Bedtime

Finally, I can go to bed.  I'm feeling stiff, sore, I have a headache and I made it!  Had a big salad for dinner.  Look forward to tomorrow.

Day Two morning

The brain fog is worse.  This may be one of the days I need a keeper.  Past experience tells me that after day three things will get better.

The Whole30 folks are pretty tough.    This is what they tell you if you whine about the 30 days being hard.


“It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You won’t get any coddling, and you won’t get any sympathy for your ‘struggles’.”

I agree with the sentiment and it's easier to give up coffee than drink it without cream so I've gone cold turkey and am not drinking coffee.  However, I am allowing myself one cup (about 12 ounces) of white tea around 11:30 a.m.

The hard part for me is the amount of planning and cooking involved.  More on that after I get my brain back from wherever it wandered to without coffee.

Day One of Whole30

The only thing different about today is that I had no coffee because we are not allowed dairy and I would rather go without than drink black coffee.  I did have a weak cup of white tea at noon.  Because of the lack of caffeine my brain feels fogged and I'm very tired.

Spent no money today.  I have a freezer full of meat, at least enough for half the month.  Friday I will inventory pantry and freezer, then create a week's worth of menus.  On Sunday I shall cook for the week.

It's 7:25 p.m. and I want to go to bed.  Too early AND Bubba the Cat threw up in my bed while I was out today.  I've torn the bed down but now I need to get the sheets washing and make the bed.  

It was a good day and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  I have fresh eggs from Mary's beautiful chickens for breakfast tomorrow.  Love those orange yolks.

Food and Money

On August 1 I begin experiments around Food and Money. 

Is it possible to reverse Hashimoto’s Disease (food)?

What are the essential, absolutely necessary reasons to spend money?

Wednesday morning I start the Whole30 program 

http://whole9life.com/2012/01/whole-30-v2012/

This involves eliminating known allergens and suspect allergens (dairy, caffeine, sugar in its many forms, grains and legumes, etc.) and reintroducing them one at a time after August.

I eliminated grains and legumes in August 2010 and most dairy in 2011 so the first difficulty involves giving up my morning cuppa (14 ounces) with heavy cream.  That will get better after a few days.

The real challenge is planning and cooking ahead to make certain I have lunches and dinners.  Breakfast is easy—poached eggs and bacon, ham or leftover meat from dinner. 

Money is trickier.  This month calls for true austerity in order to find out what is really necessary in the budget.  It’s so easy to bullshit myself that for 31 days I must be firm and question every expenditure.

If I were among the millions of people in this country who lost jobs, homes, and more, what would I consider a necessary expense?

I’ve had mixed reactions from the friends I told about this experiment.  Some are excited, “You are doing an inquiry!”  One friend thinks I’m punishing myself.  At least one person took it personally and was hurt.

A friend with whom I have dinner and a long visit monthly immediately agreed to a walk instead.  I’ll already be downtown so I don’t need to drive to meet her.  We shall have our long visit while walking instead of eating.

I learned in the last few years that I require accountability to accomplish my goals, so I will write about these two endeavors on my blog every single day during the month of August. 

The Right’s False Prophet

Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried, Cambridge University Press, 182 pages

Review by Kenneth B. McIntyre

The three paragraphs below are actually the last three graphs of the review.  The whole thing is worth reading (Well, I think the Austrians [and Ayn Rand] are fools and moral cretins, so of course I would like Kenneth's thoughts on the subject.)  Regarding the last paragraph, Louis Bromfield, in 1939, coming from a different perspective, said pretty much the same thing about Americans.  Google Bromfield if he's a new name--I've been reading and re-reading his books for more than 50 years.  He was doing sustainable farming long before the term existed.  Fifty years ago his books were educational, brilliant and fun, today they are heartbreaking because we didn't learn anything and are now probably past the tipping point.  I have no children and no close relatives so I can die lamenting only all the other mammals who will become extinct after much suffering which results directly from our human stupidity and mostly American stupidity.  Think James Inhofe, Mitch McConnell and all the other climate change deniers and science haters.  Our congresses for the last 30 years are responsible for most of what's wrong with the natural world.  Don't tell anyone but it's probably too late to correct for them.


Strauss was at best a mediocre scholar whose thought expressed a confused bipolarity between a very German and ahistorical Grecophilia on the one hand and a scattered, dogmatic, and unsophisticated apology for an American version of liberal universalism on the other. Amongst prominent European philosophers, Strauss was taken seriously only by Hans-Georg Gadamer, until Gadamer concluded that Strauss was a crank, and by Alexandre Kojève, whose work reads today as if it were a parody of trendy French Marxism. In Britain, neither Strauss nor the Straussians have ever been taken seriously.

Strauss’s argument about esotericism is both historically and philosophically incoherent and useless in any methodological sense. It calls to mind something that Umberto Eco called cogito interruptus:

cogito interruptus is typical of those who see the world inhabited by symbols or symptoms. Like someone who, for example, points to the little box of matches, stares hard into your eyes, and says, ‘You see, there are seven…,’ then gives you a meaningful look, waiting for you to perceive the meaning concealed in that unmistakable sign.  (Omigod, I'm so in love with Umberto)

Finally, regarding the phenomenon of Straussianism, the cult took hold here for the same reasons that cults generally succeed in the U.S.: ignorance, inexperience, and a desire to have a simple answer to complex problems.

For the entire review, click on link below:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/the-mediocrity-of-leo-strauss.html

The Hunchback of Penn State

I recently saw a production of Phantom of the Opera and am currently reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Since I read about Jerry Sandusky over the weekend I keep seeing similarities. The men in Phantom and Hunchback are physically deformed and ugly. The Phantom says he was never kissed, never loved, even by his mother. Both men are heartbreaking.

I see Jerry Sandusky as another sort of human deformity only his ugliness is inside. I feel enormous sadness for him, along with revulsion. And for his victims, whose lives have been horribly altered--children raped and betrayed--I am angry on their behalf and sickened by their innocence laid waste.

But the real corruption is with the men who knew about this and chose Penn State over innocent children and by their choice, allowed this depravity to continue, destroying more lives of children who were tossed aside so the football games could continue.

The coach and all the Catholic priests who prey on children are sick, hideously sick. But the Penn State officials and all the bishops, cardinals and even the present pope of the Holy Roman Catholic Church are so beyond contempt I cannot summon the words to describe them. And they are the ones who should be prosecuted and prosecuted and prosecuted. They aren't sick, they are corrupt and corrupted, they are complicit in the rape and destruction of children.

I can't hate the sick clergy or Sandusky. They should be locked up, forever, never to be able to touch another child. But the bishops, cardinals and popes should be jailed and perhaps even have brands burned into their foreheads, setting an example for all who consider allowing pedophiles to continue their predations in order to preserve the outward appearance of respectability for churches and football teams.

So I said in a rash moment that I read all of Victor Hugo. Au contraire. After an extensive search on wikipedia and amazon.com I've come to the conclusion that it was a combination of Balzac, Hugo and Dickens I read, but not all of any.

I see a set of about 10 volumes and I'm thinking it must have been Balzac. I was 16 when we moved to Stockton, in June, right after school got out for the summer. I knew no one and my mother and I spent many hours and sometimes days in used bookstores and at my aunt Mildred's house which was close to downtown. I suspect my aunt had sets of Balzac and Dickens (people had them back in those days--this would have been in 1956) and I read them. I definitely remember reading Les Mis and The Hunchback of Notre Dame but sure as hell don't remember any of the rest. However, I do remember many Balzac and Dickens titles.

What's interesting to me is that I read so many books between ages 14 and 25 that I cannot force myself to read now and it's mainly being too impatient to spend the time wading through the dense description. Of Cabbages and Kings by O. Henry is one I remember fondly from about age 14. I just ordered it to see if it holds up at all. East of Eden held up and Hemingway's work, so far.

When I go to Bisbee I invariably end up reading something from my youth and somehow there, I can do it. In 2008 I reread Frances Parkinson Keyes. Marvelous novels and the descriptions go on for pages. Somehow, on vacation it's possible. I would say it's Hemingway who ruined me for Balzac and Dickens but I was reading him alongside B & D.