipe is for gravlax (Swedish for “buried salmon” or “salmon in a grave”), one of the many old pre-refrigeration fish recipes, like lutefisk, where fresh fish is buried with salt and other drying compounds to be preserved for eating later. The product was often vile, but beloved by generations later who have far outgrown the necessity of such a practice. The Swedish version, made in all Scandinavian countries (Kathy’s and my own Norway included) makes for a pretty tasty product. Likely, the fish was gathered just before the waters finally froze up or became too frigid to ply, with the cured product available to be munched at Christmastime. Maybe it’s attractive to rheumatologists like me and Tim as we never cure anything otherwise. At least we can do a fish. To do this right, you take a pretty big slab of salmon (recipe’s at the end), so unless you have a big Christmas crowd, there will be leftovers. Not knowing what to do with the surplus from our last batch several years ago, I vacu-sealed and froze it. The fate of that fish I the basis for the rest of the story, which I related in an e-mail to Tim:
Hey Tim,
I dug out your old gravlax recipe today, the one written on 3 pages of a Naprosyn notepad. We haven’t made it for several years, but it’s always a winner. I don’t have a big slab of salmon to cure right now, but I wanted the sauce recipe. Digging though my freezer yesterday, I found a slab of gravlax from God knows when (I date my freezer entries now). Thawing it out to see how it might taste, I decided to slice it thin and serve it between a couple of the slices, toasted, of the Zingerman’s rye I’d bought Thursday for the Reubens we made last night. Figured a little of that sauce of yours would boost the flavor. Had to use some grapeseed oil as I was down to my last ¼ cup of olive. I also substituted agave nectar for the sugar just for the hell of it. Tastes pretty good. I got ‘em made in time for Kathy’s noon break from her big screen, and she found hers delicious. Mine was o.k. too. The flavor and texture of the gravlax has survived well in those years in the deep freeze, and the sauce tastes great slathered on a sandwich. We washed it all down with a nice petit Verdot (Quail Hollow, Lodi, 2018) that arrived from Vinesse today. We consumed the feast on our deck in 660 sunshine, surveying NW AA to be sure all was under control. It was. The bottle did not survive lunch. Kathy blew 0.210 on my BACtrack pocket breathalyzer, myself a mere 0.170. She teaches well under the influence, and I’m set for any and all retiree activities, unless I get pulled over. We sung your praises again, as we do every time we haul out this recipe. There’s fish, bread, and sauce (very little, but easy to make) left over so we’ll have it again soon. Thanks again. I thought you might want to know about this little sliver of your legacy. I don’t think you can put recipes on your CV, but I hear that soon you’ll not be needing to impress any promotions committee. So just when will you be joining me among the growing ranks of the elderly unemployed? It’s a great place to be, believe me. Plus you’ve got a working wife to support you. You know how those girls love to work and work and get a kick when they’re pulling in more than their men.
Thanks again. Let’s keep in touch.
Bob
Tim replied and confessed he hadn’t made up either recipe, although he couldn’t recall the specific sources. But to me and Kathy, they’ll always we his. You can’t sing praises to a cookbook, like we can to Tim!
And here they are:
And here’s our paper:
* Laing TJ, Ike RW, Griffiths CE, Richardson BC, Grober JS, Keroack BK, Toth MB, Railan D, Cooper KD. A pilot study of the effect of oral 8-methoxypsoralen and intraarticular ultraviolet light on rheumatoid synovitis. J Rheumatol 1995;22:29-33.
I heard on WCRJ this morning that today was William Shatner’s birthday, getting it wrong by two days. Must have been a time warp. He was born 3/22/31 in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to a Conservative Jewish household. Betcha didn’t know he was Jewish. So, yep, Captain Kirk has turned 90. How about that! He still looks pretty good.
Kathy and I have been huge Star Trek fans since the get go, especially of the original cast and the remakes with younger actors portraying the originals. Chris Pine has young Jim Kirk nailed. Mountains of prose have been heaped up about Star Trek, so stop me before I start adding my pile. This is about William Shatner.
We were privileged to see him live at Sound Board, MGM Grand Casino on Grand River in Detroit 1/24/16. It was just him at a podium, which he didn’t spend much time behind, regaling us with stories from his life. He kept us entertained for an hour and a half, even imparting a little wisdom. I still cherish and follow a chestnut he offered after describing his travails trying to scratch out a living after Star Trek closed down, his livelihood dependent on voices at the other end of random phone calls. This led to some interesting situations, but eventually TJ Hooker, and it was smooth sailin’ after that. He said what he learned was “Always keep yourself open to new possibilities”. That thought has served me in good stead since, especially since I’ve retired. You never know what’s going to come along.
So today was a special day for me and Kathy. Kathy’s been a space nut since John Glenn visited their Silver Lake Ohio house in a campaign swing. He was running for senate, and won.
Kathy’s kept her toe, and as much of her other body parts, in space as possible since then. She adapted her musculoskeletal research to space flight issues, received several grants from NASA to study effects of zero gravity on pregnant rats flown in the space shuttle, made the first cut in her application to the astronaut corps, got recruited to be one of NASAs chief scientists (space station ‘98-’00, human space flight ’00-’02), and served on several NASA committees since, including the Return to Flight Committee, convened to address the Columbia disaster. She acquired a master’s in lunar geology in ‘15 to bolster her space credentials. She’ll resign her appointment in the School of Kinesiology 7/1/21, but will retain her appointment as adjunct associate research scientist in aerospace engineering. Yes, I’m proud of her. The girl may make it to Mars yet.
So she didn’t flinch when I suggested we buy those Star Trek uniforms. Today seemed to be a good day to haul them out.
My tunic is a science officer’s uniform (Spock), custom made. Kathy’s belongs to the communications officer (Uhura) and is actually a short short dress, which looks great on her with those long long legs. Yes, we’re trekkies, hanging on anything about the original series, including the remakes. We don’t go to conventions or anything like that (see Galaxy Quest https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/), but welcome any chance to don our uniforms and pledge allegiance to the Federation.
The backdrop of a handsome Kirk is thanks to Canada Post. An issuance of stamps honoring classic Star Trek characters was announced from Vulcan, Alberta (yes, there is) in 2016 https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Canada_Post. Offerings included some side art, which I had to snap up. I’ll never mail a letter with Cap’n Kirk, but I can have him on my wall. He was to have been hung on my revamped NIB office wall, complete with the chance to tell the story about keeping open to possibilities, but they wanted me gone before that could happen. He sits against the wall in our living room, waiting for his chance to adorn amongst all the space pictures. When there, he’s right at home.
The day is mostly gone, but we raised a few toasts to Cap’n Kirk before dinner and several more during. We don’t know Mr. Shatner’s favorite meal or I would have cooked it (but you remember what Cap’n Kirk’s favorite drink was, don’t you? They were both illegal according to the Federation: Saurian Brandy or the dreaded Romulan Ale). We didn’t have either on hand, but thought he might have enjoyed our dinner. Mainly a throw together of left overs, it was based on capillina (angel hair) pasta cooked up in the pot liquor left over from our St. Paddy’s corned beef. When Kathy tasted it, she said all else was superfluous. But all else was pretty tasty: thin sliced tenderloin (frozen since ’03) and chunked garlic browned in dried chili prepped hot lard (yes, lard) followed by butter braised mushrooms to which I added the half cup remainder of last nights roasted peppers. It looked pretty in the wok.
Think the replicator could make that? It tasted even better than it looked, with a chunk of Zingerman’s sourdough on the side to push stuff around and a bottle of Killerman’s Run 2017 Shiraz (Penna Lane, Penwortham, South Africa) to wash it all down. But that’s not the bottle I asked her to bring up from the cellar! So now we’ll have to tackle a Hahn GSM 2019, a Grenache-Syrah-Mouvedre blend from Soledad California, in the Monterrey Valley. In the interim we’ll have some Nibbles dark chocolate from San Diego for dessert. Light. Should you wish to make the same, here’s the recipe:
Now tell me Captain Kirk wouldn’t have liked all that! What a hoot it would be to have him over for dinner! Mr. Shatner, you’ve been a part of our lives for way over half a century. Live long and prosper! I know that’s Spock’s, but has there ever been a better wish?
That was December 10, 1971, at Crisler Arena, packed for the John Sinclair Freedom Rally. Yes, he was sprung later that same month. Bill was playing lead guitar for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who stole the show on a bill that included Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Stevie Wonder and John & Yoko. Was there ever a band that was more fun? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8TeHA4UL_8.
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