Photo by Yohann LIBOT on Unsplash

We’re all familiar with the basic theme: people die, are buried, then come back to life. Oh, right: they come back to life with ravenous appetites for brains. Nothing else. Only brains.

I think that if, as I’ve read from numerous sources, humans taste like pork (giving rise to the quaint designation of “long pig”), why choose brains? Personally, I’d choose a meatier cut. After all, brains are mostly fat. Not much nutrition there. If people are anything like chicken, give me a nice big breast or a couple of meaty thighs.

And what…

A British scientist has stirred up controversy with his claim that adding milk to your tea before adding the boiling water results in a more flavorful brew, especially in areas plagued with hard water.

Prof. Alan Mackie of Leeds University claims that minerals in hard water “prevent flavour compounds from forming.”

The article in The Independent goes on to describe the science behind Mackie’s claim, which I won’t bore you with here. But I tried his theory, and I’m here to tell you what I found.

I live in Rochester, New York. Our water is moderately hard, but not enough…

My good friend Kirk paces. His friend Rick sits on the couch all day, watching television. Mostly 2020’s reruns. I write on my blogs and here on Medium and watch old NCIS reruns on Netflix. My landlord/roommate Ed watches a lot of YouTube, mostly documentaries about ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece.

Rick has a steady job, although I’m not sure how steady is an appropriate word to describe a job that has him awaiting a daily or nightly email letting him know if he has a job from day to day.

Ed is in a slightly better position: his language…

"The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans."
From "The Wild Swans At Coole"
William Butler Years

Windfall Lake is one of those hidden gems in Juneau, Alaska. Or at least it was hidden when I lived there. Since then, it's become more popular after the US Forest Service installed a cabin on the lake shore.

My adventure began one afternoon when I hiked the trail to the lake, pitched my tent, and prepared for an…

I used to write three or four stories a week on Medium. Now I’m lucky if I write one. Part of the problem is the isolation. I don’t have reliable transportation, and the bus system here seems to be run at the convenience of the bus system, rather than the convenience of its riders.

My landlord is kind enough to take me grocery shopping when I need to go, but if I want to go anywhere else, the bus runs once an hour, meaning a simple trip to the library is an all-day adventure.

So as Duke Ellington sang, “Don’t…

I enjoy cooking. Whether it’s Tex-Mex, Italian, Indian, or whatever, it’s all grist for my mill. The nine cooking apps on my iPhone testify to that.

But there’s a problem with all of them: They all cater to white tastes.

Did you know that there’s even a Chinese cooking school in San Francisco’s Chinatown that teaches Chinese chefs how to cook to American (read: mostly white) tastes?

EatOkra, by developer Anthony Edwards, is an app that lets you find Black-owned restaurants and food trucks in dozens of cities around the country. …

Photo by Arseniy Kapran on Unsplash

I think I was five years old when I had my first sip of tea. I don’t remember if my mother gave it to me, or if it was my Nana, as they were both devotees of the magic brew. In a way it was almost ironic: my mother was sold on it’s benefits,but it was her mother-in-law, my Nana, who definitely believed in tea’s blessings.

Mom’s remedy for everything was tea and toast. Got the chicken pox? Tea and toast. I came down with the measles? Tea and toast, perhaps with a dash…