nohats.com

E. and I are back from Tennessee; we had a great time visiting folks. My wings ended up winning the competition–but so did my brother’s. Folks were very diplomatic and refused to decide, but the recipes were very different. Mine were much saucier; my only regret was that I listened to certain meek-tongued family members who pronounced even my mildest sauce attempt to be too hot. I made two batches, which I originally pegged as a 1-alarm and a 3-alarm, but after remixing the sauce I called the batches 1/2 alarm and 2 alarm. After tasting the final product, I have to call them 0 alarm and 1 alarm. Alert to family: next time I make wings, I show no mercy for the weak. Wasn’t Nietzsche talking about Buffalo wings when he wrote “Was uns nicht umbringt, macht uns stärker?”

Our last night was marked by a hayride for kids. Here is E. learning to drive the tractor (c. 1953 Allis-Chalmers WD-45):

E. and I have spent the last week on the road. We brought our computers and a slew of readings, but in addition to schoolwork we spent time with her folks in North Carolina–including time at the lake–before coming to West Tennessee. I’ve been doing some repair work on the porch of Oak Hill, the historic Maclin farmhouse. Over the years the house has seen numerous repairs; this time, the left eaves of the porch were beginning to sag and the roof above them had obviously been leaking. I removed the shingles, took out and replaced all the old wood, and recovered the roof with new tar paper, flashing, and shingles. Tomorrow my folks are having their annual “June Party,” and my brother S. and I are planning a wing cook-off. He makes “Italian chicken wings,” while mine are a more traditional Buffalo wing style, though with a Parmesan peppercorn dipping sauce in place of the traditional bleu cheese. My wing recipe has already won one contest: it is on E.’s frequent craving list. Not sure if that means the baby will like spicy food or not–time will tell.

E. and I went to the Georgia Renaissance Festival yesterday, to celebrate the men and women who have participated in countless jousts through the ages. As usual, there were vendors of historic-looking wares, horses, people in costume, and food. We had a great time, and were smart enough to have a refillable water bottle to avoid paying the $2.50 they charge for a 16-ounce bottle.

On the note of expensive liquids, gasoline is still one of the cheapest liquids you can buy: cheaper than milk by the gallon, cheaper than water by the 16-ounce bottle, cheaper than most sodas in cans. it was expensive to drive to the Ren Fest, though–moreso than usual. E. and I have definitely cut out excess driving, and we didn’t drive much to begin with. Now, I’m reading online that OPEC nations may have drastically overstated their oil reserves. I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. This just reinforces my (and others’) conclusion that we have passed the critical point. Advice to friends and family: imagine a world with $10/gallon gasoline–if your job or lifestyle would be hurt by that price increase, be thinking of a “plan B.”

On a happier note, E. is percolating nicely and everything with Baby Unit X seems to be on track. We went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago and found out that it is going to be a girl! More news as it develops.

Week before last, I was in NYC for a conference at the American Museum of Natural History. The conference was on “Sustaining Biological and Cultural Diversity in a Changing World” and brought together biologists, ecologists, anthropologists, geographers, and others. While there, I led a discussion on the study of institutional controls within organizations.

While in town, I had a chance to catch up with friends T. and E. and kids, who let me stay at their place, as well as folks at the Aikido dojo in Brooklyn. I practiced at the dojo on Wednesday night, and it is good to know that I haven’t completely fallen out of shape. All the same, I’m kicking the running up a notch now that warmer weather has arrived.

Speaking of warmer weather, E. and I spent some of last week in the garden planting, repotting, and moving things around for Spring–just in time for the most recent batch of cold weather. For my few readers who still don’t acknowledge human-induced global climate change, this cold snap doesn’t disprove anything: global climate change is measured in probabilistic terms, so a few cold days here and there don’t change the general trend. On a related note, Gourmet Magazine has an article on the Farm Bill that is interesting reading for anyone concerned with food and/or the environment. Check it out.

Enter the Nohats YouTube Contest!

For full details, see this page.

After uploading your entry to YouTube, please post the URL as a reply to this blog entry.

Since today is the last day of March and I have not posted in a while, I thought I probably should. Also various people have been bugging me about the lack of activity on this weblog. You know who you are.

I spent last week in scenic west Tennessee with E.; we were in the area for the annual Society for Applied Anthropology conference, which was in Memphis this year. J. from UGA and I co-hosted a lunchtime roundtable discussion on Barbecue, appropriately entitled “The Raw and the Slow-Cooked.” For those not in the know, this is a play on the title of a famous anthropological work by Claude Levi-Strauss. The session was held at the famous Rendezvous restaurant in Memphis, and was attended by notable anthropologists from around the country, as well as J.’s folks, my mom, and E. (who I suppose also counts as a notable anthropologist). On Saturday, while my folks were at the NCAA tournament in Houston, we hosted a wild party, complete with barbecue, beer, and live music. M. and C. and Ch. from Covington also showed up. For conference goers, this turned into an overnighter with a full breakfast in the morning before people returned to Athens.

On a related note, for those who have not heard, E. and I are expecting a baby in mid-September. For now, we are tentatively referring to her or him as “The Tzar,” who in this case is the chief of the prenatal colonial regime. More details on that news as it unfolds.

When I lived in Brooklyn, my friend P. and I developed the idea of the Winter Bar. There was also a parallel idea of the Summer Bar, but the Winter Bar is what sticks in my mind. Winters in New York can be brutal (by Georgia standards), and a Winter Bar serves a number of specific purposes. A Winter Bar should be within easy walking distance of home, since one may be returning late in cold, wet, and drunk conditions. A winter bar (or summer bar) should have a juke box with a good music selection. The drinks should be generously poured, and should include draught Guiness (the preferred winter beer) and shots of Jameson and Patron. In Brooklyn, our winter bar was the B61 Bar, on Columbia at DeGraw. The music ranged from the Dead Kennedys and The Smiths to Johnny Cash, and the drinks were always on the spot. And, if we went on a weeknight, it was always fairly empty.

I’ve been looking for a Winter Bar in Athens, and it is harder for a couple of reasons. One, driving is almost a requirement for getting to the bars, and limits consumption. Two, the dark, eclectic, good-beer-serving bar I like has been hard to find. Manhattan is a candidate, but it is more of a Summer Bar to me, despite their mulled wine. E. and I went to the Melting Point on Wednesday, and they had great live music–but the Winter Bar is not a club. Then, last night we went to a new bar–Trappeze–with a 14 page beer list. It is a strong candidate–I’ll do some more research soon and let you all know if this could be a winner.

I really do try to stay away from political posts on this site. That said, a few words; please feel free to circulate.

First of all, congratulations to Hillary Clinton for her turnaround victory in New Hampshire. She ran a good campaign, and certainly can’t be counted out. That said, I’m marginally ticked off at Senator Clinton. During her victory speech, she thanked all of her competing Democratic candidates, with the exception of Mike Gravel. Was this an oversight? Does she have a grudge against Gravel? And a better question: why do I seem to be the only one who noticed? I reviewed the speech on YouTube; she definitely snubbed Gravel. Ms. Clinton is certainly free to say whatever she wants in her speech, but when Gravel is complaining that the media is not including him in coverage, I find it troublesome that none of the pundits picked up on this slight. Someone needs to ask for an apology from the Clinton team.

I tried posting comments on CNN and MSNBC’s blogs, but my posts apparently didn’t get through. Based on the lack of coverage, I have come to the following conclusion: Gravel is a Superhero, with the power to cloud people’s minds and become invisible at will. Imagine what he could do as President! He could avert wars, settle disputes of all sizes, stop criminals, and usher in an era of peace and prosperity. And those are only the powers we know about! If he picked Dennis Kucinich, who has mastery of space-time in his pockets, as his sidekick (or Vice President) the pair could solve environmental problems, fix health care, and solve pretty much any other problem that might come up. I’m sure that Gravel has a weakness–like the color yellow or Kryptonite–but it should only take a small part of our GNP to keep him protected. Since he has the power to cloud our minds, we would have the satisfaction of thinking that we had done it ourselves. And to think–if Hillary Clinton had remembered to acknowledge him, we might never have known.

If you are reading this, you probably know that I have a weblog. I also have a Myspace page, another Myspace page that I maintain for the band, and a Facebook page. Lately, I’ve been getting lots more activity on my Facebook page in particular. Part of that is my fault–I saw that many of my friends were on Facebook, and I added them as friends through the Facebook system. Anyhow, now I have my email to check every day, plus my Facebook profile, plus my Myspace page, if I want to be thorough. Given all that, I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical from updating all those other pages. I’m not going to completely abstain from checking in there, but if you have a message for me don’t count on it reaching me any time soon (or getting a reply) if you send it through Facebook. Someone should invent a meta-networking site that condenses all of the other social network stuff into one page…