Breathtaking Morning and The Olympics
What? You think I am going to talk about the China 2008 Olympics, but you are wrong, wrong, WRONG. After slogging through two days of on-again-off-again drizzle, light showers, and downpours, the sky cleared late yesterday, the sun broke through, and this morning, we had a breathtaking view of the Olympic Mountains. You might even notice there is a trace of SNOW on the mountains.
You gotta dress in layers. One minute you will be shivering, the next, when the sun comes out, you will be sweating. None of that matters – once the sun comes out, this place is gorgeous.
Job and Islamic Tradition
One of the things I learned later in life, like when I lived in Doha, is that you (my Gulf and Moslem readers) have many of the same characters and stories in the Qur’an that we have in the Bible. Interesting, to me, the stories are not always exactly the same. Today’s reading in our lectionary (Old Testament) is from Job (you call him Ayoub, I think.)
First – if you read this, will you tell me if the story in Islam is similar to our story – that Satan is allowed to torment Job, because God believes him to be a faithful servant who will not turn away from him in times of hardship? Satan believes he can demonstrate that Job will be faithless?
Second – why is Satan called “the accuser?” I know Arabic is very close to the old Aramaic; is Satan always called Sheitan? Do you have other names for Satan? (These are not rhetorical questions; these are things I really don’t know) For example, Satan, in our tradition, is called The Father of Lies, The Great Deceiver, etc. But I don’t understand him being called The Accuser.
Third, toward the end of this reading his wife says essentially, give it up, Job, curse God and die. But the little asterisk says “bless”. This is a great puzzlement to me – a curse is the absolute 180° opposite of a blessing, I think. And then again, sometimes what appears to be a curse can be a blessing, and what appears to be a blessing can end up really being a curse. I just don’t understand why, in this context, the word curse could also mean bless? Do you?
Job 2:1-13
2 One day the heavenly beings* came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan (*Heb the accuser) also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 2 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan* answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ 3 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’ 4 Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives.* 5But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.’ 6 The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’
7 So Satan* went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8Job* took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
9 Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse* (bless) God, and die.’ 10 But he said to her, ‘You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. 13 They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
High Schoolers Find Trumped Up Fish in Sushi
This is a great story; you can read the whole article at The New York Times. High school students, listening to a dad talking about DNA coding, wondered if sushi served in New York was what it was labled. They took samples, examined just one gene, and found that a lot of the fish was marketed as much more select than it really was. Don’t you just love it? These kids have made the news!
Fish Tale Has DNA Hook: Students Find Bad Labels
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 21, 2008
Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.
In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.
They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.
What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.
Read the entire article HERE.
Daily Odds and Ends
This cat was found as a kitten; he’d been hit by a car. The man who found him paid $1400 to get him well again. Now he had a home where he is happy, has special furniture just for him, and a life where he is treasured. His name is Lucky. He looks crabby, but he is a sweetheart:
Lucky lives next door to an Ethiopian Grocery store:
In an antique store, I found this unique display:
I’m crazy about old silver, and these pieces knocked my socks off. I am guessing it is old hotel silver – I didn’t ask.
I talked my military-wife-friend into going back to Tai-Ho’s and this time we tried their famous noodle soup with meat and chinese pickles. It is to die for!
Mom called as we were saying goodbye to say that if I was anywhere near the coast, there was going to be a fabulous sunset with magnificent clouds:
Building 7 Collapse Solved, No Mystery
Feds Say They’ve Solved 9/11 Mystery
By DEVLIN BARRETT, AP
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (Aug. 21) – Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.
The 47-story trapezoid-shaped building sat north of the World Trade Center towers, across Vesey Street in lower Manhattan. On Sept. 11, it was set on fire by falling debris from the burning towers, but skeptics have long argued that fire and debris alone should not have brought down such a big steel-and-concrete structure.
Federal investigators said Thursday they have resolved a lingering question from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: What caused World Trade Center 7 to collapse? They determined the building, which sat north of the World Trade Center towers, was brought down by fire started by debris from the twin towers.
Scientists with the National Institute of Standards and Technology say their three-year investigation of the collapse determined the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a skyscraper.
“The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team.
Investigators also concluded that the collapse of the nearby towers broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water.
The building has been the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories for the last seven years, partly because the collapse occurred about seven hours after the twin towers came down. That fueled suspicion that someone intentionally blew up the building in a controlled demolition.
Critics like Mike Berger of the group 9/11 Truth said he wasn’t buying the government’s explanation.
“Their explanation simply isn’t sufficient. We’re being lied to,” he said, arguing that there is other evidence suggesting explosives were used on the building.
Sunder said his team investigated the possibility that an explosion inside the building brought it down, but found there was no large boom or other noise that would have occurred with such a detonation. Investigators also created a giant computer model of the collapse, based partly on news footage from CBS News, that they say shows internal column failure brought down the building.
Investigators also ruled out the possibility that the collapse was caused by fires from a substantial amount of diesel fuel that was stored in the building, most of it for generators for the city’s emergency operations command center.
The 77-page report concluded that the fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure.
“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” said Sunder.
The NIST investigators issued more than a dozen building recommendations as a result of their inquiry, most of which repeat earlier recommendations from their investigation into the collapse of the two large towers.
In both instances, investigators concluded that extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the buildings until the entire structure succumbed.
The recommendations include building skyscrapers with stronger connections and framing systems to resist the effects of thermal expansion, and structural systems designed to prevent damage to one part of a building from spreading to other parts.
A spokeswoman for the leaseholder of the World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein, praised the government’s work.
“Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day,” said Silverstein spokeswoman Dara McQuillen.
In discussing the findings, the investigator Sunder acknowledged that some may still not be convinced, but insisted the science behind their findings is “incredibly conclusive.”
“The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said,” he said, adding: “The obvious stares you in the face.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
Everett Marina Park
This weekend there was an Arts Fest in the Everett Marina Park, drawing people from all over the area, as there were a lot of hands-on demonstrations and artists who encourage people to try developing a new skill. I saw this fabulous sculpture in the Marina Park:
I love it because it looks like a whale, playing in the surf. It is made of like seven different slices of (wood?) (metal) bolted together, so that if you look from one end, all you see is flat slices, but the sculpture seems to move as you move around it. So creative!
All in One Day
Life is funny, in Kuwait, you are just getting up, brushing your teeth, getting ready to head for work, knowing tonight is date night and tomorrow you sleep in. I’m in my jammies, lying in bed with my computer, watching old Law and Order’s on TNT (sometimes the Olympics just get boring) and winding down, getting ready to call it a day.
And what a day! My long time Army-wife friend and I went out playing – picked up lunch at Ivar’s and took it over to the park to eat, where we found a whole flock of new friends:
This guy was persistent – after we ate our fish, we threw him the fries:
We looked at a house for sale – great bones, significant view, lousy location:
The day was warm, but there was a persistent wind, and at one point, we drove home from the crowded malls in a driving rain. Everywhere, for the next three hours, people were saying “this is October weather, not August weather!”
A great night for Chinese food. T&T’s Seafood is SO Chinese that there aren’t that many things on the menu I am comfortable ordering, and I fly close to the edge of the envelope when exploring Chinese food. I ordered Hot and Sour Soup, Green Beans with shaved meat, and Prawns with Honeyed Pecans. I sat with all the other take-out people waiting for their orders – it’s truly that kind of night. Everyone is talking about the weather. They don’t do a lot of delivery in Seattle; mostly you have to go pick it up yourself:
It was pouring when I went in – clearing when I came out:
Heading toward the coast:
After dinner, I drove down to surfside to take a sunset photo with these wonderful clouds:
Colors and Localities
One of the things we joke about, AdventureMan and I, when we come back to the Seattle area, is that all the houses are grey. Some might look brown, but it is a very grey brown. Some might look green, but it is a very grey kind of green. Some houses are purely grey – maybe they have white trim, but they are very very grey. An occasional truly brown house sticks out, anything not toned down by grey sticks out. And oh! now and then someone with a Mediterranean soul will build a pink or terra cotta house with a red tile roof and people will say “Oh! Look at that! They must not be from around here!”
Yesterday, I was in one of my most favorite places, Home Depot, wandering around looking at what the contracters are putting in the newest houses.
“High rise toilets!” I exclaimed to AdventureMan, who was on the phone with me. “For people who are older, and don’t have the strength in their legs to lower themselves too far!”
I was looking to see what was available in small bathtubs, because I love a hot bath on a cold day, and I want a deeper, smaller tub in which I can lean back with a good book, not one of these huge tubs that take all day to fill. I was looking at shower apparatus; I am thinking one day I want to go the European way with those wall flash-heaters that give you hot water when you need it and don’t keep heating it all day when you don’t.
And then I saw the carpet samples. I just had to laugh. When we lived in Florida, I loved walking into the model homes, with their seafoam green carpets, or even a mellow shade of tropical pink. Everything looked so welcoming and laid back.
In the Pacific Northwest, people choose from shades of sand. I never knew there could be so much variation on beige, which is somewhere between white and brown:
To those of you who say that sand isn’t as dark as the darkest brown swatches of carpet, I can only say you have never walked along a Pacific Northwest Beach on a dark and stormy day. Believe me, sand can be very very dark.
Long Way Gone in PB
Just a quick note to say that if you have been waiting to read Long Way Gone in paperback, it is now on the shelves.
Tai-ho’s in Kenmore, WA
“If she didn’t have a refrigerator, Intlxpatr (only she calls me by my real name), what did she do about laundry and diapers when you came along?”
I just looked at her stupidly. That had never occurred to me.
“I remember our next door neighbors had a barrel-shaped washing machine with a hand cranked wringer,” I responded, “but I think by that point my Mom had a more modern washing machine. I don’t know what she was using when I was born.”
Then, over noodles at Tai-Ho’s, where you watch the noodle-maker man in a specially built window, surrounded by Chinese, Chinese-Americans and Chinese-food lovers, we reminisced about our own babies, and laundry services. We were mothers of the hip generation, back-to-nature, and for eco reasons, we used a diaper service, which was considered much more earth-friendly.
“Oh! The smell of that diaper pail!” I groaned. We both moved on to Pampers after a few months with the soiled diaper smell.
We were rescued from any further contemplation of those pungent smells by the arrival of a delicious Hot and Sour Soup, a big bowl, which we divided, followed quickly by the Green Beans with Meat:
And then – one of the specialities of the house, the Seafood Basket, which is served in a basket of those noodles we saw the noodle-maker-guy making, filled with delectable scallops, shrimp, fish, fresh steamed crispy broccoli and water chestnuts, covered with a foam of egg whites – magnificent.
My friend had recommended the Green Beans, but she didn’t know about the Seafood Basket – we just ordered it to see what it was like. After it came, we saw other diners asking the waitress about it and several more came out of the kitchen. It was DELICIOUS.
Tai-Ho Restaurant
http://www.taihorestaurant.com
6312 NE Bothell Way
Kenmore, WA 98028
(425) 485-4020
If you are coming from Kuwait – or elsewhere – and want to eat like a local, you want Tai-Ho’s. It is purely wonderful.
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