Second Breakfast

This is Morgan’s first novel, and is something of a combination of “Sin City” and “Johnny Mnemonic”.

While the plot of the novel is something of a familiar detective structure, the central conceit of the book is that, in the future, human consciousness has become digital, and can be moved from body to body (the term in the book is “sleeve”).  While space travel is limited by the speed of light and familiar physics, information can be transmitted instantaneously.  So Takeshi Kovacs, sometime UN Envoy (think super-bad mercenary solider/enforcer/hitman) and now private citizen finds himself taken off of “the stack” (storage) to investigate the “murder” of an ultra-rich “Meth” (as in Methuselah) whose body (but not mind) was killed by someone unknown.

Things get complicated fast, and Kovacs starts getting shot at quickly and often as he unravels a complicated set of plots and plans.

A bit of sex and a lot of violence.  Not sure I enjoyed this deeply, but its not a bad summer read.  The “sleeve” notion is particularly disturbing and fascinating — bodies themselves become commodities, and you can wake up wearing someone else’s face, or someone can be walking around wearing yours.  The ultimate separation of body and soul, but you can live forever if you can afford it.  Utopia or dystopia: you decide.

As has been widely reported in the news, the Emerald Ash Borer, a species of beetle invasive to North America, has been devastating the ash tree stocks in the midwest, particularly in southeastern Michigan. Over the past few years, every spring has brought new signs of destruction as more and more ash trees succumb to the pest, whose larvae feed on the cambium area of the ash tree (between the bark and the hard wood), essentially girdling the tree as it cannot transport water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves.

Alan and I often commute together, and increasingly large stands of ash are dying along our drive on I-94 into Ann Arbor. The psychological effect is significant I think, as we both grew up in southern Michigan, and we’re pretty much used to seeing trees everywhere. We live near a town named in part for its abundance of leafy canopy. To see so many trees killed in such a short period of time is quite disturbing.

I can’t say I could have identified an ash tree prior to this infestation. Now the broom-like fan of its defoliated branches is all too familiar. Ash tend to thrive and outcompete other trees in marshy areas, so once a stand has been infested, the whole area dies. The picture above is a from a area west of Parker Road south of I-94 in Washtenaw County (click for the entire set).

The State of Michigan has imposed a quarantine on the movement of wood and related items to help limit the spread of the pest, but I fear that the ash could go the way of the elm did a few decades ago. More info at www.emeraldashborer.info.

This Mediterranean cousin to hummous has quickly become a favorite in our house.

The recipe calls for pomegranate molasses, which wasn’t something I could get easily, so I’m told “its not the same”, but I substituted some turbinado sugar and it was still fabulous.

Items

• 1 12oz jar roasted red peppers
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2/3 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted lightly if possible, chopped fine
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced and mashed with some 1/2 tsp salt
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses (or 1Tbsp turbinado sugar)
• 2 tsp toasted cumin seeds, ground fine (or 1-2 tsp powdered cumin, to taste)
• 2 Tbsp sweet paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried red pepper flakes (or to taste)
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Warm pita triangles for serving.
Method

1. Drain peppers from their liquid, and place in a food processor along with everything except the olive oil.
2. Process until uniform and well-combined, and then drizzle in the olive oil until you have a thick sauce.

This improves with time in the fridge (keep covered).  Serve at room temperature with warm bread, or use as a sauce for meat or even pasta.

The husband and I have decided to unplug from the news for a month. No CNN in the morning, no drive-time NPR. No perusing news blogs in an effort to stay informed, keep up, or remain in the know. No more Tivo’ed Daily Show during dinner, or Colbert after dinner is cleaned up.
The news is, frankly, depressing. And its making us cynical.

It started with, innocently enough, the alarm clock. The 7am radio alarm would come on, and Carl Kasell’s reassuring voice would tally the number of dead and wounded in Baghdad that day. Of course by now we’ve all become somewhat numbed to the daily body count, so its easy not to really “hear” the thing, but it has a subtle (or not so subtle) effect if that’s the first thing you hear in the day.

Then I decided that I couldn’t listen to the news on the way into work, so we switched to Sirius “First Wave” (oldies for Gen-Xers), and reserved the drive-time news for the evening commute home (we drive together most days). I just find that, given the preponderance of really bad news these days, it makes me anxious and angry and frustrated to listen to so many really bad things that, frankly, I can do little or nothing about.

The proverbial last straw was last week’s assertion by Tricky-Dick Cheney that the Vice President doesn’t work for the Executive Branch. While laughable, it illustrates an administration that has zero regard for the intelligence of the public, holds utter contempt for the fundamental principles of the Republic, and is obsessed only with its own power and reactionary agenda. Our usual news venues were either as dumbfounded as anyone else, or had the obvious satirical responses. But boy, the knot of impotent and cynical anger that put in my stomach hasn’t left for days.

So we’ve had enough, at least for July.

Of course I feel guilty. I feel like its my duty to stay informed, so I can write my congressman, senator, governor, state rep, county commissioner, mayor, and zoning commissioner to voice my rage at whatever idiocy is being perpetrated on our country, state, and community this month. And its hard to get away from this stuff. Sit down to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning, and the remote, almost by itself, turns on CNN. It turns off just as easily though.

The world will do just fine without us for a month. Maybe we’ll do even better without it.