A love letter to the world

My gratitude for the day is for the public library system. I recently read about a book I was really interested in: Four Seasons in Rome (2007) by Anthony Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015 for All the Light We Cannot See. It wasn't available through Libby, but they do have two copies in the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library system. I put a hold on it, and it was transferred to, and available for pickup the next day at, our local Central Library, where I exchanged it for The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay, which I had just finished.

 

The Closer

Lately, Mom has several times come up with a missing answer that cracks the last unsolved corner in one of the crossword puzzles Brad and I have been working. She even managed this on a Saturday Stumper. Luckily, Mom has been surprisingly humble about this. Not! 😆

 

 

In addition to writing braggadocious things trumpeting the one answer she got in the entire puzzle, Mom has started referring to herself as "The Closer." As in, "Have you guys gotten stuck yet? Hand it over to The Closer and I'll break it open for you." This is why Brad and I are especially happy when we solve all of the Stumper in one sitting.

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Pesto update

Mom has been using all the summer basil to make pesto left and right so I thought I should get this one posted sooner rather than later. This is just a minor tweak to the original pesto, from a post in which I lauded the virtues of making pesto in a mortar and pestle. It's still great that way, but this one is quick and easy and a little more flexible, providing for the use of just about any kind of nuts (pecans were surprisingly good!). If you want to make this pesto but serve it in the traditional Genovese way with some potato and beans, you can still follow the instructions for the rest of the recipe for Pasta al Pesto Ricco.

Cooking for one

I'm in the second of my multiple stints home alone this summer, so I had a chance to cook again this new recipe I found that makes one small portion of noodles right in your dinner bowl. Not to bury the lede, these may be the best noodles I've had. It's insane how good and easy these are, mixing the sauce right in the bowl you're going to eat out of and ready in under 15 minutes. They're good enough to make you look forward to being alone and cooking for yourself. This one goes straight to bold in the index of "Recipes."

Running and executive function

There are lots of studies showing that running improves executive function, which Psychology Today describes as

a set of cognitive processes and mental skills that help an individual plan, monitor, and successfully execute their goals. The “executive functions,” as they’re known, include attentional control, working memory, inhibition, and problem-solving, many of which are thought to originate in the brain’s prefrontal cortex.

For example, one Japanese study from 2019 found that, compared to brain function at rest, just 10 minutes of moderate-intensity running (50% of VO₂ Max) increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex and thereby significantly boosts both executive function (measured using the Stroop Color and Word Test) and mood, which is also controlled by the prefrontal cortex. The lead author has opined that "running may stimulate the prefrontal cortex more broadly to benefit mood and executive function than other forms of exercise that do not require as much coordination of weight-bearing activity, such as pedaling."

The big day

As you all know, we recently had a very big day here in Central Virginia. Yes, it was time again for the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library spring book sale. Wait, did something else important happen recently? 🤯 We'll cover that too, but I need some more time to process everything. In the meantime, here are the 22 books that $31 bought me at the book sale the week before last. "The Vulture" (aka Brad) has really turned the corner, as he ended up being the big winner this year, with lots of recent books that he put off buying new and ended up finding for $3 and $4 at the book sale. Go Brad!

 

From the Friday night members' pre-sale

Saturday afternoon's tally

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A flophouse in Duluth

When someone in our family catastrophizes (which is not all that infrequently), Brad thinks of Dan Harris in 10% Happier, whose catastrophizing always ended up with him in a "flophouse in Duluth." For example, if someone scored an assignment that Harris wanted while he was still working at ABC News, he would think the executive who made the assignments "dislikes me → My career is doomed → I'm going to end up in a flophouse in a Duluth." Or he noticed some thinning in the back of his basically full head of hair (Hello!) and imagined a future that looked like this: "Baldness → Unemployment → Flophouse in Duluth." I think this is a funny image to keep in mind when your catastrophizing gets out of hand to calm things down.

 

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Forty years too late

I recently received the latest issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine (Spring 2023), which is billed as “The Food Issue.” One of the stories is about Dharshan Munidasa, who got an engineering degree from Hopkins in 1994 but is now a chef and restaurateur best known for his Ministry of Crab restaurants (great name!). Munidasa’s recollection of the food offered at Hopkins’ Homewood campus in the early ’90s is that “You could eat it, but it was never interesting. It was mass-produced. Boring.” That’s actually a slight step up from what I’d say about the food we were served at Homewood a decade earlier. His reaction was similar to mine though, that is, “to eat well [given the crappy Hopkins dining hall food] he needed to teach himself to cook well.” Which is how I started making spaghetti alla carbonara for your Mom on a regular basis after we began dating.

 

Gilman Hall (Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Hopkins is apparently now seeking to change the food culture on campus. In his opening letter in the Food Issue, Hopkins president Ronald Daniels says that food “brings people together, expanding our tastes and inspiring us to greater creativity. It truly binds a community.” To that end, Hopkins has “spent the last year bringing all our dining operations in-house instead of contracting with an external partner,” like they did in my day. Now, Daniels writes, the improved “Hopkins dining experience should be a source of joy, comfort, and the feeling of home.” New offerings on campus will include Puerto Rican pernil, barbeque jackfruit, the new Director of Culinary Innovation’s favorite tandoori-style chicken, and even—oh, the irony—“house-made gelato.”

Spring book sale report, day one

Time again for one of our favorite events of the year, the first Friday evening of the biannual Friends of the Library book sale. This time around I found hardly anything that was actually on my list, but I still came away with some interesting finds that I wasn't looking for, or previously aware of in most cases, which is one of the best things about the book sale: being able to take some flyers on books you've never heard of for only $1 or $2. Here's my haul from day one:

This is what $21 buys you at the book sale

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B.A.R.F.

Among the many reasons you should be grateful for your dear old parents is that we didn't let Dylan participate in naming either of his siblings. I've been reading Give and Take (2013) by Adam Grant[1] ($2 at the Book Sale). He has a few pages in there about some really interesting research on the surprising effects your name can have on, among other things, your occupation and even your longevity.[2]

 

For example, if your first name is Dennis, you're almost twice as likely to become a dentist (Dennis the Dentist!) than someone with a similarly common name like Jerry or Walter. Another study showed that people with the surname Doctor are more likely to become doctors (Dr. Doctor!) than lawyers, while people with the last name Lawyer are more likely to become lawyers. This phenomenon even extends to medical subspecialties, with Raymonds being more likely to become radiologists (Raymond the Radiologist!) than dermatologists.

What's more interesting is that even just your initials can have a seemingly big effect. For example, one study showed that men with "positive" initials—such as A.C.E., J.O.Y., or V.I.P.—live about 4½ years longer on average, while men with "negative" initials—like B.U.M., D.I.E., or P.I.G.—die about 2.8 years younger (the effect is smaller in women). For some reason, the effect was much larger in professional baseball players, among whom players with "positive" initials like A.C.E. lived a mean of 13 years longer than players with neutral initials or "negative" initials like D.E.D.

Fast food, episode XI

We had some locally made packaged potato gnocchi while we were in Italy, which were really good. Mom liked them so much that she lugged some packages across the Atlantic to distribute to glutenous family members. Then I went to Trader Joe's after we got back and found some similar gnocchi—also a "product of Italy," though Joe doesn't say where exactly in Italy because his sourcing is such a big secret—which were almost, but not quite, as good as the stuff we bought in Italy.

 

Both products have a similar ingredient list, including being made primarily of potato flakes, which is the star ingredient in the Instant Mashed Potato Gnocchi that we like so well.

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We have a contender

For years, I've printed out Newsday's "Saturday Stumper" crossword puzzle and worked my way through it. Sometimes that only takes 20 or 30 minutes, sometimes it takes me days or even, on occasion, a few weeks. When Brad is here, we work it together, and it usually goes a lot quicker because we feed off each other's thoughts and answers. Plus, Brad is great at figuring out the long ones, sometimes with hardly any letters already filled in.

 

When we're stumped for a little bit, Mom always asks if we need her help, then she usually grabs the puzzle and looks at it for about 30 seconds before getting bored and saying she's "got nothing" and giving it back. Last week though, Mom had her all-time Saturday Stumper moment, when she found a few wrong letters, which helped her finish off the missing clues by herself. And, as you can imagine, she let us know about it! Check this out:

Hats off to Mom for her excellent puzzle work. Even so, I think the appropriate description was not "contender," but "pretender."

 

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Belated V Day: Plaisir d'amour

For obvious reasons, Valentine's Day dinner this year consisted of Mom and I eating in different rooms, on different floors. (Mom's text: "Happy fucking Valentine's Day.") While I was eating alone in Brad's room, I read a great review in the New Yorker by Hua Hsu of the Soul Music podcast that the BBC has been producing since 2000. It's a fabulous testament to the power of music, with each episode generally featuring a good mix of joyous and moving moments. The episodes on "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and "God Only Knows" are some real tear-jerkers.

 

Given the proximity to Valentine's Day, I was especially pleased to listen to the episode on "Plaisir d'amour" (the "pleasure of love"), a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (how many hyphens can you jam into one name?). Listen to Marianne Faithfull’s rendition of the song (featured in the Soul Music episode) and see if you can figure out why. Do you recognize the tune, before looking below the video? 

 

Sparking joy, episode IV

One of my latest dives into the psychological literature was Chatter, a 2021 book by Ethan Kross, a professor in the University of Michigan’s psychology department and its business school. To quote the subtitle, the book is about "the voice in our head, why it matters, and how to harness it." Throughout the book, Kross offers a variety of tools we can use to harness the voice in our head instead of letting it derail us. I've discussed some of the tools before, including getting out in nature and using "distanced self-talk," that is, talking to yourself in the second ("you") or third person ("Paul") to gain some psychological distance from your problems.

 

I'm happy to say that Kross also reports that there is a scientific basis for the joy sparkage that comes from some Marie Kondo-style decluttering. Researchers have found that ordering our surroundings creates "perceptions of control—the belief that we possess the ability to impact the world in ways we desire"—which ends up having all sorts of psychological benefits, including improved physical health and emotional well-being, better performance at work and school, and more satisfying interpersonal relationships. Wow, all that just from cleaning up your desk or getting the excess crap off the dump-zone surfaces in your house.

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Redundancy

Mom and I have enjoyed our empty nest for all of eight days since the pandemic hit in March, which was the total amount of time that JMU was able to hold onto Brad once school started in the fall. After Brad and Cass left the house for a few weeks, the first meal I made was a new tuna pasta (the fourth), with a new microwave chocolate mug cake (the fourth) for dessert. You are now undoubtedly thinking, what's with the old man, does he really need four recipes for tuna pasta and four recipes for microwave chocolate mug cake (not to mention the 4.5 recipes for banana bread)?

 

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More adventures in happiness

After finishing The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, I've moved onto The How of Happiness (2006) by Sonja Lyubomirsky, who is one of the leading researchers on the psychology of happiness/well-being. Lyubomirsky gave center stage in the book to a pie chart depicting that “50 percent of individual differences in happiness are governed by genes, 10 percent by life circumstances, and the remaining 40 percent by what we do and how we think—that is, our intentional activities and strategies." Last year, at a talk during the 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology (how cool is that?!), she backed off that statement a bit, saying that she regrets assigning hard numbers to those three factors, but she still emphasizes that all three exert "sizable influences" on well-being. The idea remains that even though there are genetic and circumstantial components to happiness, your "intentional activities and strategies" still play a big role in how happy you are.

The book lives up to its subtitle—"A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want"—as Lyubomirsky takes you through the science in laying out a step-by-step approach to finding the happiness-enhancing activities you should try to increase your own well-being. You start by taking a Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic, which helps you determine which of the 12 happiness activities she describes are the best fit for you. After that, you take the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire to get a baseline for your happiness level. Then you dive into one or more of the activities that are best fitted to you and re-test every month or so to see how you're progressing.

 

It sounds like some work, but the questionnaires don't take long, especially if you do the self-scoring ones online, and it's kinda fun once you get started. The Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic certainly rang true for me, as my top four happiness activities turned out to be:

1. Taking care of your body ("engaging in physical activity, meditating, and smiling and laughing");
2. Savoring life's joys ("paying close attention, taking delight, and replaying life's momentary pleasures and wonders, through thinking, writing, drawing, or sharing with another");
3. Doing more activities that truly engage you (increasing the number of challenging and absorbing "flow" experiences at home and work in which you lose yourself); and
   
4. Expressing gratitude (counting your blessings for what you have, either privately, in a journal or through contemplation, or to a close other).

Lyubomirsky includes a lot more detail about the activities, and more of them to try, than Achor did in The Happiness Advantage (which is a quicker, more entertaining read). But after a month or so of doing some of the activities from The Happiness Advantage, I already scored above average on the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, which correlates to "rather happy; pretty happy." That seems like a pretty amazing start for me.

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Green is good, episode IIa

Green is good, episode II was the episode covering how to make Genovese basil pesto, either the traditional way with a mortar and pestle or in the food processor. Since then, I've streamlined the process of making the pesto in a food processor, so I decided to post this recipe separately. These are the exact same quantities as in the original pesto. But the first recipe was for a classic Genovese pasta al pesto ricco with potatoes and green beans. Since those vegetables require some extra work, and my goal here was streamlining the whole process, I figured I'd also offer frozen peas as another vegetable option to make this version even quicker and easier than the original. Mom and Brad approved.

Streamlined Pesto with Pasta and Peas

Time: 25 minutes

For the pesto
43 grams/1½ ounces Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese, cut into chunks
14 grams/½ ounce grated pecorino Romano cheese, cut into chunks
1 garlic clove, unpeeled
30 grams (¼ cup) raw pine nuts
kosher or coarse sea salt
55 grams/2 ounces (2 cups tightly packed) Genovese basil, rinsed and patted dry
53 grams (¼ cup) extra-virgin olive oil, more if needed

For the pasta
1 to 2 tablespoons fine sea salt
1 pound dried pasta such as fusilli or penne
227 grams/8 ounces frozen peas
28 grams (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
freshly ground black pepper

    1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a rolling boil in a large pot over high heat.
    2. Place the chunks of Parmesan and pecorino Romano in the work bowl of a food processor or mini food processor (I used the mini food processor attachment for my immersion blender). Pulse and process until the cheese is finely ground. Transfer the cheese to a medium bowl.

    3. Nuke the garlic clove for 10 seconds in the microwave. (You can skip the microwave if you don't have one, but it makes it easier to peel and smash the garlic, as well as taming the flavor of the raw garlic some.) Slip the peel off, then flatten the garlic with the flat face of a chef's knife. Place the garlic, pine nuts, and a good pinch of salt in the now empty food processor. Pulse and process until finely ground to a paste, but don't go overboard and make pine-nut butter.

    4. Chop the basil roughly, then add to the food processor along with 27 grams (2 tablespoons) of the olive oil. Pulse and process until the basil is finely minced, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

    5. Transfer the basil-pine nut mixture to the medium bowl with the cheese. Pour in the remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Work everything together until the pesto has the consistency of creamed butter, adding a little more oil if needed. (If you are not using the pesto right away, transfer it to a glass jar and top with a thin film of olive oil. Store in the fridge for up to 2 days, or freeze.)

    6. When the water boils, add the fine sea salt and stir to dissolve. Add the pasta and stir a few times during the first minute or two to keep it from sticking. When the pasta is about 2 minutes short of al dente, scoop out a mugful of the pasta cooking water, then stir in the peas. When the pasta is al dente, drain the pasta and peas in a colander.
    7. Return the drained pasta and peas to the now empty pot. Add the pesto, butter, ½ cup of the pasta cooking water, and a grind or two of pepper. Stir vigorously until well combined, adding more pasta water as needed to achieve a creamy consistency. Serve promptly. Serves 4.

The principle of charity

I recently finished up my traversal of Jonathan's Haidt's oeuvre with The Coddling of the American Mind (which Haidt co-wrote with First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff). While I was disappointed that his latest work did not involve fart spray in any way, shape, or form, the book did cover a wide variety of interesting topics, including the philosophical "principle of charity." As Haidt and Lukianoff explain, the principle of charity holds that "one should interpret other people's statements in their best, most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible." In other words, we must give others "the benefit of the doubt, rather than trying to twist their words to support the ugliest possible implications."[1]

The principle of charity leapt out at me because it is, of course, the exact opposite of the family's infamous "evil intent" gene, which ascribes the worst possible motive to other people's words and actions. The evil intent gene is contrary not only to the principle of charity but to Mister Rogers' first, second, and third paths to ultimate success in this world, each of which is to "be kind." Or, to change the formula ever so slightly in the words of another great philosopher,[2] "be good."

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[1] The second quote is from Haidt's article "True Diversity Requires Generosity of Spirit" (Nov. 18, 2015).
[2] That’d be yours fucking truly, to flatter myself with the New York honorific.

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Walk in the woods

Keeping up with my self-prescribed nature cure, I had an eventful walk in Biscuit Run Friday morning. Less than two minutes onto the trail, I had a dog, off leash of course, come bounding up to me, barking and snarling malevolently. The owner insulted my intelligence by telling me he was "just playing," as if that's how friendly dogs play. The funny thing is the dog had worked himself up into a frenzy over little old geezer me while there were two much more interesting deer crossing the trail not 30 yards behind him.

Things improved considerably after that. First, I heard a Wood Thrush, my favorite among all the avian singers, busting out his "ee-oh-lay," with the flute-like trill at the end. Fun fact: Wood Thrush have a double voice box, which allows them to sing in harmony with themselves. (See if your professors can teach you that trick, Cass.)



The Wood Thrush's beautiful, haunting song was soon replaced by the loud drumming of a Pileated Woodpecker looking for food. While the Wood Thrush is much easier to hear than to see, you can't miss a Pileated Woodpecker, which is about 18 inches tall (about the size of a crow) with a flaming red crest.

"Pileated woodpecker in southern NH" by KenWilliamsPhoto is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

We usually walk by the pond without stopping, but there were a bunch of geese making a racket there on Friday so I went to check them out, too. You can see them in my picture if you look close:

Mom has said it seems like the pond is getting bigger, and I found out why by the water's edge—beaver at work:

I'll have to see if I can find their lodge on a future visit.

Last, but not least, some of the many mountain laurel in Biscuit Run are just starting to bloom. In the next week or so, the woods will be absolutely filled with them. It should be spectacular!

That's a pretty impressive collection of fauna and flora—including deer, Wood Thrush and other songbirds, Pileated Woodpecker, geese, beaver, and mountain laurel about to take over the woods—for a three-mile hike not 200 yards from our front door.

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Dick candles

I can’t seem to muster up the concentration it takes to get through a whole book lately, so I’ve been reading magazines mostly, including Cooks Illustrated, Cooks Country, and Bon Appétit through the RBdigital app (I'm always scouting out new recipes for you, my faithful readers), as well as my backlog of New Yorker issues handed down by a co-worker. In the February 3, 2020 issue of the New Yorker, I read Doreen St. Félix's review ("The Magical Thinking of 'The Goop Lab'") of "The Goop Lab" series on Netflix.

The show, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop company, sounds like serious drivel, but I couldn’t help but be impressed by the author's statement that Paltrow had just sold out of her "This Smells Like My Vagina" candles at $75 a pop. The packaging is stark—just black lettering, in all caps, of “THIS SMELLS LIKE MY VAGINA” on a plain white background. The description of the candles in Goop's online store is more high-brow, reminiscent of someone touting a fine wine: “With a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent, this candle is made with geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed to put us in mind of fantasy, seduction, and a sophisticated warmth.” Who can read that and not imagine what a better life we’d all have just by sniffing GP’s floral and citrus-scented vagina?

I am in awe of this concept. I can’t believe I’ve wasted my entire life working for the man when I could have been selling “This Smells Like My Penis” candles and other paraphernalia at outrageous prices. I could've retired years ago! (GP and her vagina are reportedly worth around $250 million.) Of course, I probably would’ve had to have brought a preexisting high Q Score (like you get from being a famous actor with a Barbie doll look and/or having two parents who are also famous actors) to the party to get my penile venture off the ground, but there must be some other way I can get this to work for me.

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