061409

This week I met up with some of my oldest friends, my best friends, whom I haven't seen in almost 20 years. I couldn't possibly express how fantastic it is to be home again. I was about to curl up and die in Portland, smothered in and strangled by utter solitude. Lo and behold, I've come alive again!

*Index*

Adam's Index

Degree to which MS hampers my ability to be vegan: 100%

Speed with which I would switch back to being a vegan if I (suddenly, miraculously) didn't have MS or if they came out with a cure: immediate

Number of reasons for this choice: countless but including social (disparity between the wealthy world and the poor), economic (ditto and it takes 10 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of meat, that's 10 pounds of food taken from the plates of the world's starving; so meat eating is drastically inefficient and the wrong moral choice in economic terms), philosophical (see above and I'm a Taoist with the morals of a Buddhist), scientific/ecological (inefficiency is a scientist's arch enemy), environmental (untold millions of acres of arable land has been destroyed to make way for cattle and other hoofed beasts), and many more

Effect the choice to be an omnivore has on me: sobering

Degree to which my quality of life is better as an carnivore: 1,000%

Amount of dairy I consume: extremely little

Amount by which dairy is worse for your body than meat: many times

Ranking in the world of the number of Americans with osteoporosis: top three, along with the Swedish and the Alaskan Inuit

Causal relationship between dairy consumption and osteoporosis: incontrovertible

Favorite vegan cuisine: south Indian (a cuisine that's been around for a couple of thousand years)

*Top*

Top five omnivorous dishes:

5. Sausage and ricotta calzone

4. Chicken wings

3. A decent hamburger done medium rare

2. Two eggs over medium with bacon, rye toast, and hashbrowns

1. The short ribs at Rosa Mexicana on the corner, a five star restaurant with a well deserved reputation and very high prices

*Quotations*

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

--Socrates

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

--Voltaire

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

--George Bernard Shaw

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold it would be a merrier world.

--JRR Tolkien

Red meat is _not_ bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!

--Tommy Smothers

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.

--Buddy Hackett

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

--Calvin Trillin

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

--Mark Twain

There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

--Gandhi

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

--Einstein

*Politics*

By Maureen Dowd for The New York Times:

"Can The One have fun?

"The fun police are patrolling Pennsylvania Avenue. Given the serious times, the chatter goes, should Barack Obama be allowed to enjoy date night with Michelle in New York, sightseeing in Paris, golf outings in D.C., not to mention doing a promotion for Conan O'Brien and a video cameo for Stephen Colbert's first comedy show from Iraq? With two wars and G.M. in bankruptcy proceedings, shouldn’t the president be glued to the grindstone, emulating W.'s gravity when he sacrificed golf in 2003 as the Iraq insurgency spread? "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," the former president explained later. "I think, you know, playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

"Actually, what sends the wrong signal is going to war with a phony justification, inadequate troop levels, insufficient armor, an inept Defense secretary and an inability to admit for years, deadly ones, that you needed counterinsurgency experts. The right signal is Michelle and her daughters being charming ambassadors, “gobsmacking” the town, as a British tabloid put it, by scarfing down fish and chips at a London pub for £7.95 (about $13), like regular tourists. As a taxpayer, I am most happy to contribute to domestic and international date nights. As Arthur Schlesinger noted in his diaries, the White House tends to drive its occupants nuts. So some respite from the pressure is clearly a healthy thing. Not as much respite as W. took, bicycling and vacationing through all the disasters that President Obama is now stuck fixing--spending a total of 490 days in the tumbleweed isolation of Crawford and rarely deigning to sightsee as he traveled the world.

"Some White House officials fretted that the Obamas' Marine One and Gulfstream magic-carpet ride to dinner in Greenwich Village and a play on Broadway was too showy. Others thought it helped show a softer side of the often dispassionate Obama. Interestingly, Dr. No, Dick Cheney, declined to tut-tut with other Republicans, saying "I don’t know why not," when he was asked about the propriety of the president's getaway to Broadway. A far more mature response than Senator Chuck Grassley's nit-twit tweets grumbling about the president urging progress on health care "while u sightseeing in Paris." I loved the "Pretty Woman" romance of the New York tableau, the president, who had not lived an entitled life where he could afford such lavish gestures, throwing off his tie and whisking his wife, in a flirty black cocktail dress, to sip martinis in Manhattan, as Sasha hung over a White House balcony and called out goodbye.

"When the president and first lady walked to their seats in the Belasco for "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," the theater-goers went nuts. And why not? What a relief to have an urbane, cultivated, curious president who's out and about, engaged in the world. Not dangerously detached, as W. was, or darkly stewing like Cheney. Not hanging with the Rat Pack like J.F.K. or getting bored and up to mischief like Bill Clinton. It was lame of critics on Capitol Hill to carp that the Obamas could have taken in a play in D.C. I'm a native, but it's not the same. And it's nice to see them tending to their marriage. According to Richard Wolffe in "Renegade," his new book about the Obama campaign, it has taken effort to get the relationship this strong.

""She hated the failed race for Congress in 2000, and their marriage was strained by the time their youngest daughter, Sasha, was born a year later," Wolffe writes. "There was little conversation and even less romance. She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful. Even as he ran for the United States Senate in 2004, she still harbored very mixed feelings about her husband’s love of politics. ... So she had played no part in Barack’s previous contests and preferred to keep her distance." Wolffe limns what those of us who traveled with Obama could see: He was often grumpy on the campaign. He missed his family. He disdained what he saw as superficial, point-scoring conventions of politics, like debates and macho put-downs and public noshing. The Chicago smarty-pants was a Michael Jordan clutch player who grew bored if he was not challenged.

"Being president, by contrast, suits him much better. He has not lapsed into his old ambivalence. He is intellectually engaged by sculpting history. The trellis of hideous problems is a challenge that lures him to be powerfully concentrated. And, as his aides say, he loves living above the family store. Mixing play with intense work is not only a good mental health strategy; it's a good way to show the world that American confidence and cool--and Cary Grant romantic flair--still thrive. Date on and tee it up, Mr. President. It's O.K. if they're teed off.

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz