SaltShaker

 As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to [...]

 …we now live in the second robber baron era. One of the things that happens in such times is that the wealthy and powerful get to construct huge building and homes. Yet, however we may feel about the 19th century power hoggers, we are still attracted to the architecture and structures they were rich enough [...]

 Treebeard marched on, signing with the others for a while. But after a time, his voice died to a murmur and fell silent again. Pippin could see that his old brow was wrinkled and knotted. At last he looked up, and Pippin could see a sad look in his eyes, sad but not unhappy. There [...]

 You shouldn’t speak until you know what you’re talking about. That’s why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? They hand me a script. I’m a grown man who puts on makeup.”
- Brad Pitt, Actor
Buenos Aires - A [...]

 [America's] first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness, produced among them a state of society, which countries, long harassed [...]

 A waiter arrived with a tray of falafel, the one item on the menu that didn’t taste as if it had been scraped off the wick of Aladdin’s lamp.”
- Tom Robbins, skinny legs and all
Buenos Aires - Continuing on my educational journey about one cuisine or another or method of cooking, I noted in passing, [...]

 …born in a mansion and died in a shack…”
- from A Fierce Green Fire by Marybeth Lorbiecki
Buenos Aires - I’ve been to the barrio of Barracas (literally “shacks”) before, but always with a particular destination in mind. A friend suggested we take a real wander through the neighborhood - perhaps over time more than one, [...]

 One could argue that these [today's] ‘plagues’ are fundamentally different than the ones in the Passover story because they can be seen as humankind’s own creations and not sent by God.
- Dan Weiss, Only 10 plagues? Early Egyptians had it easy
Buenos Aires - Most Jewish kids I knew when I was growing up dreaded Passover. [...]