Peeking into the rock

I was complaining that online fashion historians were horribly vague about class and in fact seemed to be only talking about the aristocracy most of the time, and personheaddel_c suggested searching instead for images of people in the particular jobs I am interested in, in years that are equivalent to my story time.  Thanks to this strategy, I now know what those collars really look like when worn (as opposed to a Leyendecker Arrow Collar advertisement).  And also, I know that Albert Einstein went to Prague and attended intellectual gatherings with . . . Franz Kafka. That is very cool. Also, I found out about Einstein's assistant, Emil Nohel, the son of a Jewish farmer, previously a high school physics teacher, who lived to see his whole family killed by the Nazis, and himself as well.

I am experimenting with adding specific Central/Eastern European city names to the searches, but "Krakow" and "Prague" turn up a lot of Delacroix and Beveridge, which is not the end of the world but is really puzzling.  Delacroix is not even remotely in the time period.  But I guess it got the tag because elsewhere in the blog in question there was an article about Jaroslav Hašek (whose portrait might have been helpful except that it was only a head shot and showed nothing at all).

(irrelevant aside inspired by an illustration on a Kafka website: the german name Franz is the same as Frank and also František. My Frank doesn't like to be called František, as it sounds like a diminutive to him, and this caused a bit of friction in his Czech language class.  I like the sound of the name myself, but I have no need to call him that.  We never called him Frankie when he was little: we called him Franklin).

Another oddity I turned up was a mug shot for Menachim Begin when he was a mere terrorist and not a world-renowned statesman and architect of the policy of unrelenting war against Palestinians.  People don't remember that that whole generation of Israeli leaders got their start blowing up tourist hotels.  Aside: Einstein held out for a bicultural state, integrating Arabs and Jews, but most of his friends wouldn't even consider it. 

And also I found what looks like a real gem: the Ptak Science Books blog, which has articles about almost everything, it looks like.  I'm in danger of reading it all day.

Anyway, I think Yanek has to have a stiff collar and a ribbon tie.  Some of these folks are wearing a modern tie and a pointy folded-down collar, but I think that those are too modern for a conservative environment such as the one Yanek lives in.

Bingo.  I found the photo sleuth!

So last night was Live Music Night at folk dancing. It went well: the music was great, I got really sweaty, it felt good.'


However.

I was going to take a treat. People bring thigns to eat to Live Music Night. Usually sweets. Ellie brought "Mexican wedding cookies" (known to some of us as walnut balls, or possibly as Those (insert ethnicity) Christmas Cookies). I thought about makign sesame candy adn decided it's too messy for the occasion. Then I was going to make a pumpkin bread because I have cooked pumpkin. But I really really liked the dinosaur kale ("there's really something called dinosaur kale? Why?" Emma asked) and pea quiche thing I made the week before for my lunches. It's maybe more of a timbale or (Spanish) tortilla, or maybe like a breadless strata, I don't know: no crust, and the egg part is firm so you can eat it out of hand. So I figured I would make one out of what I had to hand. Which was cauliflower. So, cauliflower strata.

But . . . two and a half hours, and my always-slow oven had still not finished preheating and I thought I might smell gas. So I turned it off and determined to call PG&E in the morning after I got home from Dog Beach Saturday (except it was field not beach because the tide was so high there was no beach, which happens every so often, more likely around the full moon which it is about now). But as I was gathering my strength to start this task, I thought . . . I've had the stove for twenty years and it never worked right . . . I have four hundred dollars cash in my pocket from selling my telescopes to a nice guy from El Cerrito who wants to show his kids and his friend's cub scouts the wonders of the stars . . . I could get a new stove.

So, a new stove is coming Friday. It's the cheapest one at Sears that I could stand, and it was still over five hundred dollars after taxes. It's weird lookign, too. Who decided it was a good idea to put a black front and back on a stove with a white top and sides? What were they thinking? Do customers come in in droves demanding piebald cooking appliances? "Hey, we can't decide between white and black, so why don't we just split the difference?" Or what? There was no black one, it cost more for an all-white stove and I thought that since the nice fellow had insisted on black appliances, the black and white stove would look a little less weird anyway, so I'm getting a patchwork stove. Though it looks pretty damned weird.

I kind of thought that selling the telescopes was going to allow me to pay off my lawyer this month, but maybe-smelling gas kind of put that consideration first. And no, I can't do two things in one month.

one another front: Frank intends to go to the winter ball again this year. What's special about it: "We're going to the ball."

on yet another front: Neighborhood 99 is doing a literary lot design contest. Take any kind of house or community venue from any literary source and illustrate it with the Sims.

I was going to do Huckleberry Finn's raft and island, but I decided instead . . . Gregor Samsa's apartment from Metamorphosis. Without cockroach, but with narration.