Second Breakfast

Another installment in the rather large “Honor Harrington” series by David Weber, which recounts the adventures of Honor Harrington, starship captain and all around Good Guy (or Gal).
Weber is definitely a military guy, and his emphasis is as much on strategy and tactics as it is on the conflicts and characters that require their employment.   The story revolves around the impending conflict between the imperiled Kingdom of Manticore (aka Britain) and the so-called Republic of Haven (aka France) engaged in a proxy war with two planets involved in a religious feud going back centuries.

Turns out that Grayson and Masada (the two planets in direct conflict) are the descendants of Puritanic religious settlers with a particularly nasty attitude towards women.  Given that Honor is the first female officer these folks have encountered, lots of conflict erupts, and soon someone starts shooting as the events unfold.  People die, sometimes badly, and the bad guys act like real bad guys when things go wrong.  Of course in the end Honor and her people save things brilliantly, but at some personal cost.
After two books one starts to see some patterns.  Weber tends to regard the career military folks generally as the “good guys”, even when they’re on the other side.  In this book the captain of the Havenite task force involved in this proxy conflict is portrayed very sympathetically, mostly at the mercy of the crazy religious fanatics whose aims are less than savory.  That said, Weber does go beyond the Star Trek trope of “religion is stupid and we evolved beyond all that superstition” to explain in a compelling way how the Grayson folks came to regard their female population because of the harsh conditions of their planet, and the absolute need for survival.

Weber’s also an optimistic guy, and in his world when the professionals are allowed to do their jobs, good things happen.

I’m generally not one for military culture, but I like the Harrington character, and I like the large story arc he’s drawing here.  These are good beach, plane, train, or vacation reads if you “like this sort of thing”.

This was a timely book for me to pick up at Border’s, which had strategically put copies out just in time for Holy Week. I’m often an impulse-buyer when it comes to books, but anything by Marcus Borg is going to be insightful, and likely to be challenging both intellectually and emotionally.  I’ve encountered John Crossan as part of the “Living the Questions” adult education series we did at church last year, so I was excited to find this book, which traces in depth Mark’s account of Jesus’ last week from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday.
I saved it up for a week or so, and tried to read along day by day as Borg and Crossan do an extended midrash on the themes and issues undergirding Mark’s account of the events Holy Week.  This book primarily concerns itself with the political and social dimensions of Jesus’ ministry, and is less focused with the spiritual.  This is an excellent academic re-reading of Mark, but as I progressed throughout the week with the book, I found myself becoming uneasy with it, and put off reading the final Easter Sunday chapter until well after Easter itself.  Borg and Crossan are controversial in their own right, and here they take on some of the most central questions of Christian thought:  what was Jesus’ purpose in his ministry, what did the say about himself, what was God’s purpose behind his execution, and what happened on Easter Sunday?

There are some really insightful moments for me in the early part of the book, such as the comparison of Jesus’ Palm Sunday procession with Pilate’s Imperial procession entering Jerusalem before Passover, and an excellent deconstruction of the issues involved with sacrifice and temple politics.  Their main point is to emphasize that Jesus’ Passion should be understood to include what Jesus was passionate about, namely the living out in human lives of the love and justice that God intends for humankind, and confronting the systems of domination and oppression that were a central reality in Jesus’ day and our own.

And while I certainly do not count myself among the tribe of Biblical literalists (as the old saw goes “I don’t take the Bible literally, I take it seriously”), Borg and Crossan put forth some pretty challenging ideas about the parable nature of the resurrection accounts that I have a hard time accepting.  I find it difficult to accept the whole notion of the “Christian project” as completely valid without the reality of a supernaturally-resurrected Jesus.  I suppose what has resonated for me for a long time is C.S. Lewis’ notion that Jesus’ resurrection represents the historical incarnation of what had previously been a mythical story:  Jesus wasn’t some guy who lived in the mythic past, but a flesh-and-blood person in a specific time and place, and his resurrection is the historical acting out by God of a central human hope.  As one commentator has said “Something happened”, and that something radically transformed that small community of friends into a force that has reshaped history.

This book is troubling, but I think in a good way, and it challenges the reader in ways large and small.

This is an omnibus re-issue of a three-book series: “Mutineer’s Moon”, “The Armageddon Inheritance”, and “Heirs of Empire”.

This is my first encounter with David Weber, and boy this book was a lot of fun.  This is science fiction in the classic “space opera” mode.  Lots of action, some big but not terribly complex ideas, and things move along quickly.  The characters aren’t developed in a deep way, but encountering them is fun, and the overall outlook of the books is positive and upbeat.

Without giving too much away, we have Colin Macintyre, an astronaut and test-pilot who discovers that the moon is actually a giant, intelligent spaceship named Dahak, and that humans are actually the descendants of part of the crew that attempted to munity on Dahak fifty thousand years ago.  Those mutineers have survived to this day, some are real bad guys, some have realized they were duped and are good guys, and are engaged in cold war while manipulating humankind in the process.

All of these folks come from a vast interstellar empire that no one has heard from in a long time, and oh by the way, the whole point of the empire was to resist a xenophobic alien species hell-bent on destroying all other competing intelligence, and the real bad-guys appear to be on their way.

The first two books I think are the strongest in terms of delivering on the formula that Weber employs.  The third book gets bogged down a bit in what feels like a somewhat secondary plot, but overall I think the series is pretty successful.

If you like your sci-fi with popcorn and explosions, this is a fun read.

I generally dislike “red sauces”. Most tomato-based sauces just seem boring to my palate, and are usually too acidic, or just don’t carry much of a punch. So on any Italian restaurant menu, I’ll skip the tomato-based dishes, and head straight for the oil or cream-based sauces when I’m in the mood for pasta. More pesto, please!

That being said, this dish, while tomato-based, is fantastic. The secret is not in the ingredients, but in the cooking method. The tomatoes are allowed to caramelize in the oil, which adds a depth of flavor and richness not typically found in such dishes. I heard this recipe from Lynne Rosetto-Casper of The Splendid Table, but its a fairly famous preparation.

As my husband says, putting bacon in spaghetti sauce is a “concept everyone can get behind“.

Items

• 2 Tb olive oil
• 1 28oz can good-quality whole plum tomatoes in juice
• 1 medium onion, peeled and diced
• 6oz pancetta or smoked American bacon (I couldn’t find pancetta, and the bacon version is fabulous), cut into 1/2 dice
• 1 lb bucatini, thick spaghetti, or spaghetti
• 1 Tsp salt (at least)
• 1 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper (at least)
• 1 Tsp - 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you like things)
• freshly grated Pecorino-Romano cheese

Method

1. Start the pasta water, and heat olive oil in large sautee pan over medium high heat.
2. Cook bacon or pancetta in oil, stirring occasionally, until crispy, 6-8 minutes at least. Remove bacon from fat and reserve (leave the fat in the pan). Increase heat to high.
3. Take half of the tomatoes, lift them from the can, and squeeze them gently to remove as much liquid or seeds in them as you can. Add them to the oil in the pan, along with half of the onion, and cook over high heat until onions and tomatoes start to caramelize around the edges, stirring occasionally, 6-8 minutes.  I actually only stir the onions, and rather flip the tomatoes when they get browned.  The point is to let the caramelization of the sugars work its magic on the fruit and the bottom of the pan.
4. Add the remaining tomatoes with their juices, remaining onion, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and reserved bacon or pancetta, turn down the heat, and cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. When finished keep warm over very low heat.
5. Cook pasta according to package directions in salted water. Drain.
6. Toss pasta with sauce in pan over medium heat for a minute or so.
7. Serve toppped with a generous portion of the cheese.

Serves 4.

I picked this up at the airport bookstore on the way back from the More Light Presbyterians winter board meeting in Santa Fe. I like to find reading material at airports sometimes — the selection is limited, and sometimes I’ll find something that I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. I’m often suspicious of books on the bestseller list, which is probably a sign of my intellectual snobbery (I grew up in a trailer park and went to a public university, so go figure), and also tend to roll my eyes at books that tend to pander to the fluffy religiousity of some parts of the evangelical movement. So it seemed like I might be taking a chance on this book on Biblical history from the ABQ book mart.

This turns out to be a great read. Feiler, an American Jew, is interested in the relationship between the stories in the Bible, and the places where those stories took place, and the people who live there now. He has written two earlier books which look at Abraham and the first five books of the Bible, and the intersections between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This book focuses on the prophetic texts of the second half of Hebrew testament, and follows his journeys to Israel, Iraq, and Iran.

At times the book reads like a journalistic adventure yarn, other times like a starter course in old testament theology or biblical archeology. Himself a fairly secular Jew, Feiler encounters people with deep faith and a strong connection to the places where the live and the history of those places.

The moments that made the strongest impact on me are the contrasts between his preparations for leaving for Iraq and Iran, and what he finds in both places. Given the danger for an American Jew in Iraq, Feiler doesn’t take his wife with him, and pens a “If you’re reading this I’m probably dead” note which he hides in case he doesn’t return. His wife does accompany him to Iran, and they both fall in love with the land and the people there. I found these portions especially eye-opening, as much of the history of this part of the world is mostly unfamiliar to most Americans.

I’ve decided to read the rest of these, although I’m a contrarian so I’ll read them in reverse order.