Tag: Lydia

The Lydster: the late Johni Dunia

It made me painfully aware of how scary the world can be.

Johni DuniaGreg, one of the first people I met online when I started blogging in 2005, wrote a provocative post on Facebook. He noted that his eighth-grader told him and his wife that a student brought a gun to school.

“Apparently it wasn’t a gun, just a facsimile, but still. He brought the replica… because he sold weed to somebody who refused to pay and he wanted to intimidate the kid. This is a regular public school in a perfectly fine neighborhood, mind you.”

Greg’s takeaway is that you should “talk to your kids about “adult” stuff even if you don’t think they’re old enough.” It reminded me that I had this notion that my daughter was in the other room doing something else when I watched the news. But she was listening, paying attention. She is, not to brag, one of the most politically savvy kid in her class, and has been for the past four or five years.

Of course, it made me painfully aware of how scary the world can be. I recalled the daughter learning whatever terrible things that were going on in 2012 (e.g., Newtown). Yes, you can’t protect them, but I’m terrified we’re leaving them a sucky world – the pollution issues alone bring me to despair.

This semester, a young man named Johni Dunia, 17, a student at my daughter’s high school, “entered into eternal life on Friday, November 16, 2018.” He was shot numerous times, allegedly by a 22-year-old, on a bike trail in mid-November.

Ironically, his family left their war-torn homeland of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his mother said, for the United States because it “offered security and safety.” Johni “is lovingly recalled as a person with a large and kind heart who never showed anger. He loved his family and was very dedicated to his mother and his brother and sisters.”

At this point, there is an arrest but no motive provided yet. “The suspect and victim knew each other, according to police.”

V is for vanilla extract and imitation vanilla

Vanilla extract is the only flavoring deemed important enough for the federal government to officially define standards for

vanilla extractMy daughter had taken some course in middle school that involved cooking. Yes, the class had BOTH boys and girls. One of the things the students could NOT bring to school was vanilla extract. But they COULD bring imitation vanilla.

Vacationing with my wife’s family this past summer, one of my in-laws wondered whether imitation vanilla contained alcohol. I surmised that it did not. If it did, why allow it and not permit vanilla extract in school?

But I had not looked it up util the next day, when I found an intriguing 2015 article called Why Don’t You Buy Vanilla Extract in a Liquor Store? The subtitle notes it is “the same proof as vodka or rum, yet we buy it at the supermarket. Here’s why.”

“You have to go back to the years just before Prohibition, when trade groups and manufacturers… realized that the only way to save their industries was to lobby politicians to write in legal loopholes that would allow them to continue operating.

“Vanilla extract doesn’t just rely on alcohol to extract the essential flavors and fragrances from the vanilla bean and suspend them in a stable solution—it’s also required by law to have an alcohol content of at least 35 percent. (Vanilla extract is also the only flavoring deemed important enough for the federal government to officially define standards for.)

“In 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was made the law of the land, and the U.S. was, at least on paper, now an alcohol-free country. But the actual legal mechanisms for enforcing the amendment weren’t in place yet.

“Seeing their last chance to avert disaster, [the Flavor and Extracts Manufacturers Association] flooded congressmen with telegrams… By the time the Volstead Act went into effect the following year, it included a clause that made an exemption for flavor extracts—as long as they were deemed non-potable and a reasonable person wouldn’t want to drink them straight.”

The story has more fun facts, especially about money, but also concerning what a “reasonable person” means.

Imitation vanilla is made from synthetic vanillin, which is the compound that naturally occurs in vanilla beans and gives it that distinctive flavor.” It is cheaper and contains no alcohol.

Those are the rules in the United States. How does the rest of the world treat vanilla extract?

For ABC Wednesday

The Lydster: the Vietnamese restaurant

Theory #1: she did not want her parents to have a good time!

Just before Christmas 2017, our library director took his library staff out to lunch. It’s been a tradition that it’d be some non-standard fate, and this time we settled on Van’s Vietnamese restaurant, on Central Avenue in Albany.

It was fine, and the servings were generous. I got two more lunches out of the leftovers. But the decor was non-distinct.

But I recall the PREVIOUS time I was at Van’s, more than a decade ago. It was located on Madison Avenue. It was going to be the first time my wife and I were going to actually go out to dinner at a nice, sit-down restaurant. It had a nifty tile floor, as I recall.

Of course, we had to take the Daughter in that carry seat that fits into the back seat of the car. All the way to the restaurant, she was fine. Happy, even.

However, within five minutes of being seated, she began to cry. No, that’s not precisely correct. She began to WAIL. The screaming bouncing off the floor made the sound even worse.

None of the usual tricks – the binky to suck on, singing to her, holding her -worked. After about five minutes, not wanting to torture the other diners, the waitstaff, or ourselves any further, we departed, leaving a small tip for the two partially-drunk glasses of water.

We put her in the car, went to some drive-through place for some burgers and went home. The Daughter was fine, happy even. So what happened?

Theory #1: she did not want her parents to have a good time! Theory #2: there was something about the smell of the food that disagreed with her. Or maybe it was just the sound of people walking on that floor that bothered her ears.

Emotionally, I’d been leaning towards Theory #1, but years of hindsight suggests the second theory is more plausible.

The Lydster: belated thanks for the gifts

It’s much like how one might take bills one cannot afford to pay and stuff them into a drawer, irrationally hoping they will go away.

When The Daughter was born, we received some lovely and generous gifts from friends and family. Being raised correctly, we tried to send out thank you notes right away. But we were tired, trying to get a handle on this parenting thing.

Finally, in October 2004, only seven months later, we wrote up a bunch of cards of appreciation. Not so bad, really.

My wife reminds me that we were even better with our wedding presents from 1999. The notes went out within three weeks, not bad since we spent nearly a week in Barbados. There were a couple items we were unable to identify – who gave us the $100 J.C. Penney gift card? – but for the most part, we were properly appreciative in a timely manner. And necessarily so, since the presents had taken over the living room.

This past winter, I was wading through a bunch of miscellaneous boxes that had made their way to the attic. I FOUND a handful of thank you cards from 2004! They were in envelopes, the cards filled with personalized messages about the special gifts people had gotten for us. The names were on the envelopes but not addresses; presumably we were going to look them up. They had 37 cent stamps already attached.

I was mortified and immediately threw them back into the box, much like how one might take bills one cannot afford to pay and stuff them into a drawer, irrationally hoping they will go away, which, for the record, seldom works.

So apologies to Jack in my current choir and his wife Sue, and to Lori from my previous choir. Those are the only names I saw before I stopped looking. Apologies to whomever else we failed to fulfill our social obligation.

Maybe next time I find them, I will put on the additional postage and actually mail them out. Hey, Lori, where ARE you in Florida? I’ve lost track.

Lydster: Cursive writing, analog clocks

Even thirty years ago, I realized some ten-year-old children could not read an analog clock.

The Daughter was practicing her signature, using cursive writing, earlier this year. A couple generations ago, this wouldn’t have even warranted a mention.

Now there’s a great debate regarding the necessity and efficacy of cursive writing. In some circles, it is now considered a form of creativity, art, if you will, and I think the Daughter was attracted to it at that level.

It is also true that, for some time, she was having difficulty READING cursive, notes from her grandparents, for instance. To the degree that she can, it’s like learning a foreign language. I imagine the folks who design logos are cognizant of that trend.

One of the “cons” of cursive listed: “It’s gone the way of the typewriter.” Of course, the typewriter is making a comeback.

Is the loss of cursive a “dumbing-down of our education system” or is teaching it time wasted? As one who thinks that quicker is not necessarily better, I believe that since it appears to be good for the brain, it should be taught.

“Since it engages both the right and left hemispheres of the brain, it can actually aid in reading comprehension, idea generation, spelling, brain development and memory.”

Even thirty years ago, I realized some ten-year-old children could not read an analog clock. The Daughter was learning in second or third grade, but I know I understood it before I left kindergarten, and I might have known it earlier.

The announcement that analog clocks are disappearing from UK schools caused similar conflict, with some bemoaning it, others suggesting that we can’t read a sundial either, times change, etc.

I suppose I like the analog clock – a retronym, BTW – precisely because it’s imprecise. A quarter to three might be 2:44 or 2:46, and unless you’re trying to catch a train or something, it matters little.

If I had to keep one or the other, it would be cursive writing. Yes, toddlers might have computers to type on, but there’s value to the hands-on craft.

Ramblin' with Roger
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