Cephalopod attack!

This one isn't even a stretch (though it's sensationalized enough): Man Eating Giant Squid Devouring Fish Stocks

Two Mexican fishermen were recently dragged from their boats and chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified even by their own families....

Hunting in 1,000-strong packs the giant squid can out-swim and out-think fish. Scientists believe they coordinate attacks by using pigment cells to communicate....

Former US special forces diver Scott Cassell has put his life on the line to study the squid. He too has been attacked.

He said: “Within five minutes my right shoulder had been pulled out of its socket. I had 30 big marks on my head and throat and one squid hit me so hard I saw stars. They then grabbed on to me and pulled me down so fast that I could not equalise and I ruptured my eardrum.

Apparently it's about climate change, as usual. Another point in global warming's favor!

It's an awfully long time since we've done recipe blogging. Let's remedy that. We've been eating a lot of this since receiving it from the Querencia crew. It's summery, really easy and works very well when prepared in advance. I don't know the provenance (though it's obviously an Eastern Mediterranean sort of thing); I received it handwritten in my mother's script. But I cannot recommend it too highly!

Eggplant with Pomegranate Sauce

[Recipe claims it serves six. Maybe with lots of other food. We're having it for two right now.]

1-1/2 to 2 lbs. Japanese eggplant (Long, narrow eggplants are best, not weighing over 3/4 lb. each)
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 F, lightly coat a baking sheet with olive oil.

Remove ends and slice eggplants on the bias into 1/2" thick ovals. Spread slices on baking sheet and brush w. olive oil [I find dipping in a bowl answers better]. Bake about 12 minutes [takes us longer] on each side until golden brown. Transfer to serving dish, overlapping slices slightly.

Pomegranate Sauce

2 tbsp. pomegranate molasses
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 clove [yeah, right!] garlic, peeled and crushed w. 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. sugar
1-1/2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tbsp. fresh mint
1 tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp fresh pomegranate seeds [If you got em, but don't hesitate to go for it without them. We've found dried powdered pomegranate is quite acceptable as well.]

Combine first 6 ingredients, blending well. Drizzle sauce over eggplant. Top w. mint, parsley and pomegranate seeds. Cover w. plastic wrap and let stand until ready to serve [preferably at least 45 minutes, in our experience, it does make it better]. Best at room temperature.

Two U.K. climbers make a couple of really remote first ascents in Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor:

Alan says: "I was standing on top of a mountain in Afghanistan that probably no Westerner had even seen - maybe no human being has even seen.

Alan Halewood has photos on his blog.

Hat Tip: The Adventure Blog

Luxurious geothermal baths and horrific wounds: A nice page on health, grooming and medicine in early Iceland.

Thanks to Chas.

Opera Round-Up

Blogging the Santa Fe opera season is a tradition here on O&P, and this year will be no exception. However, high standards for individual posts on each production have led me to blow off blogging the last couple performances over the last couple years. This sucks, not least because I didn't post on The Letter last year, which was awesome, bringing to mind Puccini, Janacek and Strauss, made one happy about the future of opera. So I'm doing them all in one mildly drunken post this year, in the order we saw them. We gave Life is a Dream a miss; the plot actually sounds rather good and well-suited for opera, but the music was not recommended unless you were in the mood for atonalism. We were not.

Tales of Hoffman: This was my first listen all the way through, and I must say it's not going to become one of my favorite operas. Poets and their muses; one woman in three aspects; drunken, artistic stupors: I just don't have the sympathy for these things that I did in high school. Hoffman is a study in random weirdness, and this year's production decided to amplify the weirdness rather than organize it. However, I had no complaints about the musical performance. The orchestra was in good form, and the singers rocked it. There was a stand-in as Lindorf/Various Bad Guys/Satan; alas, I didn't catch his name, but he was clearly having the time of his life, and stole most of his scenes. Also of note was mezzo Kate Lindsey, who played Hoffman's Muse/Nicklausse: besides being really good looking, her singing was a delight, whenever the production could spare her from sprawling languidly on the furniture. And in her Nicklausse incarnation, she got to be the only character who talked a word of sense. Some ambitious composer could make a rather good sequel in which Nicklausse leaves Hoffman in a gutter and proceeds to do something intelligent and worthwhile.

Madame Butterfly: Just about perfect. Puccini performs so well, he made these things pretty foolproof. Still, this was just bloody good, the kind of production Santa Fe really does well, naturalistic but light, making a little scenery go a long way. The only criticism I could think of was that the set representing Butterfly's home shouldn't have had to spin around quite that many times. Kelly Kaduce (also easy on the eyes; the fat lady stereotype is really a thing of the past) absolutely nailed the title role, and committed very satisfyingly convincing and gory seppuku at the end. Pinkerton got booed at the curtain call; I assume this is a tradition, as the tenor did not at all disappoint. (This is a mild response to a despicable opera character; Italian baritones have had to dodge real bullets when playing Iago.)

The Magic Flute: This was a revival of the production from a few years back. I liked it well enough the first time, but it may please be retired. It did not reward a second viewing. Maybe it was an off night, but the performance seemed a little phoned-in in every way. The conductor's pacing was a little flabby, and Audrey Elizabeth Luna was just not up to The Queen of the Night. Her coloratura was out of control, the high notes in the Act I aria brought to mind a countertenor camel, and she managed (deliberately or otherwise) to get laughs out of the Act II number by her bodily twitching. That's just wrong. The opera is comic, but Der Hölle Rache is not.

The performance was saved by a very good Pamina (Ekaterina Siurina) and an amazing Sarastro (Andrea Silvestrelli). (I do see a certain logic to the current trend of casting the better singers as Pamina; a good Pamina is an excellent thing, but this breaks down if the Queen is absolutely not up to it.) Silvestrelli's first notes made you feel like the sound was coming from inside your own chest, giving rise to fears about the resonant frequencies of ribcages. He sounded like an opera-singing walrus, and I mean that as a complement!

Happily, we had friends in town for this one, and they got a perfect Santa Fe opera experience. We tailgated, with a lot of great Vietnamese food and New Mexico's excellent Gruet blanc de noirs. The sunset was absolutely incredible, even by our high standards, with ranks of clouds traversing every shade of yellow, vermilion and red, while each finger mesa of the Jemez stood out in shades of purple. And when we went to take our standing-room spots (we planned this one a little late), the staff practically dragged us by our necks to fill some inexplicably empty sixty-dollar seats. Such boons incline one to forgive a lot in a performance.

Albert Herring: One has to see any opera with the word herring in the title. God, this was good! The plot is as perfect a plot as exists anywhere: no young ladies of sufficient virtue are to be had, so a young man is elected Queen of the May. Then he gets drunk. Santa Fe has been doing great things with Benjamin Britten for a while now, and everything about this was perfect. Kate Lindsey was in this one too, as a village tart (Nancy) of outwardly loose but inwardly compassionate morals; she can act as well as sing. The Vicar (Wayne Tigges) embodied everything that annoys one in vicars. The Mayor (Mark Schowalter) was straight out of Graham Oakley's Wortlethorpe. The village brats were cute but decidedly bratty. Lady Billows (Christine Brewer) was perfectly insufferable (how nice it musty be for physically large singers to play fat English ladies instead of 16-year-old ingenues!). Mrs. Herring (Judith Christin) may possibly have been a Monty Python member in drag ("Oooh, well I never!"). And Albert himself (Alek Shrader) gave a very, very fine performance. So did everyone else. And the scenery was spot-on, convincing and detailed without being distracting. At this point, I'd say any Britten in Santa Fe is absolutely a must-see.

Some good news for Desolation Canyon. Plus new photos.

Bringing the aesthetic delights of the 1040-EZ to every cash transaction: some design firm has really ugly ideas for our money. And I'm using ugly in its most literal sense. Not even going to touch the implicit politics here. If we want to revamp our already rather unattractive cash, what's wrong with old-fashioned engravings of picturesque minorities and alpine scenery?

An amazing set of photographs from throughout the Russian Empire, taken from 1909-1912:

In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.

There's a lot of shots in there from Central Asia, the Caucasus and eastern Turkey, besides Russia proper. Truly an incredible record!

Och, crivens, the Omanis can spiel a pipe like ony Scotsman!



The dancing is something too! Here's much more:



Thanks to Mrs. Peculiar, who was delighted to happen upon such an Omani piper at the Santa Fe Folk Art Festival earlier this summer.

To their great credit, McCallum Bagpipes is willing to accomodate the special needs of far-flung pipers:

Two military pipe bands belonging to the Sultan of Oman, who ply their trade seated upon the backs of camels, are suffering badly for their art. Proud men, resplendent in white uniforms and seated on bedecked and braided camels, they look magnificent until they smile, when they reveal large numbers of missing teeth.

This is the inevitable result of their mounts lurching unexpectedly when they are playing, thrusting 18 inches of rigid hardwood into their mouths.

The Sultan, a lover of the pipes - he has five other more fortunate bands which are not camel-mounted - has now asked Scots craftsmen to redesign the bagpipes with a bendy blowpipe to save his musicians from injury.

McCallum Bagipes, a bagpipe manufacturer from Kilmarnock, has come up with something that flexes as the camels sway graciously across the sands. Stuart McCallum, a director of the company making the camel-

friendly pipes, said: “I was amazed when I got the request, but I designed the device using computer technology.

“It's a flexible plastic tube that bends as the camel moves and can be adjusted in length, depending on how tall the piper is. There's a padded bit on the tip as well for extra comfort.”

Gazelle and terrier produce hideous bastard offspring! Err, to sensationalize a bit. This ridiculous thing is pretty sensational, though.

Reasons I'm glad I'm Orthodox, #51: Giant schnauzer ministry. On a skateboard.

Hat tip: Chas, who has convinced me that Pueblo, CO is very odd indeed. Not that I needed much convincing; I've been there. And such oddities make it vastly superior to the rest of the front range.*

*When we lived in western Colorado, people asked us with rather appalling frequency, "So, do you visit The Springs [i.e. Colorado Springs, a.k.a. The Protestant Vatican] much?" My undiplomatic response was usually, "Good God no! Why would we do that?"

A new one from Eilen Jewell: Butcher Holler: A Tribute To Loretta Lynn. Recommended, as is all of Eilen's work. Nice to see on her web page that it's doing well on the Americana and Alt-Country charts.

What I did instead of watching the Perseids on Thursday night: Previewed Ragnarok in the Pecos.

Seen recently in Santa Fe, a T-shirt which read:

Fasolt and Fafner Construction
Rates Negotiable

Have brewed mugwort/yarrow beer. Pissing gentle lavender color, and having dreams about dhole worms and shoggoths. NO MORE "ANCIENT CELTIC" RECIPES.

Guitar for four hands: wow!

Apostle to the Sasquatches:

A Russian Orthodox bishop is hunting bigfoot:

Kemerovo (Russia), (RIA Novosti) A group of people led by the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Kemerovo and a regional official set out Thursday in search of a bigfoot sighted by hunters in Tashtagol area in Russia, a regional spokesman said.

Earlier this week, the Kemerovo regional administration released a report that local hunters had spotted "some hairy humanoid creatures with a height of 1.5-2 metres near the Azass Cave on Mount Shoriya...

[The spokesman] also noted that yetis for some reason are always spotted singularly, which is "biological nonsense", as a large population must exist in order to create generation after generation.

I'm unclear how "hairy humanoid creature with a height of 1.5-2 metres" differs from an average Russian Orthodox parishioner. Such issues notwithstanding, if any bishops are reading this post, Your Grace is welcome to hire me to investigate bigfoot reports in the Southern Rockies on behalf of the Church. My fees are reasonable.

'Tis the Season

Whan that August with his shoures soote
the droghte of June hath perced to the roote,
and bathed every veyne in swich parfoum
of which vertu engendred is the shroum....

...thanne longen southwestryn folk to goon on pilgrimages. So might Chaucer have ywrote, had he lived in the Southern Rockies and been more interested in fungi than relics.


Everyone's doing it: Chas, Sometimes Far Afield, 14ers.com denizens, and we are not immune. A >12,000' summit plus boletes: that's what I call a successful day! And we even had time afterwards to head to the county fair and feast our eyes on prize-winning swine.





Can anyone identify these hideous alpine thistles, pendulous beneath the weight of their fecund efflorescence? (First shot is in the Pecos Wilderness, high above the mushrooms; below is a specimen up North Crestone Creek in the Colorado Sangres. Click to enlarge.)

Update: Think we've got a fairly positive ID: Cirsium eatonii var. eriocephalum. A big thanks to Al at the highly-recommended Southwest Colorado Wildflowers site for help with this one.

For no reason but that I came across it today: Chesterton's Defense of Penny Dreadfuls.

In former centuries the educated class ignored the ruck of vulgar literature. They ignored, and therefore did not, properly speaking, despise it. Simple ignorance and indifference does not inflate the character with pride. A man does not walk down the street giving a haughty twirl to his moustaches at the thought of his superiority to some variety of deep-sea fishes. The old scholars left the whole under-world of popular compositions in a similar darkness.

If I had the moustaches, I would never cease twirling them in scorn of those fishes.

Hypatia Round-Up

Not our Hypatia (though she occasionally needs a little rounding up, generally when she's slithering into oblivion inside the furniture). Rather the one being portrayed in Agora, which, even if it may not see widespread theatrical release, will probably come to Santa Fe and Netflix eventually. The movie's now out there, and the web is rife with Hypatia-blogging. Here are a few perspectives:

• The Good, the Bad and the Silly: A review of the movie from a historical-accuracy perspective.
• The Perniciously Persistent Myths of Hypatia and the Great Library: A debunker's take.
• Agora: the “Reel” vs. the “Real”: A historical novelist's thoughts.
• A giant discussion of the history surrounding Hypatia: Bloody good, but many, many words.

The upshot for me: the movie is a movie of course, but attempts to reduce Hypatia's story to "Pagan vs. Christian" or "Enlightened Philisophy vs. Superstition" are historically naïve at best. Also, make sure you know the historical record regarding the Library of Alexandria. Also, Alexandria was a tough town and a weird, weird place, and Christianity did not change that.

The first link in this chain was Chas.

Not making it up: Radioactive Boar on the Rise in Germany