Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 44

On this Veterans' Day

take a moment and thank someone who served in our armed forces.  Maybe think also about the system of government we enjoy and what protecting that system has cost many vets.

Then take a deep breath and remind yourself that the system is strong and robust, stronger and more robust than any one person.

Leonard Cohen, R.I.P.

Well, this week delivered another fine blow:  Leonard Cohen is dead.  He was 82, so he had a reasonably long life, but I have to tell you that from where I stand right now, that's just not enough years--not for him, not for me, not for anyone.

At the risk of repeating everyone else, I'm putting here a relatively recent performance of his brilliant song, "Hallelujah."



Damn, another legend passes.  2016 has been brutal for musicians.

Their work stands, though they are gone.

This song will always touch me.

We will not see Leonard Cohen's like again soon.

It's going to take me some time

to get over my embarrassment and outrage at being a member of the group--white men--that more than any other went for Trump in this election.  I don't care if you are dissatisfied with business as usual, or you want more opportunities, or you dislike the current administration; there's simply no acceptable excuse for voting for a racist, sexist candidate.

I did not vote for Trump, and I am sad and pissed that I am a member of a group that overwhelmingly did.

The greatest lesson I learned from this election

I'm writing this a bit after eleven p.m. here in Portland, Oregon, so it's after two a.m. back home.  As of this moment, though no news agency (to my knowledge) has yet called the election, it looks extremely likely that Trump will be the next President of the United States.

I am beyond sad and angry at that thought.

I am also amazed.  This election has taught me that a great many of my fellow Americans, apparently the majority of them, think so differently from the way I do that I do not understand them at all.  I suppose I would be wise to remember this fact going forward.

That lesson will be true even if Clinton squeaks out a victory.

For now, I'm going to work a bit more, check the election news once more, and then crash.

Should the trend continue and Trump win, I hope I will be able to be as gracious a loser as I would have asked Trump's supporters to be.

Two bits of (almost entirely non-partisan) election-day advice

You're probably tired of me writing about the election, but it's mighty damn important, so I'm going to do one last pre-election post.  I want to share two thoughts.

First, vote.  Yes, I'm clearly arguing for and voted for Hillary Clinton (that was the end of the partisan bit), but no matter whom you choose, I want you to vote.  And not just for President, either; no, I want you to vote for all the offices up for election.  Do a little research--voting guides of all persuasions are readily available online--and then vote.  I'd like this--and every--election to represent the will of the people.

Next, consider picking up a little safety cake.  The idea behind safety cake, a concept my family has embraced for some time now (and just possibly invented), is that when you're worried about a momentous event, you pick up (or bake) some delicious cake.  If the event goes the way you want, you celebrate with...cake!  If the event goes against your wishes, you console yourself with...cake!  Either way, you have cake.

With any luck at all, in 30 hours or less we will know the election results--and we'll all be celebrating or consoling ourselves with delicious safety cake.

Doctor Strange

Let's start with the bottom line:  I very much enjoyed this movie, and I definitely recommend it.  It provides everything you hope for in a Marvel superhero movie, including more humor than I had expected.  Benedict Cumberbatch turns in as strong a performance as you would hope, never breaking character and always burning with his usual intensity.  All of the other leads--Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel MacAdams, and Tilda Swinton--also deliver good performances.

I never looked away, I was never bored, and I had a good time.  You can't ask for much more than that.

Having said that, the film has one big structural flaw:  it rushes to its ending and in the process skips what should have been a significant amount of improvement in the powers and character of Stephen Strange.  I don't want to spoil any of the plot, so I'll say only that from the first encounter between Strange and the antagonist, the film moves too swiftly and skips parts I would very much like to have seen.  It feels almost as if the first cut ran two and a half hours, so someone said, "Hey, this is a minor character, so trim back to two hours."  If that longer version exists, I'd really like to see it.

If you're a fan of the Marvel superhero films, or if you just want a fun movie with a lot of action and special effects, go see Doctor Strange.

The overdue North Carolina State Fair food report

Going to the North Carolina State Fair each year is a long-time family tradition.  For most of that time, a key goal of the trip has been to try as many of the new and unusual foods as possible.  The challenge was always that eating more than a couple of them was both a challenge and a way to gain a ton of weight in a hurry.  A few years back, I devised a strategy for tasting the weird foods and not gaining weight, too:  eating only one (or at most two) bites of each.  To make this plan work, you need either to be willing to throw out a lot of food or to have a group willing to join you in the quest for strange delights.

Fortunately, our State Fair group is willing to help me.

We always enter from the same gate, so I began with my traditional first food:  a pretzel dog.

Click an image to see a larger version.
It was as warm, greasy, and delicious as always.

Sarah begins her feasting with a butter-and-salt pretzel from the same vendor, and she is always willing to let me have a bite.


Umm, good.

Scott opted to start with a blooming onion, and he also let me try a piece.


Greasy and hot and tasty, oh yeah.

Another early dish was the fried cheese.


Hot and gooey and tasty, it was everything fried cheese should be.

Up to this point, we had been following tradition and eating dishes that, while definitely bad for you, were not really Fair food.

The fried Oreos, covered in powdered sugar, took us squarely into the land of unusual foods.


Though you're bound to wear the sugar if you try these, they are surprisingly good little rascals, with the strong Oreo flavor complemented by the dough and sugar.

Continuing in the vein of things you shouldn't eat more than once a year--and maybe not then--we went for the Krispy Kreme donut bacon cheese burger.


This fat and sugar bomb is tastier than you would expect--though I knew that before my first bite, because I've tried it before.

Next up was one of the few fails of the Fair foods:  the fried Klondike bar.


Now, I like fried things (as you can tell), and I like a good Klondike bar from time to time, but this one didn't work because the bar turned completely to liquid before you could take a bite.  Klondike bars are rarely frozen hard, but you might have to do just that to make this dish work.

This next one was just too sweet for me, but it worked for some:  a Reese's peanut butter cup and something else (I think; I can't recall for sure) deep-fried and covered with sugar.


To be fair, those who enjoy peanut butter with their sweets did seem to like it.

After all of that sweet, a salty ham biscuit from one of the Methodist food halls was just the ticket.


Hey, wait, is that a juggling Elvis on a unicycle?


Duh.  What else would it be?

Returning to food and sticking with savories, the sausage baguette was yummy and provided just the right amount of spice to warm your mouth without making you hurt.


Don't believe in artisanal baked whoopie pies?


Come to the Fair.  They exist, and they are amazingly delicious.

Is that a bear chilling in a huge tire swing?


Again, duh, of course it is, though for all his size he is hard to spot in this photo.  Watching him climb into the swing and steady it was a treat in itself.

Back on the midway, hot mini sugar donuts are a staple our group cannot resist.


Damn, that is a big watermelon!


That is also a freaky pumpkin.


I don't know what one would do with such a thing that it would be worth $900, but I'd love to know the story of anyone who bought it.

This cow, who was chilling while staring into a fan, his ears blown back and his eyes nearly shut, proved to be a surprise star of that part of the Fair.


Like a dog hanging his head out a car window, this cow was extremely cute.

We had to search high and low to find the deep-fried Cubano, but when we did,


it was delicious.

No trip to the State Fair can be complete without a simple cheese dog.


Sometime in the course of the night, we sampled some delicious N.C. State ice cream, but I forgot to take a photo of it.

In a final Fair tradition, Sarah, and now Ben and others, rode the swings.


My fear of heights, better in recent years but still present, made me happy to watch everyone's stuff from the ground.

We walked for four hours, and I ate almost nothing before the Fair, so the morning after tasting all of this, I weighed exactly what I had the previous day.  I thus declare victory for this year's State Fair trip!

Hacksaw Ridge

is a powerful, moving film that I quite enjoyed.  It's also one of the most brutal war movies I've seen, with long stretches of action that give us a sense of how brutal the action on Okinawa must have been for the men there.  Don't go to this one if you are at all squeamish.

Director Mel Gibson does a generally strong job, though at times his obsessions take the movie over the top.  The ending scene, which I won't spoil, is the worst example of this behavior.  Even with the indulgences, though, Gibson remains a strong director (despite his many other flaws; we don't have to like an artist to appreciate their work).

Andrew Garfield does a fine job in the leading role, and all of the supporting actors are equally strong.

If you don't know the story, don't look into it; just go see the film if you at all like war movies.  Letting this one work on you is the best way to experience it.

This one deserves its strong critical and audience ratings.  Check it out.

Another PT person doing good in the world

Earlier this year, Jen took her sabbatical and helped feed local children.  Check out this video to see her story.



I am proud to be her colleague and to get to work with so many great, caring folks.

Don't take any election as being a done deal. Vote.

You can't go far on the Internet without running into someone's election predictions.  Many of those predictions disagree.  Even those that strongly favor one candidate or the other have to admit that it's possible the race could go either way.

So do your part:  vote.

I want you to vote for Hillary Clinton if for no other reason than to keep Trump out of office.  (I actually believe Clinton will be a solid President, but you don't need to share that opinion to vote for her.  All you have to do is agree that Trump would be a bad President.)  Even if you want Trump, though, I want you to vote.  I want every eligible voter to vote.  Voting is a privilege and a responsibility that we should take seriously.

Vote.  Please.