The Christmas Season

I am still annoyed by folks jumping the gun on Christmas. Advent should be a time of expectation, not preliminary indulgence to a feast that then becomes a chore rather than a great delight. However, I am finding myself more annoyed by the abrupt closure of public Christmas on the 26th. Many municipalities collect old Christmas trees even before the 12th day of Christmas. It is a season and should be enjoyed as such.

Anyway, tomorrow we are having one of my favorite Christmas treats: goose carnitas tacos. I take leftover goose, chop it up, add cumin, onions, Mexican oregano and chipotles and fry it in goose fat. Then we have it on tacos (homemade tortillas this year) with onions, cilantro and guacamole. Each bite is pure yum. Then we finish with Mexican hot chocolate. If I am particularly motivated I will also make chicharrones in salsa verde.

SFMOMA

So, Tyler Green comes to my neck of the woods and shames me by noticing something that I missed: SFMOMA does not have one Thiebaud hanging on the Second Floor (Permanent Collection). What is particularly galling is that Thiebaud is one of my all time favorite painters, a native son of sorts of Sacramento (we used to frequent the same coffee house) and a huge painter-hero of mine. How did I not notice his absence?

Merry Christmas!

I hope that all of you have had a wonderful Christmas. Our dinner has been postponed by a day due to a stomach ailment that has hit three of us. So far two of the afflicted seem over it and the third is on the way, so it looks like everything is on for tomorrow, which is good because for the first time in 24 hours roast goose is sounding really good.

The one advantage to being in sleep and rest mode is that I have been able to watch The Way Things Go, which Melanie gave me for Christmas. If you haven't seen this film, you should definitely check it out. I fell in love with it in 1988 when I saw it at the Berkeley Art Museum, and have seen it many times since. The DVD is good, but I would have liked more additional features (surely they could have found some Fischli and Weiss shorts to add to it, or an interview or something).

Penultimately, I want to thank my readers who have helped solve the chamomile Minnesota mystery. It seems it is a wild chamomile that I was smelling and that make me think of Minnesota whenever I smell chamomile.

And finally, please keep sending your artists who really reflect the place they worked in. I know the original entry is off the front page, so feel free to add recommendations to this entry's combox. I will be speaking of C.S. Price later because he certainly captured the feeling of the Northwest (and did a fine job of Northern California when he lived here).

Overheard in Oakland and Environs

Melanie has a fantastic voice, a rich dramatic soprano voice with a range that often amazes me. Furthermore, she has a good ear, superb phrasing, and an innate musicality that is rare.

So it was a bit surprising the other day when Melanie was singing and Amalia pipes up from the back seat, "Mamma! Quit Squawking!"

Then this morning I was talking on the phone with my friend who has a sentimental attachment to democracy.

I was talking about my upcoming plans on making vermouth and some other goodies. I said that I was thinking about making gin and the whole issue of a still came up. I told him that I believed that it was the duty of every man, woman and child to set up a still, because the law against it is so patently unjust, etc.

Anyway, I mentioned that a friend had shown me how to make a still with an electric pressure cooker and surgical tubing.

"You know what the last words of many a redneck is?"

"No, what?"

"'Watch this!'"

Some art, less food writing...no, reverse that...

Every so often I get to a point in a restaurant review where I really want to tear my hear out [editor's note: tear my "hear" out?!? Que? I am letting this stand just as a monument to bad typing. It should read "hair" by the way], or at least quit. I come upon a dish and realize that I have to describe it. I can't just say, "yummy" or even leave it at "well-made." Normally this is no problem. I just describe it (and many others ever single week) and that is that.

But then there are these days when I feel like I am writing a parody of food writing, that I have really used up all my food vocabulary and have devolved to nothing but cliche.

Subtle hints of red plum delicately lifted by a hint of shallot. Yawn.

Melanie's co-workers seem to have fun when I get in a rut. "Provides a perfect foil for the..." that one kept them giggling for awhile. The problem is that Melanie works for the newspaper, so all of her coworkers read me. Now we even get the newspaper delivered to our house, so even I read me. I can't help it. I am a compulsive newspaper reader, which is why I quit completely for awhile. Now the thing is on the doorstep every morning and it is safe to say that I have fallen off the wagon.

So not only do I have to face my writing on my own computer, but I get it in print.

Anyway, I really do like food writing, but there are those times when it just seems like I am spinning my wheels:

"You thought the hat was empty, but look at this lovely cliche!"

Then I think about my poor colleagues in the Sports section.

"Oh, you have some nerve, eating delicious duck rillette sandwiches and describing the texture of the friggin' ciabatta! Try making the thousandth double play sound unique."

Everyone knows that the best writing in any newspaper is found in the sports pages. You have to be good to write sports or you get out.

The best way to renew the springs of inspiration is to read non-food writing (and lots of it) and to read classics in food writing. Then, buy a good set of electrodes and program your word processor to send a painful pulse through them whenever you write "soft, yet able to stand up to..."

In college I had a brilliant idea for using electrodes and MIDI to produce better keyboardists. All you need to do is wire a sequencing program to a MIDI keyboard and a set of electrodes. Then you set the limits: dynamics to X%, rhythmic allowances for Y% (allowing for rubato only in the right hand, and carefully controlled ritardandi at the ends of sections, etc.). Then you play. If you hit a wrong note, or with dynamics outside the allowances, or the rhythm gets funny, a powerful charge of electricity rebukes you.

Like I said, brilliant idea, but for some reason I could never get a volunteer to try it out. You build a better mouse trap and the mice just complain bitterly.

Anyway, art is always fun to write about, unless it is crap like Jeff Koons, but that is not really art, so I feel safe ignoring it.

We went back to SFMOMA on Saturday. Amalia was asleep in her stroller, so Melanie and I got to go through the galleries at a much more leisurely pace.

I noticed something that I missed the other day: a beautiful Agnes Martin canvas. I suppose she was fresh in my mind, seeing as how she passed away last week at the age of 92, but I am still shocked that I missed this painting the other day. I have always liked her work. Anyway, having a few minutes (not enough, because Melanie has normal patience for taking long gazes at almost-minimalism) to look and think about this painting was fantastic.

Furthermore, it got me in the right mood to study a gorgeous Ad Reinhardt canvas in the next room, which all adds up to making my pique at the lack of Robert Ryman works all the more acute. And since for every reaction there is an equal and opposite anti-reaction, where are the Arnesons?!?

I want, no, I demand the extremes. Give me somber reflection of Ryman and Martin, and give me the goofball joy of Arneson. But get rid of the smug "irony" of Warhol or the goofball seriousness of Newman (for some reason the goofball seriousness of Still and Rothko never bothers me, probably because both men produced a few fantastic works).

We had a great visit (still a little shorter than ideal, but few people enjoy museum visits as long as my ideal), and Amalia woke up in the gift shop just as we were buying her Christmas present (oops).

Anyway, back to "sweet without being cloying." To quote Ian Shoales, "I gotta go."

National Identification Cards

I see that there is a renewed push to standardize state ID's. The usual suspects are griping about it paving the way for a national ID card. I really don't understand some of the pet causes of civil libertarians (even when I was a libertarian I never did get the objections to this one). I have always supported a national ID card, along with legislation mandating that it be carried at all times. In the old days people where known in their communities, making such things redundant, but now it is not so. If the police collar a miscreant, they might have no idea who he is. If they knew that failing to carry an ID only would add to their sentence, they would carry it.

Civil Libertarian types need to just sit down, take some deep breaths and repeat a hundred times:

"A national ID does not amount to taking away our freedom."
"A national ID does not amount to taking away our freedom."
And so on.

To paraphrase my grandmother, "if you want to whine about your freedom being taken away, then come here and I will give you something to whine about!"

Believe!
Obey!
Fight!

Stove Top Moka Express

At the bottom of a comment on another post, a reader asks if one can make decent coffee in one of those stove top Moka deals (in which one puts water in the bottom, ground coffee in a basket and the heat sends the water from the bottom, through the grounds and up a column into a collector).

The answer is yes, if one is careful. Here are the rules:

1. Low heat. The lower the flame you brew over the richer and better the coffee will be, at times almost resembling a true espresso. You want it so that the coffee is just barely oozing over the top.

2. Brew with the lid up. The biggest enemy to Moka Express coffee is allowing the brewed coffee to boil. Ick. Also, with the lid up you can carefully watch the oozing coffee.

3. Correct blend, correct roast, correct grind, correct dose, correct tamp. Moka Express can tolerate a higher percentage of East African beans, which is certainly good news for those of us who like Kenyan and Ethiopian beans. However, not all of the beans can be East African. Use some Columbian, some Javanese, and see that the roast is pretty close to a true espresso roast (not a dark French coffee cinder roast). Grind slightly coarser than for true espresso, fill the basket until it can't be filled no mo', and tamp like your life depends on how tight you can get it all in there.

4. Check the gasket. Those things are made of rubber and they will dry out and crack. You can buy replacements at the same place you bought the pot (or a good coffee bean supplier).

5. Clean water. No funny tastes. They only get magnified in the brewing. If your water is not good tasting, use bottled.

6. Lower your expectations. You will never pull a God Shotfrom a Moka Express. However, you are not going to take the Gaggia with you backpacking, and the Moka Express can make fine coffee, especially for breakfast. I keep mine at my parents' house, along with a grinder. It beats lugging the whole setup with me, and if I really want a great espresso, there is a fantastic coffee house in Sacramento. But for cold Saturday afternoons when we don't have time to go to the coffee house and back because we are going to do something with my parents, it is perfect. Other than that, it is primarily for camping.

Speaking of Minnesota

The other day I was looking at a painting by Elmer Bischoff, who, when he was at his best, was magnificent. One thing that always strikes me about his best work is how well he captures the atmosphere of the Bay Area (the way Diebenkorn's work from the 1950's captures the East Bay or the way Thiebaud captures a certain something about Sacramento in the summer).

That made me think of other artists who seem to distill the essence of their region in their work. Southern California, certainly. You have Hockney, for instance, not to mention scads of late 19th century painters who have captured the essence of the region that is reduced to small pockets (but when you encounter one of those pockets, you immediately recognize it).

There were artists who captured New York in various phases of history.

I got to thinking about Northern Minnesota (obviously I had been drinking chamomile tea to calm my sour stomach) and realized that I could not think of a single painting, let alone painter who captured the feeling of the area.

Then I realized that of all the great and beautiful parts of the United States, very few of them have been properly nailed by artists. Or have they? One of the problems with the New York dominance of the world of art is that we are far more inclined to know painted New York than the state next to ours. Nevada? Wait! Louis Siegriest's abstract work from the 1960's captures something of the Virginia City/Reno area, although only a particular aspect of it. But Oregon? Mark Tobey doesn't really say anything about the Northwest as a place. I know artists in Portland, yet none of them seem to grab the atmosphere of the area and paint it.

So, for the next few days I would love to hear from my readers in the various parts of the United States (well, why limit it... if you can think of a painter in, say, Hagen, Germany who captures the area, let's hear about it) about artists who "get" their area. As someone who is interested in the dance between abstract and representational art (think of the Diebenkorn Berkeley paintings from 1953 to 1955), those sorts of paintings are the ones I particularly want to hear about, but I also like a good realist (Sacramentans will certainly think of Gregory Kondos here). Also, while I am keen on current and modern painters, what about the 19th and prior centuries? Did the Hudson River School have an offshoot on the Red River of the North?

So let's hear from Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida, DC, Massachussetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, etc.

Chamomile and Minnesota

Perhaps one of you can help me figure this one out.

For some odd reason, the smell of chamomile immediately conjures up Northern Minnesota (and I mean far Northern, the Gunflint Trail area to be precise). I am not sure why. I don't recall drinking chamomile tea or chamomile grappa on any of my trips there. Perhaps it grows wild up there? The olfactory memory is somehow linked with rain, but you frequently get afternoon rains up there, so it could just be the setting of the Boundary Waters that implies rain.

Are any of you from Grand Marais or have spent time up there recently? Does the stuff grow wild in the North Woods? If I don't get an answer I may just have to take a canoe trip and do some exploration. Wouldn't mind fishing for Northerns at the same time!

SFMOMA

Amalia and I went to SFMOMA today. It was my first visit in awhile, so it was the first time I saw the foyer stripped of all the ticket selling clutter, the first time I saw the Lichtenstein show, and the first time I saw the rehang of the permanent collection. As I have to finish a restaurant review for the newspaper, and I am suffering from some digestive malaise, undoubtedly caused by my own indiscretion with regards to acidic things (should have avoided the onion jam on my grilled ham and fontina panini at the Caffe Museo, at least so soon after the company holiday party and the amazing chorizo and bean soup we made last night), I will be brief.

Also, Amalia was in quick view mode when it came to the permanent collection (at least until we hit a Joan Brown painting with two dogs in it) and the Lichtenstein, I did not get the full absorbtion that I like to get before really evaluating an exhibit.

First, the foyer: it looks great. I love the SFMOMA building, and I particularly like the space that greets you when you walk through the doors. Now, I am a member, so I never have to wait outside for tickets (members still get theirs inside), so perhaps if I waited twenty minutes in the wind and rain sometime I would sing a different tune, but it is great to have this open space so, well, open.

Second, the fifth floor (contemporary art): mostly silly stuff, including an installation that I thought had been euthanized years ago. A whole room of Kara Walker, which is about as essential to an art museum as a diet of gravel and arsenic is to good digestion. One of my favorite Jay DeFeo paintings (Insision), which is baffling, seeing as how her contemporaries are hung downstairs (I think that, since SFMOMA holds one of her two important paintings, they are trying to boost her cache, which is a dumb idea. Those two paintings are great, but she is a minor painter. Let's appreciate the few good and the two great works she did and not try to boost her into something else). Now, I was being rushed through, so I did not read the criteria for inclusion, so maybe it made sense.

Third, the exhibit on design, architecture and fashion: a few good pieces but mostly fluff.

Four, the Lichtenstein: nothing here to change my evaluation of his most famous works: overrated. He finally started doing some interesting paintings in the 1980's, when he explored the ideas of surrealism, and was really on to something in his last years, but the cartoon frames wear thin. Really thin.

Five, the permanent collection: I always applaud good placement of Diebenkorns, and we get two outstanding paintings in this one. Why do we need even one Newman, though? And where are the Ryman's and Arneson's? Also, SFMOMA does not have a great Picasso, so why put the minor works they have right in the front? Matisse was a better painter anyway. There I said it. I love Picasso, but Matisse is ultimately the more important painter.

Six, do we really need all that photography? Why not just put it in a book and let people browse. I actually like photography, but have generally never gotten along with photographers, so this might just be a personal grudge. Still, way too much space devoted to photomechanical stuff.

Oh dear...

You know I have been a bad blogger when only one entry is left on the thing. However, I am back and have some good rants stored up! Yipee!

One disadvantage to neglecting the blog is the amount of spam that comes up with all new ways around my blacklist.

One question I have is why would anyone hire a lawyer based on a blog spam comment?

Anyway, thank you for your patience. I have been so absent from my computer that I have barely checked email for the last three days, which has been a wonderful break, but all breaks must end and the 719 emails must be sorted (most of them can be easily deleted, but I should be careful, as that is how real emails end up getting zapped as well).

Rachmaninov

I have decided that of all the overblown and bombastic Romantic music out there, Rachmaninov has to be at the very bottom of the pit. What really threw me over the line on him was listening to some piece he did on a piece by Paganini (or a theme of Paganini's, either way, it was an awful experience that did not compel me to go look up the piece).

Rachmaninov is the perfect embodiment of all that is wrong with classical music today. His music is written for the mechanic: the pimply, black-clad long-hair who is overly smitten with his own pianistic prowess. Like early Franz Liszt, there is something there, but the effort to get to it is not worth it (the late Franz Liszt, on the other hand, is something else). When I hear Rachmaninov, all signs point to the empty bombast of the Van Cliburn generation. Technically perfect recordings that simply do not breathe, and if they did, would be breathing nothing but hot air anyway.

Speaking of crap that does not seem to need to exist: the Real Gilligan's Island?!? A reality show based on a sitcom that completely exhausted its own creative potential? Anyway, I will not allow this blog to devolve into television commentary, lest I start frothing at the mouth about how bad (and I mean that in a moral as well as dramatic sense) Friends was.

Anyway, with recordings of Rachmaninov being touted as important music, is it any wonder that classical music is in a slump? When Rostropovich's silly renditions of the Bach Cello Suites are played over and over on classical radio?

Sorry, but Bolero is more worthy than this stuff. At least Ravel created a fine essay on orchestration (of course you only need to listen to it a couple of times to get everything out of it that you can) with it.

On a happier note, I pulled out a Gustav Leonhardt recording of French baroque music and found just what the doctor ordered. I have a soft spot for the French baroque, since they got it so right (Couperin Uber Alles!), and Leonhardt understands this repertoire (he's not so shabby with Bach, either).

Tonight, after I post this, I will be delving back into the world of Christmas music (reading scores, not listening to recordings), which has been interesting. I normally limit my Christmas music exposure by avoiding it almost entirely during Advent, but my lecture on Tuesday leaves me no choice but to wade chest deep in the stuff.

So, with that, let me recommend the Anonymous 4's On Yoolis Night (Harmonia Mundi). Their sound is almost too much to take at times, but it is powerful stuff. To balance out your ears, you might need a dose of Russian men's choir music, just to restore the bass recognition center in your brain, but other than that, the Anonymous 4 really have something good going on.

God's Country

Good Lord! I like TSO as much as the next guy, but when he identifies places like Ireland and Ohio and some Carolina and even, gasp, Texas(!) as God's Country, I have to wonder.

Don't get me wrong, they are probably all wonderful places. The ones I have seen are indeed beautiful.

However, they are but specks of dust compared to Big Sur, which is God's Country, which also happens to be a short drive from God's City (even though the adversary seems to be holding it now).

But I cannot complain about spreading the good news about Ohio. I have never been to Ohio, but I find myself often touting its beauty, its low cost of living, its high standard of living to just about anyone in the Bay Area who I think could benefit from this advice! So, TSO, keep up the good work. Could I forward you a list of people bidding on a house or two that I am interested in and have you mention to them the goodness of Ohio, Carolina, etc.?

You better go back to beautiful Texas,
Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee!

MOMA

I was asked tonight what I thought of the MOMA renovation. I am witholding comment until I actually see the thing, which will probably not be for awhile, as I do not have any plans to go to New York soon, unfortunately. I am long overdue for a trip, but, you know how these things go...

Anyway, I am not as opposed to the $20 entrance fee as I thought that I was to begin with. First, crappy Hollywood movies cost over half of that, and you don't get to spend time with any Matisses (I won't even mention what folks pay per month for cable television). Second, for those who really are into art, you will get a membership anyway, which is good for a number of reasons: one, if you have the membership you will be more inclined towards casual visits, two, you get the newsletter so you can keep up on events, and three, you get invited to cool stuff that the nonmembers won't even hear about. Third, if you spend $20 to get in, you are going to be more inclined to make the most of your visit.

Museum memberships are about the best entertainment/educations value there is. Amalia and I go to museums all the time, and a membership makes an avec toddler trip much more enticing (if she only wants to search for horses and the color purple for an hour, so be it. We spend an hour. If she is in crazy art mood and wants to sit in front of a William Keith painting and talk about it for half and hour before returning to the California Impressionists and then another visit to the Hudson sculpture, followed by another half hour looking at the horse statue, that is fine, too).

For those of you in the Bay Area, be sure to take your toddler to the Oakland Museum of California. You may never get out of the Natural History section, but it is not every day that you get to see a wolverine fighting with a coyote over a dead marmot. The gardens are also great for running around (and you can climb a three ton piece of jade), and the art department is full of horses, particularly in the 19th century section. Just watch out for the museum gift shop, as it is full of cool toys for the toddler and cool books for the Babbo, all of which can lighten the wallet.

Speaking of local museums, I just realized that it has been way too long since we went to SFMOMA, which is a great space to look at art in. I have yet to see the rehang of the permanent collection, which is pathetic. Must be less Oaklandcentric.

Of course it is fun to be a little Oaklandcentric, since we have almost no tourists, and some cool stuff that is rarely crowded. There is a There there, but it is scattered around. You just have to know where to go and what to look for.

Blood Cults

I have a good friend who has a sentimental attachment to democracy. He tends to see, in the Marxist mode, all right-wing popular movements as being the same and says, "for someone who claims to not be into race and blood cults, your latest post on the Dutch could make someone wonder."

Ah-hah! You must understand that I see these things as matters of cultures, not genetics. And I absolutely affirm and declare that there are some cultures that are objectively better than others. Not only that, but I affirm and declare that one can go from one culture to another, even as an adult, and should be seen as part of the culture he has joined. So, an Algerian can have as credible a claim as Oriana Fellacci to being an Italian should he fully embrace Italian culture (one would have to renounce Mohamedanism to be a bona fide Italian, though).

So, I do not see anything genetically wrong with the Englisch or Dutch: they are people, as much so as Italians, even. They are capable of all the triumphs and failings of the French, the Spanish, the Californian, etc. IF they reject that which is erroneous in their culture (and I will not go so far as to say that ANY culture is all bad, even the Aztec, which gets pretty close in its religion to pure evil).

There is one standard by which to ultimately judge a culture, and that is the Gospel as interpreted by the living magisterium of the Catholic Church, and every culture has some good and some bad. It is just that the proportions of each are not equal.

So, dear reader, have no fear that I am promoting some race and blood cult. Those are wrong and evil and have no place in a Catholic dialog.

The War Against Spam Rages On!

I have been getting a string of spam attacks that contain no URL for me to add to the blacklist. Therefore, I have had to resort to IP banning. I am always a little hesitant to ban IP's, because I do not exactly understand how the whole thing works, and I don't want to ban someone from commenting who did nothing wrong.

However, something needed to be done about this miscreant, so I banned a whole bunch of IP's. If you are trying to comment and cannot, please email me at EKeilholtz [@t] a[merica]o[n]l[ine][dot]com and I will lift the ban on your IP.

The Netherworlds Sinks Further into Swampdeutsch Depravity

I admit it. I am a bit of a bigot. I am prejudiced against Germanic culture. Being half German, I absolutely thankful to St. Boniface for his role in bringing down the most horrid manifestations of Germanic culture (yes, I do mean that Earth-afirming, mother worshipping, oh yeah, human sacrificing, proto-Nazi death cult paganism that postmodern hippies seem to think was so groovy).

And yet I do make distinctions of horridness of Germanic culture. At the best, you have the civilized Germans: speakers of Hoch Deutsch, Romanized, capable of producing great art, music, literature, and pork products. Even higher than the Rheinland Deutsch, where my ancestors come from, are the Bavarians and Austrians. Although watch us closely, as history has shown, we can go as bad as the worst of them. And to make matters worse, we will spill gallons of ink debating the whys and hows of it afterwards (I tried to endure a seminar on the "German Question" at UCSC. It was part of the History of Consciousness program. I think I lasted about 15 minutes. ACH!).

Below the civilized Germans you have the Scandinavians: gotta love their gingerbread, Ibsen, hardanger fiddle, and architecture (not to mention IKEA), but you always get the feeling that the Viking roots are beginning to show again. Another generation of secularization and I expect them to lose all decency and to pillage Ireland again.

At the lowest level of Germanic culture you get the Swamp Germans and their Island Dwelling Cousins, the Englisch. Since I normally pick on the Englisch, even though they have been on pretty good behavior these last few decades (for savages, that is), and I have been enjoying Chaucer a lot these days, I will give them a break here. Also, when the good Germans went bad 60 or 70 years ago, the Englisch did their duty and put them back in their place. Also, Prince Charles really seems a decent chap. Good painter, staunch traditionalist. If he became Catholic, I would probably wear a Union Jack pin for a week.

The dwellers of the Netherworld, on the other hand, seem to be intent on earning their name. Some day the collective marihuana and recidual post-Calvinism might wear off and they may decide to return to the fold of Western Civilization, but until then, go read this abominable story and come back and tell me why it matters that they were liberated from the Germans. Or tell me why we needed to stop Hitler and Saddam and we should just sit idly by and allow these monsters (or is it maansteers?) to continue.

I was just at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento this weekend. They have some wonderful second-rate Dutch paintings (in other words, good works by "student of Rembrandt" and the like). One of the popular genres of the Dutch artists were depictions of depravity with stern warnings attached. "You see, Jaap, if you go out to the tavern, this scene of bedlam will become all that is left of your family!"

Of course the patrons of this kind of art were less interested in the warnings than the depravity. And thus enters the deadly dualism of Calvinism. Eventually comes the rationalization of how this is different than that, and, well, so long as you aren't a Papist, anything goes! When the strictures of the old Calvinism go away, all you have left is the sickest and the lowest, but now exalted as compassion and tolerance.

It seems to be coming to a head in the Netherwolrds, and I really do hope that they come out on top. I enjoy the place. I like their food, their music, their art, especially their art, their language (can you say Kaatzenjammer? I knew you could), and their stubborn clinging to some of the least habitable land in Europe. However, they are going to be facing the hardest struggle of all to return to the good of their culture, and sinking to the level of euthanizing babies does not point in the right direction.

Hat tip to Cacciaguida for the link.