Daily Office: Wednesday
¶ Matins: On her train ride to Albany, Kathleen missed Sing-Sing. I told her to keep her eyes peeled, but the windows were so dirty that she was glad that she hadn’t brought a camera.
¶ Tierce: RACE STILL A PROBLEM IN US, according to American Presidential Campaign. Barack Obama dissociates himself from Rev Jeremiah Wright. (The New York Times, Front Page.)
¶ Vespers: Alone for dinner tonight, I’m tempted to make a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. Here’s a recipe, in case anyone should need such a thing.
¶ Compline: If I’ve got an excuse for not writing (much less posting) this week’s Book Review review until the tail end of Wednesday, I don’t know what it is.
Oremus…
§ Matins. And then there was the difficulty of placing Ossining. How can you tell, in a speeding train, that you’re in Ossining? For my part, I thought that Sing-Sing was in Yonkers, which is not only illiterate but proof that a Westchester upbringing can be incredibly provincial. Sing-Sing, Yonkers, and all the houses that I lived in to the age of twenty are in Westchester County, but even the most rabid patriots of Luxembourg cannot be more insular than the good ratepayers of Bronxville. Yonkers, Ossining… it’s all on the wrong side of the Bronx River — the slimmest of creeks. The Mighty Hudson? No more than a nearby estuary.  Â
§ Tierce. My aunt in New Hampshire, who wants more than anything for Mr Obama to win the general election in November, fears that he may now not even get the Democratic Party nomination. “Fatal” was her word for the damage inflicted by Rev Wright, spurned demagogic mentor of the first person of color to run seriously for the Executive Office. Sage political commentators would add that the wound was aggravated by Mr Obama’s inexperienced dithering — by his trying to heal the rift with his pastor by being respectful and (that most crippling of American weaknesses) nice. However you play haruspex, however, it’s obvious that there wouldn’t be a problem here if Americans, particularly toward the lower middling rungs of the socio-economic ladder, were truly comfortable with racial differences. For ten years or so, pop culture has been feeding us a pipe dream of grousing but, end-of-episode, movingly soluble racial confrontations. We ought to recognize this fantasy for what it is.
It’s vile, of course, of the Clintons to take advantage of this context, which rather makes the entire nation look like Boston during the ugly days of busing, but I’m afraid that I have to forgive them, at least for so long as they remain Democrats. For me, this election is all about Federal judges and Federal agencies, and the long slog of uprooting the weeds of the House of Reagan Bush. As I’ve said before, I’d vote for Alfred E Neuman if he were a Democrat — and if it weren’t for the Twenty-Second Amendment. Â
§ Vespers. Does the idea of peanut butter and bacon on toast gross you out? It does many people. I grew up on it, though, and I think it’s an extraordinarily successful combination. Too much of a good thing, almost. I can’t imagine why anyone would need a recipe, though. You take toast, slather on peanut butter, and lay on strips of bacon. It’s all done “to taste” — the way you like it. Sometimes, for example, microwaved bacon is acceptable; at other times, it’s just not. Big difference in timing, there. You don’t cook bacon on the stove, not if you’re cooking it properly; you render it. That’s a kind of melting.
As for tonight, though, I’m drawn to another member of the pig-tummy family: pancetta. I foresee a big bowl of spaghetti alla carbonara. Now, that you might want a recipe for.
§ Compline. Tonight, I hope to finish Joshua Heskin’s Matrimony. It made something of a big noise last year, and someone kindly gave me a copy. Only a chaotician could tell you how I came to pull it from The Stack of unread books. I hope to write it up tomorrow, briefly. It has been a while since I added to Portico‘s stock of book notes.