November 24, 2018

They were emus. Nearly six feet tall, typically seventy-five pounds, these flightless birds stand beside the kangaroo on Australia’s coat of arms as a symbol of this otherworldly continent at the bottom of the globe. Emus seem part bird and part mammal, with a little dinosaur thrown in. Shaggy, twin-shafted brown feathers hang from the rounded torso like hair. A long black neck periscopes up from the body, ending in a gooselike beak. The wings are mere stumps, and stick out from the body like comical afterthoughts. But on their strong, backwards-bending legs, emus can run forty miles an hour — and sever fencing wire, or break a neck, with a single kick.

At the sight of them, a shock leapt from the top of my head down my spine. I’d never been so close to this large a wild animal before — much less while alone, on a foreign continent. I was not so much afraid as I was dazzled. I froze, caught by their grace and power and strangeness, as they lifted their long, scaly legs and folded their huge dinosaurian toes, then set them down again. Balletically dipping their necks into an S-shape as they picked at the grass, they walked past me, and then over the ridge. Finally their haystack-like bodies blended into the brown, rounded forms of the wintering bushes, and were gone.

After they left, I felt a shift in my psyche. But I had no idea that I had just caught the first glimpse of a life farther off the beaten path than I had ever imagined. I could not have known it then, but these strange giant birds would grant me the destiny Molly had inspired, and they would repay me a millionfold for my first act of true bravery: leaving all that I loved behind.

Sy Montgomery - How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals



Free Will and Quantum Theory.



Toward the end of his career, having made thousands of martinis, Mr. Rowles said there was a right way to make one.

“My secret is to forget about the vermouth,” he told FT Magazine, a weekly supplement of the British newspaper Financial Times. “I don’t know why people put it in. A bottle of vermouth, you should just open it and look at it.”



From my bartending days and nights, two methods: 1) Wave the bottle over the Gin; 2) Pour Vermouth over the ice, then throw out the Vermouth, leaving a hint on the ice.

Mostly stirred, rarely shaken. Sorry, Mr. Bond.

My parents used to make a batch in a carafe. They called them Martoonis.



Christmas Music Time, the SiriusXM current channels:

Holiday Traditions (Ch. 3)
Holly (Ch. 4)
Hallmark Channel’s 24/7 “Countdown to Christmas” (Ch. 70)
Mannheim Steamroller Channel (Ch. 30)
Radio Hanukkah (Ch. 77)
70s/80s Holidays (Ch. 780)
Rockin’ Xmas (Ch. 781)
Holiday Chill-Out (Ch. 783)
Jazz Holidays (Ch. 784)
Navidad (Ch. 786)



Nice display at the Greenmarket.



Liked the sun on the building.



First Christmas book. Will give it to my brother. I will read it first. Is that wrong?