kidzdoc's No Fluff Zone, Act 4

A view of some of the participants in yesterday's Women's March in Atlanta, taken in front of the state capitol building downtown. An estimated 60,000 people were in attendance, including several close friends of mine.




Currently reading:

    

1984 by George Orwell
We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known by Wole Soyinka

Completed books: (TBR = book acquired prior to 1/1/16)

January:
1. Nutshell by Ian McEwan
2. A Question of Power by Bessie Head TBR
3. The Assault by Harry Mulisch
4. Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verlhurst

Books acquired and purchased:

January:
1. The Lives of Things by José Saramago (1 Jan, Verso e-book ($1))
2. Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe by Charles Glass (1 Jan, Verso e-book ($1))
3. Human Acts by Han Kang (12 Jan, LT Early Reviewers ARC)
4. Attending Others: A Doctor's Education in Bodies and Words by Brian Volck (25 Jan, Kindle book ($9.99))
5. Miss Jane by Brad Watson (30 Jan, Kindle book ($12.89))

Classic 20th Century Novels from the African Diaspora

Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes
The Emigrants by George Lamming
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (re-read)
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt
Maps by Nuruddin Farah
Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
Native Son by Richard Wright
Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
A Question of Power by Bessie Head
Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau

Notable 21st Century Literature from the African Diaspora

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah
Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
The Drift Latitudes by Jamal Mahjoub
Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Juice! by Ishmael Reed
Ladivine by Marie NDiaye
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Pym by Mat Johnson
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction from the African Diaspora

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Beyond Black and White: From Civil Rights to Barack Obama by Manning Marable
Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
If They Come in the Morning … : Voices of Resistance, edited by Angela Y. Davis
In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture by K. Anthony Appiah
Known and Strange Things: Essays by Teju Cole
Letter to Jimmy by Alain Mabanckou
The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Alain Mabanckou
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City by William Julius Wilson
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis
Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Autobiographies, Biographies and Memoirs from the African Diaspora

Aké: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
Frantz Fanon: A Biography by David Macey
I Never Had it Made by Jackie Robinson
The Last Holiday: A Memoir by Gil Scott-Heron
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Mingus Speaks by John F. Goodman
Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim by Justin Gifford
Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

2017 Booker Prize longlist: TBD

2017 Man Booker International Prize longlist: TBA 3/17/14

2016 Booker Prize longlist:

Paul Beatty, The Sellout
J.M. Coetzee, The Schooldays of Jesus
A.L. Kennedy, Serious Sweet
Deborah Levy, Hot Milk
Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project
Ian McGuire, The North Water
David Means, Hystopia
Wyl Menmuir, The Many
Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen
Virginia Reeves, Work Like Any Other
Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton
David Szalay, All That Man Is
Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing

2016 Man Booker International Prize longlist:



José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola), A General Theory of Oblivion, translated by Daniel Hahn
Elena Ferrante (Italy), The Story of the Lost Child, translated by Ann Goldstein
Han Kang (South Korea), The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith
Maylis de Kerangal (France) The Heart: A Novel, translated by Jessica Moore
Eka Kurniawan (Indonesia), Man Tiger, translated by Labodalih Sembiring
Yan Lianke (China), The Four Books, translated by Carlos Rojas
Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo/Austria), Tram 83, translated by Roland Glasser
Raduan Nassar (Brazil), A Cup of Rage, translated by Stefan Tobler
Marie NDiaye (France), Ladivine, translated by Jordan Stump
Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan), Death by Water, translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm
Aki Ollikainen (Finland), White Hunger, translated by Emily Jeremiah & Fleur Jeremiah
Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), A Strangeness in My Mind, translated by Ekin Oklap
Robert Seethaler (Austria), A Whole Life, translated by Charlotte Collins

Iberian Literature and Nonfiction

A Bad End by Fernando Royuela
The Calligraphy of Dreams by Juan Marsé
Catalonia: A Cultural History by Michael Eaude
The Dolls' Room by Llorenç Villalonga
Fado Alexandrino by António Lobo Antunes
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
The History of Catalonia by F. Xavier Hernàndez
The Inquisitors' Manual by António Lobo Antunes
Life Embitters by Josep Pla
Monastery by Eduardo Halfon
Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga
Paris by Marcos Giralt Torrente
Private Life by Josep Maria de Sagarra
The Selected Stories of Mercé Rodoreda
The New Spaniards by John Hooper
Things Look Different in the Light by Medardo Fraile
The Yellow Rain by Julio Llamazares

Medicine, Illness and Public Health

AIDS at 30: A History by Victoria A. Harden
An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine by Howard Markel
Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby
Bedlam: London and Its Mad by Katharine Arnold
Death in a Small Package: A Short History of Anthrax by Susan D. Jones
Hope in Hell: Inside the World of Doctors Without Borders by Dan Bortolotti
Jonas Salk: A Life by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science by Douglas Starr
The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times by Barbara Taylor
Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine by Andrew Scull
Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors & Lunatics by Roy Porter
The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care by John Foot
Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder by David Healy
Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues by Martin J. Blaser, MD
The Price of Silence: A Mom's Perspective on Mental Illness by Liza Long
Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and Their Doctors by David Mendel
States of Mind: Experiences at the Edge of Consciousness by Wellcome Collection

The Rise of Populism and Related Current Affairs

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank
The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics by John B. Judis
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

Reading Globally

Quarter 1: Works by writers from the Benelux countries



The Assault by Harry Mulisch
The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans
Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon

Quarter 2: Travel writing by non-European and non-North American authors



The European Tribe by Caryl Phillips
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa
One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina

Quarter 3: Works by writers who write in what are considered minority languages within their own country

Quarter 4: Writers from the Scandinavian countries and associated territories

Voices of Color/Social Justice

Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots by Jonathan Curiel
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones
A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner
Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America by Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia
To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War by John Gibler
Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid by Joseph Nevins
The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, edited by Rubén G. Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
For the Muslims: Islamophobia in France by Edwy Plenel
The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla
A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America by Óscar Martínez
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen by Kwame Anthony Appiah
How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
Howard Zinn on Race by Howard Zinn
Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation by Ray Suarez
Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South by Mary E. Odem
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
The Mosaic of Islam: A Conversation with Perry Anderson by Suleiman Mourad
The Muslims Are Coming!: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundnani
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture by Hisham D. Aidi
Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties by Karen L. Ishizuka
Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques
Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones
We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness by Alice Walker
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam by John L. Esposito
Who Are We: And Should It Matter in the Twenty-First Century? by Gary Younge

2017 Wellcome Book Prize longlist:



How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (alternate title: The Heart: A Novel)
The Golden Age by Joan London
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

2016 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist:



Playthings by Alex Pheby
It's All in Your Head by Suzanne O'Sullivan
The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

2015 Wellcome Book Prize shortlist:



The Iceberg by Marion Coutts
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being by Alice Roberts
My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Planned books to read in January:

The Assault by Harry Mulisch
Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion by Linda Stratmann
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio (LT Early Reviewers book)
My Struggle: Book Three by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
A Question of Power by Bessie Head

Here's a photo of my version of Emeril Lagasse's Homemade Chicken and Vegetable Soup:



INGREDIENTS:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 chicken (3 pounds) boned, skinned, and visible fat removed, breast meat diced, (save the bones and carcass)
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
4 bay leaves
5 cups assorted chopped fresh vegetables, such as green beans, zucchini, yellow squash,tomatoes,and bell peppers small dice
1 1/2 cups torn spinach leaves, cleaned and stemmed
Pinch crushed red pepper
3 quarts chicken stock
1 pound assorted small dried pasta shapes, such as stars, tubes, shells, etc.

DIRECTIONS:

In a large sauce pot, heat the olive oil. Season the chicken bones, thighs and wings with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, add the chicken bones thighs and wings and sauté for about 5 minutes, or until the meat and bones are brown. Add the onions, celery, carrots, green onions, garlic, parsley, basil, and bay leaves. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté the vegetables for 6 minutes until the vegetables have wilted. Add the stock and bring the liquid to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, uncovered, for about 40 minutes.

Add the chopped vegetables, spinach, and crushed red pepper and simmer for 15 minutes longer. Transfer the chicken bones to a baking sheet or platter and set aside to cool. Add the chicken breast meat and then add the pasta and cook for 10 minutes or until the pasta is tender and the breast meat is cooked all the way through. Re- season if necessary. Pull all of the meat off the chicken bones, thighs and wings and add it back to the pot. Serve hot. Ladle the soup into thermoses and seal tightly with the lid. Place a spoonful of the parsley into each bag and seal completely. At lunch time, garnish your soup with the parsley.
_______________________________________

I made several modifications to this recipe. I was too lazy didn't want to go to the trouble of deboning a whole chicken, so I used four chicken thighs, taking off the skin and leaving the bone in, and two boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead. I'm not particularly fond of string beans, so I used zucchini, butternut squash, sweet corn, tomatoes and a red bell pepper as chopped fresh vegetables, although the sweet corn was of the frozen variety. I had closer to seven cups of veggies instead of the five called for in the recipe. I used one pound of medium shells instead of a variety of pastas. I couldn't find fresh basil at Publix, so I used one tbsp of dried sweet basil instead. And, I realized that my large soup pot was too small to contain all of the soup, so I roughly split the soup between it and my Dutch oven, but after it was finished cooking the total amount barely fit into my large soup pot.

Admittedly, the recipe doesn't resemble the one in the photo found on Emeril's web page, especially because there is hardly any liquid in this "soup", which is closer to a moistened pasta than anything else. I thought about adding one or two additional quarts of chicken broth to the finished product, but I didn't want to dilute the taste of it, so I decided not to. As it stands I was able to get nine very full servings out of it, and using more stock would produce 12-14+ servings. This tastes fabulous, and I'll make this soup on a regular basis from now on.

Happy new thread, Darryl, I hope you are liking Madame Verona comes down the hill.

>12 kidzdoc: - Looks yummy!!! I can practically smell its aroma! :-)

Happy #4 Darryl.

>12 kidzdoc: Couldn't we add just a little bit of cilantro?

>13 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita. I haven't started Madame Verona yet, but hopefully I can get to it later this week or next week.

>14 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley. I heated up a bowl of it for dinner, and I can't call it a soup anymore, as the liquid had evaporated!



I checked the ingredients, as I thought I might have not used enough chicken broth, but other than the extra two cups of chopped vegetables I made it right. So, I'm going to call this Emeril's Chicken & Vegetable Pasta, and I would say it's now my favorite pasta dish!

>15 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I could have added cilantro instead of parsley, but I had planned to invite Amber for dinner and I didn't want to displease her.

>16 kidzdoc: Congrats on the new thread, Darryl!! The leftovers look even better than the original. Yum! Tonight we are going out for pizza, because my son got his first job! He is going to make the pizza for us at Bellagio's.

Happy new thread Darryl! As always, your threads are a wonderful place for food chatter! Great cilantro - carrot - onion discussion two threads ago. I love all three and thanks for the reminder that I need to start growing another batch of cilantro from seed. I have never had grits so have not comment to add on that particular topic. Someday when I am traveling through the American South I will make it a food item to try. ;-)

Excellent review of The Assault! Not my choice of read but excellent review.

Now, you mentioned Whole Foods (back somewhere on your previous thread) which caught my eye as they hav recently opened a store here in Victoria (just this past November). I wandered through the store the week after it opened and haven't been back since. It is a great store and they obviously carry a large selection of good quality products but I noticed as I roamed the aisles that the products I recognized were selling at a markup of 10-30% compared to what I pay to purchase the same products from the grocery store closer to home. They also don't appear to carry the products that I purchase from the local organic markets, which makes me wonder about the attraction of Whole Foods? Maybe I live in a unique environment where we already have ready access to over 8 grocery store chains, and 3 different organic food markets within a very small geographical area, which makes it important for retailers to remain price competitive. Will be curious to see how Whole Foods makes out when the store here hits its one year anniversary (Target pulled out after only 2.5 years).

Wishing you a wonderful week, Darryl.

Happy new thread!

>16 kidzdoc: Soup with pasta in it does that....it doesn't evaporate, just gets absorbed into the pasta. Beans do the same thing. Looks yummy!

>16 kidzdoc: We just call it stew at that point.

Happy new thread, Darryl. >16 kidzdoc: I think it looks more interesting as a pasta than as a soup.

>18 lkernagh: There are 3 Whole Foods stores in Vancouver - all in the more pricey areas of town. I think they are going for the upscale market.

Happy Sunday, Darryl! Happy New Thread. Thanks to you and Paul, I now have a copy of The Assault home from the library. The warbling paid off...

>22 msf59: Double teamed you, buddy. In fact I know Anita and, I think Diana also read it this month so it was a veritable tag team got you.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Darryl!

Happy new thread Darryl!

that soup/pasta dish looks great1 I will have to try it!

Congrats on the new thread, Darryl! Sitting here in Urban Boston in my apocalyptic and dystopian American Carnage. Can't wait for a HUUUGE improvement /heavy sarcasm.

Loving your pasta dish. That happens to me, too.

I'm behind so some comments from the last thread.

#193 - I've been meaning to try Emeril's 4 cheese mac & cheese for some time. Your thumbs up may give me the incentive to try it. I do have a question for you though. What do you do with all the leftovers? As a single person, I get tired of them before they are gone.

#233 - The homemade chicken and vegetable soup looks good too. I've been in a "soup" mood lately. That one looks filling, and looks like it would be diet-friendly!

Now for this thread:

>1 kidzdoc: I loved the color illustration for Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill and clicked through and read the description. Sadly our public library and TN Reads don't have it. It's not even available for suggestion on TN Reads. I'm adding it to my wish list though.

>12 kidzdoc: There's that soup here. Looks yummy!

>16 kidzdoc: Looks good in the pasta variety too.

>17 Berly: Thanks, Kim. I had this pasta/soup for lunch today, and it tasted great. It has just enough liquid to warrant using a spoon, altough eating it with a fork would also be fine.

How was the pizza that your son made for you?

>18 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori! I think this thread is more useful for recipes and food talk than books, as I've made more new recipes than the number of books I've read so far this year, and I have more threads than books read as well.

I wonder if there are any restaurants in Victoria or Vancouver that specialize in American Southern cuisine. If so you would probably be able to get good grits there; fish and grits and shrimp garlic cheddar chese grits are my two favorite versions of them, followed by simple grits topped with a cut up sunny side up egg, or plain grits with salt, pepper and butter.

The closest Whole Foods Market to me is, at most, a 10 minute drive awa. However, I rarely go there, and only if I'm looking for something that I can't buy at the two supermarket chains that are most prevalent here, Publix and Kroger. Neither has a great selection of seafood, though, and since I intend to eat more fish in the coming year I'll probably start going there, or to one of the nearby farmers' markets, more often.

>19 tangledthread: Thanks, tangledthread! I looked at the recipe for Emeril Lagasse's Homemade Chicken and Vegetable Soup Recipe on the Food Network web site (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/homemade-chicken-and-vegetable-soup-recipe.html0, and there is one notable difference: that recipe, unlike the one from Emeril's own web site, only calls for two cups of chopped fresh vegetables instead of the five cups mentioned in the recipe I used (and I had at least seven cups of vegetables). However, I like this recipe more as a moist pasta than a true soup, so even though it didn't turn out the way it was supposed to I like it even better.

>20 Morphidae: I'm not sure there is enough liquid to even call it a stew, Morphy! I would estimate that the soup had maybe one tablespoon (15 ml) worth of liquid, but even microwaved the pasta, chicken and vegetables were pleasantly moistened, and the chicken was very tender. I would still say that this is now my favorite pasta recipe that I've made, and I'll make it this way from now on.

>21 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. I'm with you; I think that recipe is much better as a pasta than it would have been as a soup, especially now that I've had two full servings of it.

All of the Whole Foods Markets I'm aware of in the US and London are in upscale neighborhoods and cities as well.

>22 msf59: Thanks, Mark! look forward to getting your take on The Assault.

Happy new thread!
Soup looks yummy even without the liquid!

Good looking dish and happy new thread, Darryl!

Yummy new thread, Darryl! Thanks for that fabulous chicken/vegetable/pasta recipe. I won't bother with whether it's soup, stew, or pasta dish....... I'll just make it and enjoy!
Also thank you for that great review of The Assault. I own another H. Mulisch, but I've never tried him. Now I expect I will.

>23 PaulCranswick: Certainly you, Anita and I all read and reviewed The Assault within a day or two of each other, Paul.

>24 drneutron:, >25 scaifea:, >26 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Jim, Amber and Rachel!

>27 torontoc: I'm very fond of this pasta/soup dish, Cyrel.

>28 michigantrumpet: Thanks, Marianne.

>29 thornton37814: What do you do with all the leftovers? As a single person, I get tired of them before they are gone.

Lori, my primary cooking goals are to prepare food for the coming work week, and to maintain a variety of foods that I can choose from for lunch at work and dinner, at work or at home. Once I started cooking on a regular basis I quickly realized that I couldn't make one meal at a time and have to eat the same thing for several days running, otherwise I would waste a lot of food. This weekend I made three dishes, the asparagus bacon quiche, the mac & cheese, and the chicken vegetable pasta. I also bought four salmon burgers from Publix, which only have to be heated in my toaster oven. So, at the moment I have...let's see...multiple servings of quiche, mac & cheese, chicken & vegetable pasta, jambalaya, Zuppa Toscana, Mexican tortilla casserole, two salmon burgers, North African stew, and carrot soup. I have 22 containers of frozen food in my freezer, at least four servings of quiche, plenty of mac & cheese, and other things in my refrigerator, freezer and cabinets that I could use to make other dishes, like chicken gnocchi soup or a variety of pasta dishes. So, I have enough ready made food to last at least two weeks already, and can choose from at least seven different entrées, based on what I'm in the mood for.

Whoa...how is it almost 11 pm already?! I've been drifting in and out of sleep, so I think I'll call it a night.

>18 lkernagh: The joking name for the chain is Whole Paycheck - yes, they're ridiculously expensive. They do, occasionally, have something that no other store has and I'm interested in - but so far, every time another supermarket in the area has picked it up very quickly and at a lower price. I also have access to a lot of natural grocery stores, farmers markets, etc - Whole Foods is actually one of the least convenient stores for me - about a 20 minute drive, passing several big natural groceries to get there (Berkeley Bowl, Sprouts...), and I have a couple stores in town (5-10 minutes away at most) that have nearly everything WF has. I don't think I've been to one in the past two-three years.

Darryl--Thanks for asking. We had a very nice time visiting at Jack's new job! He made us a large pizza, half Canadian Bacon and Half Veggie (onion, red peppers, artichoke and mushrooms). We timed it just right and he got to take his break with us and we save him a couple of slices. ; )

Hey...I started a President Obama Reading Challenge, spurred on by everyone leaving links to his reading lists on their threads. Come check it out!!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/247375

Great idea!

I'm hoping that we will continue to get news of what he is reading. After all, there won't be any competition from the current potus in that arena!

Chicken looks wonderful. I'm hoping to read more Mulisch after enjoying The Assault. Probably won't be for a while though as reading has slowed down somewhat!

Mmmm....salmon burgers. I make those from time to time...very tasty, even with canned salmon.

Hi Darrell, was thinking your thread had gone awfully quiet and then discovered you had started a new one. Hard to keep up around here! Emerils Chicken Soup looks like a keeper ... even as stew!

Congrats on your shiny new thread, Darryl.

Saw that there are 90 confirmed cases of Mumps in the Spokane WA school system. Thought you'd love this apparent misapprehension about public safety and health policies:

..."During an outbreak, the Spokane Regional Health District can order students and staff who aren’t vaccinated to stay home for 25 days. Every parent who signs a vaccine exemption form acknowledges this is what will happen if there’s an outbreak. Still, some parents are worried about the amount of school their kids are missing.

“It’s pretty frustrating due to the fact that this is our religious, medical, personal belief. He should not be an outcast. My son is not sick, he is very healthy and he should not be excluded,” one mom, who does not want to be identified, said."

>43 michigantrumpet: How can they not get it's because the District doesn't want them to get sick? How stupid can you be?

Darryl--Rough day yesterday? A no-show for you is rare...Hope all is well. : )

Well, I did not go to the PALS renewal course that I was signed up for, as I hadn't finished my progress and off service notes last night after a particularly long and painful day on service, and needed to spend a few hours this morning to complete them. Even if I had finished them I was in no shape to go to the course, as I was dog tired and had no desire or mental focus to deal with an all day course on my only day off this week. I'm the backup doctor tomorrow, and there is a good chance that I'll be needed to round on patients. I'm working this weekend, and the following weekend, although I will be off on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Fortunately I'll be able to take an online PALS renewal couse, which I have to do by the end of the month to keep from being suspended from seeing patients. Then again, I could use a week or two off to catch up on rest, so a suspension is enticing rather than threatening.

So, I'll pop in when I can, but I doubt I'll have the time or energy to do more than keep up on my thread, and maybe squeeze in one or two books between now and the end of the month. I'm working a lot of shifts in February, but I'll return to my regular work schedule in March, and if all goes well I'll be able to travel to London that month.

I'm still very groggy despite a long afternoon nap, so I apologize in advance for incoherent messages or missed replies.

>32 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle. I microwaved the pasta for lunch on Monday, and there was maybe 2-3 tsp of broth in it, just enough for me to choose to eat it with a spoon rather than a fork. I could add more broth to each container to make it more of a soup, but I like it the way it is.

>33 ronincats: Thanks, Roni!

>34 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy. If you do try the recipe please let us know how it turns out.

I would highly recommend The Assault to you and everyone else, especially considering that it has received high praise from so many LTers, including Anita, Bianca, Caroline, Paul and myself. Which other book of his do you own?

>36 jjmcgaffey: Same here, more or less. I don't go to Whole Foods more than twice a year, even though there is one very close by, and it's possibly been as long as 18 months since my last visit there. I do want to buy seafood for the amazing fish stew recipe that Caroline posted a few weeks ago, and I'm tempted to go to Whole Foods, although I suspect that I'll go to one of the farmers' markets instead.

>37 Berly: I'm glad that you had a nice dinner with your family, Kim!

Thanks for mentioning the President Obama reading challenge. I'll look at it, and see if I can match my currently full reading plans with it.

>38 tangledthread: I hope so, too. I suspect that the majority of trump's reading will consist of looking at his own tweets, and admiring himself for being the "smart person" who wrote them.

>39 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I'm very fortunate that I remain very fond of chicken, even though I eat a lot of it. BTW, are there any non-vegetarians who dislike chicken? I can't think of a single person I know who eats meat and doesn't like it.

I assume that your reading has tailed off because you've started your new job.

>40 laytonwoman3rd: Publix sells fantastic salmon burgers, which are flavored with lemon and dill and have just enough filler to keep the huge chunks of fish in it together. Each one usually costs $3.99, and I bought four of them on Sunday. I'll have the last of them for dinner tonight.

>41 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. It will be much easier to keep up with this thread for at least the next week and a half, as I won't be online as much as I was earlier this month.

>46 kidzdoc: Good luck on that renewal course online. You only have 5 more days to complete it. I hope it goes well. The Association of Professional Genealogists is now requiring proof of continuing education at your annual renewal time. Fortunately it can be met with conferences, institutes, or even webinars.

>42 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara!

>43 michigantrumpet: Ah, the "logic" of the anti-vaxxers. I can only shake my head in bewilderment at them. I've given up trying to convince the (fortunately) few parents who refuse to vaccinate their children of the benefits of vaccination, for their children and other people who cannot receive vaccines or who are at risk for serious illness from vaccine preventable diseases. I would try to do so if I was in private practice, but I would tell those parents who adamantly refuse to vaccinate their kids to seek another provider, preferably in a different practice.

>44 Morphidae: Yep. Americans, taken as a whole, are shockingly science illiterate, which has more than a little to do with the reason why trump is our current POTUS.

>45 Berly: Thanks, Kim. I'm often not on LT when I'm on service, particularly during the busy work months, as I often only have time to work, make dinner, and finish my progress notes on the computer before I fall asleep, which was the case the past two days.

>50 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori. One of my partners took it recently, and she completed it in less than an hour. I'll probably do it on Friday or Monday.

>52 kidzdoc: That's not quite as bad as I feared it might be.

I hope your renewal course and exam are relatively painless, Darryl.

Wow, so we'll only expect one thread from you in February. ;) You'll breeze through that course. And that pasta is making me hungry!!! I bought stuff for ginger squash soup, so perhaps I'll be able to get to making something homemade tomorrow! And love seeing photos from the Women's March.

>49 kidzdoc: I think chicken is OK when it's cooked well, which is painfully rare. I have had some excellent, juicy chicken which was quite tasty - but I wouldn't choose to order it any place I had a choice, because so often it's dry, stringy and tasteless. I'd rather have fish - which can be dry, but is usually good - or red meat (beef/pork/lamb), which is tasty even if it's overcooked. I usually get the drumstick if we have turkey for a holiday meal, because the dark meat is slightly less likely to be too dry. So I guess I'm an oddity in your experience!

>49 kidzdoc: Mark doesn't like chicken, and he's not a vegetarian.

Meanwhile, I remain baffled by the idea that chicken breast is better (and more expensive) than dark meat.

I'm a dark meat person too. Especially the wings I'm getting for our Superbowl party! :)

Dark meat would definitely be my choice! I like chicken but only if it's cooked well and has a decent amount of sauce/gravy/other liquid to go with it. It wouldn't be my preferred meat, and I certainly don't understand the fascination with turkey. Goose is so much nicer for big celebrations (though also more expensive and with less meat on it). I enjoy duck, pheasant, partridge and other game birds over chicken too. I'm firmly on the red or dark meat side of the table.

Oh, no. that's not a good sign that you are looking at suspension as "enticing".

Mmmmmmmm chicken!

On an aside, as a Brit, I'm curious about whether Theresa May's visit to Washington is being covered in the American media? Is she being presented in a positive or negative way? I've noticed a few British new sources parading her as the first foreign leader to visit President Trump, but there seem to be quite a lot of people on social media who say she should do as the Mexican leader did, and refuse to visit.

I understand he's coming to the UK on a state visit later in the year, at the Queen's invitation. Hopefully he can sort out his attitude towards women before then.

>44 Morphidae: The thing is, they have to be *intentionally* illiterate. The information is there. The education is there. It's easily available. They are *choosing* to be illiterate. They are *refusing* the knowledge. And that I simply don't understand.

On the topic of immunizations: I received an email today from Charlie's school district that there are two confirmed cases of the Mumps at the high school here. They are strongly urging children who haven't been vaccinated to stay home for now, and the email said that even children who have been vaccinated are slightly at risk (the statistic cited was something like the vaccine being about 88% successful in preventing the illness). Gah. So now I'll be paranoidishly looking for symptoms in Charlie, even though he has been vaccinated. Yeesh.

#61
It was being covered, and then the Mexican Wall/Trade Feud dropped it from the top news spots. May's speech in Philadelphia seemed to have been positively received by the Republican party. I think her warnings about dropping NATO fell on deaf ears in Washington.

Happy weekend, Darryl. I hope it's not too busy.

The coverage I've seen is typical state-visit stuff: "here she is", a press conference, a photo op, Orange Hitler smiling at her and she at him, etc.

I saw on Facebook that you're planning to read 1984 for the first time. It's certainly apropos.

>57 _Zoe_: I'm with you, Zoe, regarding white versus dark meat of chicken. But my sister has roasted chicken breast in parchment and says it stays juicy and tender.

Interesting that you're planning to read 1984. Me too. I have tried it a couple of times in the past and never gotten very far, but maybe now I unfortunately have the impetus.

Checking in to report the lamb pasta was a success!

>12 kidzdoc: Finally, something I would eat. (smiling) Thinking of you and sending all good wishes for a wonderful 2017.

Much love to you! May 2017 be filled with magical books that take you to wonderful places.

I got home late Monday night from the ALA conference and then had to meet head-on the demands of a busy week. I hit Friday night exhausted. I spent most of yesterday napping and taking it easy. I did do grocery shopping as I am all out of something to eat. I did make a batch of honey whole wheat bread yesterday because I could let the Kitchenaid mixer do most of the work, and because, thank goodness, bread has to rise, so I could nap in my chair while waiting the hour-and-a-half for the first rise.

I am going to make turkey noodle soup today as I am in need of some comfort food that will freeze well.

>72 benitastrnad: Does your recipe call for a starter or is it something that can be made with ingredients on hand? I'm looking for a good whole wheat or whole grain bread recipe that doesn't require a starter.

>44 Morphidae: >51 kidzdoc: I read a lot about how science is communicated to the general public when I wrote a paper on climate change denial last year. A lot of people think that if science wasn't so exclusive (in that the language used actually excludes lay people from reading and understanding it), scientific information could be more easily accessed and understood by all. I agree with this completely. I was just right now writing on my own thread about a Will Self book I am reading, and how it uses many 'big' words, which serves to make parts of its meaning inaccessible too. I like precise articulation, but sometimes there can be too much of a good thing!

>74 LovingLit: I don't know. As much as I read, when it comes to anything having to do with science or medicine, I certainly consider myself a lay person. And I think most newspaper and popular magazine articles are aimed at lay people. Or are you talking about scientific papers?

It looks as if everyone will keep your thread warm without you!

>72 benitastrnad: I'd be interested in the recipe too - I'm just getting (re)started baking bread, and I love the honey whole wheat I buy. I'd love to make my own.

Hi Darryl. Just helping to keep your thread warm. Hope work is busy, but manageable.

The longlist for this year's Wellcome Book Prize, the British literary award that honors the best books about medicine, illness and health regardless of genre, was announced earlier today:

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (alternate title: The Heart: A Novel)
The Golden Age by Joan London
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant
The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

I've already read two of the longlisted books, When Breath Becomes Air and Mend the Living, and I had intended to read The Tidal Zone (which I already own), The Gene and Miss Jane. At first glance this longlist looks outstanding, and I'll try to read all 10 remaining books by the end of the year, starting with Miss Jane, which I just purchased as an Amazon Kindle e-book.

The Guardian: Wellcome book prize reveals longlist for 2017 award

Planned reads for February:

1984 by George Orwell
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Human Acts by Han Kang
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid

Fortunately this past three days weren't anywhere near as hectic as most of the past two months have been. I'm off today and tomorrow, then work Wednesday through Sunday. Next week I only have three backup shifts Wednesday through Friday, and if the census remains low it's possible that I may be off from work all week, which would be a welcome break, as I'm pooped. I can definitely feel my age at this time of the year, as I tend to get worn down by mid to late January, particularly since I don't sleep well when I'm on hospital service.

I still need to take the online PALS renewal course by tomorrow. I started it yesterday after I finished rounding on patients, thinking that I could finish it in an hour as my partner claimed. However, I realized that there was no way I could do that, and I'll probably need at least three or four hours to do so. I'm groggy and mentally fogged at the moment, so I'll probably wait until tomorrow to do it, unless I am much more alert this afternoon or evening. Instead, I'll try to finish Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill by Dimitri Verhulst today, which I'm reading for the Benelux Reading Globally challenge.

On the cooking front I think I'll try Jamie Oliver's Spanish omelette for dinner; the video is available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU3bn4UO8eE. I probably won't cook anything else until next Monday, as I fortunately have plenty of leftovers to last until then.

Today's Google Image honors the Japanese-American civil rights activist Fred Korematsu, who was born on this date in Oakland, California in 1919. Despite expressing his loyalty to the United States during World War II he was rejected for military service by the US Navy because of his race, and instead he was arrested for evading the government's order for all Americans of Japanese descent to report to assembly centers for imprisonment in internment camps after the United States declared war against Japan after the Pearl Harbor attacks. He sued the government in an attempt to gain his freedom, but the lower courts and ultimately the Supreme Court denied his case.

This quotation by Mr Korematsu is quite prescient, and I fear that we are entering a very dangerous time in our democracy.

Some great reads planned for February, Darryl. I loved Miss Jane, and I'm back and forth on The Underground Railroad, which I've read very mixed reviews on. I hope you enjoy the first as much as I did, and will look forward to your review of the second.

Excellent, I've got The Essex Serpent lined up on my Kindle and I received A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived for Christmas, so for once I'll be able to join in with comments on a couple of longlist reads, which is usually rare for me. Maybe I'll line them both up for reading in February.

And I've already read The Underground Railroad so I'll be interested to see your thoughts. I'm astonished that our reading is even vaguely overlapping!

Hope you wake up alert enough to manage to complete your PALS course.

#79
I have read some good reviews of Homo Deus and I know the author has already written a sequel because Suzanne got a copy of it at ALA-Midwinter.

#73 & 77
This recipe calls for yeast so it doesn't need a starter. I will try to bring it tomorrow. It is an old recipe I have used before. I do like it better with bread flour than with All-Purpose flour. I also added some vital wheat gluten, so the loaves got really puffy and light. I like my whole wheat bread a little heavier, but this recipe as a great crust. And of course, there is that honey flavor.

Thanks for posting the Wellcome long list, Darryl. I've only read Miss Jane which I enjoyed.
My game plan is to wait for the short list to begin reading the rest. You know how it goes, so many book blablabla!

Hiya, Darryl.

>82 kidzdoc: "Like". Truth.

Do you already have I Contain Multitudes? Last I knew, it was available as a Kindle bargain at $2.99.

>82 kidzdoc: - Wow. Well said and scarily prescient! We did not see that google doodle here in Canada, so thanks for that

>80 kidzdoc: - I just picked up the audiobook of The Underground Railroad from the library this morning and hope to get started on it soon.

>16 kidzdoc: Lurker alert!
I occasionally visit the 75ers when I'm caught up on the Category Challenge page and I like visiting your thread and hear about the books you read.
I'm visiting to give you a hint about cooking soups. Cook your noodles separately in lightly salted water and then add them to your soup. They will still absorb some flavor from your soup without sponging up all the delicious broth.

Yikes; I didn't realize how much catching up I had to do here! I'd best get on it, as I need to complete the PALS Renewal Course and take the online exam today.

I finished Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill, but I was mentally distracted after this weekend's shenanigans in Washington and wasn't able to get into the story. I've tentatively given it 2-1/2 stars, and since at least three LTers thought highly of it I may give it another go in the future.

I didn't make Jamie Oliver's Spanish omelette for dinner yesterday, but I'll give it a try today, either for lunch or dinner.

>53 thornton37814: My partner greatly underestimated the time required to take the PALS Renewal Course, but I have all day to do it, so that shouldn't be a problem.

>54 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. I've had to take this course every two years since I started residency in 1997. Let's see...wow. After I passed the initial two day course that year I've taken and passed the renewal course nine times since then. The recommendations change each year, though, and since my partners and I almost never participate in Code Blues, unlike the ER and ICU physicians, we have to learn most of this information all over again to be able to pass the exam (a score of 80% or higher is required).

>55 cammykitty: Ha! I may have more than one thread in February, but I doubt that I'll have four.

Taking the renewal course online should be much less anxiety ridden than taking it with a group of nervous physicians, respiratory therapists and nurses, particularly those who didn't study in advance and anxiously express their fear of not passing the exam to everyone around them.

How did your ginger squash soup turn out?

>56 jjmcgaffey: I think chicken is OK when it's cooked well, which is painfully rare.

I definitely cannot agree with that statement! My mother and father know how to cook chicken well, and I like the taste of the chicken I make in my recipes, as you can surely tell from the number of recipes I make that include chicken. I have had some overcooked and tasteless chicken, particularly in the hospital cafeteria, but most of the chicken I can acquire locally, including Chick-fil-A restaurants, are quite tasty.

I did come across a recipe for cooking boneless skinless chicken breasts a few years ago that I like. I coat them lightly on each side with olive oil, salt and pepper, and bake them at 450 F for 10 minutes on each side, 12 minutes for thick breasts. They are adequately cooked but are still moist and tender.

>57 _Zoe_: You married a chicken hater, Zoë?! Shameful!

I suspect that chicken breasts are more expensive than thighs because the former is healthier (more protein, and far less fat), and healthier is always more expensive.

>58 drneutron: Same here, Jim. I prefer dark meat, which is why I chose thighs in the excellent matzoh ball soup you shared with us.

I'm on call on Super Bowl Sunday, so I'll have to find out if the 3rd floor nurses are planning to bring in food, similar to what they do for the holidays, especially since the Atlanta Falcons will be playing. If so I may cook something fairly quick, possibly Emeril Lagasse's Macaroni & 4 Cheeses! One of the nurses "made" macaroni & cheese for Christmas, which was runny and tasteless. I suspect it may have been Kraft macaroni & cheese, or something similar. I think they will like Emeril's version much better.

>59 lunacat: Chicken breast has to be moist to be palatable to me, Jenny, whether in a sauce or liquid, or by itself.

I've never had goose, at least not to my knowledge, so I would like to try it. I love duck, though! I don't think I've had pheasant or partridge, but my favorite gumbo, the famed Death by Gumbo served by Restaurant R'evolution in New Orleans, is a quail gumbo stuffed with oysters and Andouille sausage. As the name implies, it is to die for.

You can see a video of Death by Gumbo here: http://www.eater.com/2016/12/2/13821014/revolution-death-by-gumbo-meat-show

>60 catarina1: True, catarina. At this time of year I'd accept anything that gives me a temporary break from clinical duty, though. Fortunately this weekend wasn't anywhere near as busy, and I had some very cute kids who brought me joy, particularly one beyond adorable 4 year old girl and her twin sister, who both had thick north Georgia accents: Say-um (Sam(antha)) and Bay-uth (Beth). I kept messing with them, calling one by the other's name, mainly to hear them say, "No! She's Bay-uth, I'm Say-um!" and vice versa. The two of them had their mother, grandfather, the nurses and I practically crying with laughter Saturday and Sunday.

>61 pokarekareana: Chicken lovers of the world, unite!

Theresa May's visit was covered reasonably well here, although it played second fiddle to trump's continued outrageous behavior and decisions.

I'm glad to see that the British are outraged over trump's executive order on Friday to ban citizens from seven countrires from entering the United States, which caused a firestorm here. I read that Parliament unaminously passed a motion put forward by Ed Milliband to condemn trump for this order, and that well over a million Britons have signed a petition opposing trump's upcoming visit to the United Kingdom.

>62 Morphidae: There seems to be a lot of "illiteracy" taking place in the United States at the moment: illiteracy toward vaccines, towards science, towards global warming, and, most disturbingly, towards the danger posed by the current potus.

>63 scaifea: I received an e-mail at work from the Georgia Department of Health about the mumps outbreak as a precautionary warning, although there hadn't been any reported cases in the state at that time. I assume that all health care providers received the same e-mail. We were reminded of the presenting symptoms, what tests should be ordered for suspected cases, and that any confirmed or suspected cases should be reported to the Health Department.

>64 benitastrnad: I didn't watch or read May's speech, as I'm still catching up with newspapers from last week. I know that the British press, at least The Guardian, were very disappointed by her performance here, and her apparent unwillingness to stand up to trump. I saw at least one vicious political cartoon portraying May and trump, which I won't post here for the sake of decency.

>65 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. Hopefully we've turned a corner and we'll finally see the early year lull that we usually have in January and February, but haven't had yet. I'm on call on Sunday, which is the day of the Super Bowl. The hometown Atlanta Falcons are playing the New England Patriots (a.k.a. Satan's Team, as the quarterback, head coach and owner are all friends of donald j. trump, and because the quarterback and head coach have faced fines and suspensions for repeated episodes of cheating). Hopefully this will make for a quiet work day, as families choose to manage their kids's illnesses at home instead of coming to the ER.

>66 RebaRelishesReading: Yep. The photos and video I saw showed May fawning over trump, which I found both nauseating and discouraging. Clearly she is an invertebrate creature.

>67 TadAD: Right, Tad. I saw the play based on 1984 at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2014, which was brilliant and chilling, and I bought the book shortly afterward.

>68 ffortsa: Hmm...I haven't yet used parchment paper to cook anything with. I'll have to keep that in mind.

>69 ursula: I've been eager to read 1984 since I saw the play in London, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

>70 lauralkeet: Excellent, Laura! I'm glad that you also liked the Mediterranean lamb & mushroom pasta. I'll make it again soon.

>71 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda!

>72 benitastrnad: Sounds good, Benita. How did your turkey noodle soup turn out?

>74 LovingLit: That's an excellent point, Megan. We are in an anti-elitist, anti-intellectual period in history in the Western world, and the use of difficult to grasp concepts and unfamiliar words won't go over well with many people within and outside of the United States.

>75 Morphidae: You may be a layperson, Morphy, but by being an avid reader you're also considerably advanced beyond the average person who doesn't read books, newspapers or magazines and obtains information about science from the media.

>76 elkiedee: Right, Luci! I appreciate the threadwarmers, who are always welcome here, as long as they treat me and my guests with respect.

>78 Berly: Thanks, Kim!

>83 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. Bonnie (@brenzi) also loved Miss Jane, and I think someone besides the two of you raved about it as well, either on LT or elsewhere.

Wow...I don't think I've seen any neutral or negative reviews of The Underground Railroad! I've read too many positive ones, both in this group, in Club Read, and in the media, and several of my book loving friends at work were very positive about it as well. Hopefully I'll have time to get to it in February.

>84 lunacat: What? Our planned reads are overlapping?! This can't be.

Neither The Essex Serpent nor A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is available in the US yet, so I'll plan to buy them when I travel to London later this year. My group's March work schedule is now up, and I have two weeks off from late March until early April. However, I'm reluctant to travel abroad at this point, given the extreme uncertainty in this country, so I may postpone my first trip to Europe until later this spring or summer, or possibly not travel outside the United States this year at all if conditions here continue to deteriorate. If that happens I'll order those books from The Book Depository.

>85 benitastrnad: I'm glad to hear that Homo Deus has been reviewed favorably, Benita. I'll probably read it over the summer.

>86 Carmenere: You're welcome, Lynda. The Wellcome Book Prize has nearly always chosen outstanding books for its shortlists and longlists, and from what I can tell so far this year is no exception. I'm pleased that a longlist of 12 books was chosen this year, after several years of only publishing a shortlist of six books, and I'm eager to get started on this year's longlist.

Because the Booker Prize longlist has been so disappointing the past few years I'm going to put a lesser priority on reading this year's longlist, and place a much greater priority on the Wellcome Book Prize longlist, both because the books chosen as finalists for the latter award are of much higher quality than the former (Me Cheeta? To Rise Again at a Decent Hour?! The Testament of Jessie Lamb???), and because they are far more relevant and interesting to me. And, after last year's regrettable choice, I think I'm done with the Nobel Prize in Literature for the time being.

>87 jnwelch: Hi, Joe! I'm glad that you also liked the quote by Paul Korematsu, which is as appropriate now as it's ever been. He died roughly a decade ago, so that statement had nothing to do with the current potus.

Speaking of which, I'm going to pay close attention to developments here before I commit to traveling abroad later this year. trump seems to be hell bent on antagonizing radical Islamic militants with his bizarre pronouncements, cabinet choices and executive orders, and I fear that terrorist incidents against Americans here and abroad will rise as a result of his irrational and immoral actions. I had intended to travel to London in March, but I'm having second thoughts about going then. Normally I'm not afraid of traveling abroad, but these are far different times than they were only two weeks ago.

Rats...I hadn't heard about the sale of the Kindle version of I Contain Multitudes, which is no longer valid. My undergraduate major was Microbiology, so I would have bought that book regardless of whether it made the Wellcome Book Prize longlist or not. I'll probably read it this spring, and hopefully the new indie bookstore that opened in Ponce City Market will have it in stock.

>88 jessibud2: You're welcome, Shelley. I hadn't heard of Paul Korematsu before, so I'm glad that Google chose to honor him, and I was happy to read about him and share what I learned.

I'm glad that you'll also be reading The Underground Railroad soon. Hopefully I can get to it in the second half of February.

>89 mamzel: Hi, mamzel! I'm glad that you decided to unlurk and say hello.

Thanks for your good suggestion. That was the first time I had cooked pasta within a soup or other recipe, instead of cooking it separately. I think I followed Emeril Lagasse's recipe as written, but since it turned out so differently than expected I'll have to go back to see what, if anything, I did wrong. Having said that, though, I like my version much better! I had some for dinner last night, and I added roughly half a cup of chicken broth to the container of "soup" I took from my freezer, which gave it just enough liquid to make it a very hearty stew. Either way it's a fabulous recipe (my mother would love this), and one that I'll make on a regular basis from now on.

I posted the following in reply to a message on my Club Read thread earlier this morning about one of the books I plan to read this month:

I saw 1984 on stage at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2014, which was brilliant and chilling, but I haven't read the book yet. I bought a copy of it in London that same year, which features the award winning Penguin cover with the words nearly completely blacked out; this photo of shows the words more than the actual cover does:



I've owned We Are All Moors for several years and it was one of the books I had intended to read in 2017, but this past weekend's events pushed it to the top of my list. I mentioned on my Facebook timeline that one of the second year pediatric residents who is working with us in the hospital this month cancelled her trip to visit her family in February, as Sudan is one of the seven countries whose citizens the trump administration has decided need to be temporarily barred from entering the country until they can be vetted with greater scrutiny. As it turns out, there is a Sudanese second year internal medicine resident in Brooklyn who visited his family and was prohibited from boarding a flight back to the US, even though he was here legally as a green card holder, similar to the resident I know.

trump’s Executive Order Strands Brooklyn Doctor in Sudan

I've barely started We Are All Moors, but its central thesis is "since the defeat of Islam in medieval Spain, minorities in the West have become, in some ways, reincarnations of the Moor, an enduring threat to Western civilization." These "new Moors" include Muslims in Europe and North America, and the Latino community in the US. Two of my physician partners are hijab wearing Muslims, and I fear for their safety, along with other Muslim friends of mine who live outside of Atlanta, particularly after this weekend's burning of a mosque in Texas and the massacre at a mosque in Québec by a far right wing trump supporter. I also fear that Latinos in the United States will experience considerably more harrassment and violence at the hands of white racists emboldened by the ascension of trump to the presidency, and that we in the US are under much greater risk of being the target of radical Islamic militants, thanks to trump's and bannon's apparent war on Islam.

I'm scared and very worried about the future of this country.

The following song, taken from Roberta Flack's amazing debut album First Take, is as relevant now as it was when it was recorded in 1969:

Tryin' Times: https://youtu.be/La8_flXOTrI

The whole thing is getting out of hand.

>94 kidzdoc: Good to hear that parents don't come to the ER with small fever and sneezing. Here too, sometimes parents are driving to the ER with minor issues. I hope you'll get some glimps of the game.

>100 kidzdoc: Jeez Louise, I can understand your reconsidering traveling to London in March, Darryl. I wonder how many other people are thinking twice about traveling abroad, given the recent Trump-ocities.

>100 kidzdoc: "I had intended to travel to London in March, but I'm having second thoughts about going then.

I'm sure this is part of Trump's end game as well - totally isolating the US - not only from people coming in but preventing people going out. The less worldly people are, the more they can be controlled.

>90 kidzdoc: I am sorry you didn't like Madame Verona, Darryl, I hope you can read it again someday without nasty political distractions.

>101 kidzdoc: I'm scared and very worried about the future of this country
I understand, but I hope not all hope is gone... (((hugs)))

Woo! I aced the PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) recertification exam, with a 90% score, even thought I was groggy when I took the test. That's the first job-related hurdle I'll have to jump over this year; I also have to renew my Georgia medical license by the end of March, re-apply for staff privileges to Children's this summer, and take the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) recertification examination by the end of the year.

>102 Ameise1: Actually, parents do bring their kids to our Emergency Department with minor issues that could easily wait until they see their pediatrician or family practitioner. Our ED has 12 Fast Track rooms that are manned by advanced practice providers (pediatric nurse practitioners and physician assistants) for these patients, and if a patient with a seemingly minor condition has something more serious that requires emergency care one of the ED physicians will assume care for the patient.

The Super Bowl starts at 6:30 pm, and I stop taking admissions from the ED and outside hospitals and clinics, and transfers from the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) at 8 pm, although my shift technically ends at 10 pm. We do have a television in one of the two call rooms in the office (each of which has a bed for the night doctors to sleep in if it's a quiet night), so I can watch the game there, in the Doctors' Lounge, in one of the Nurses' Break Rooms, or in an empty patient's room. Finding a television to watch the game will be the least of my problems on Sunday!

>103 jnwelch: Right, Joe. I assume that there are plans underway to launch terrorist strikes against the United States and Americans abroad by ISIS and other radical organizations, thanks to trump's antagonistic actions. I've all but completely decided to postpone my first trip abroad until April or later and make those two weeks into a staycation. I could use the time to start studying for my ABP recertification exam, and to make sure that my continuing medical education (CME) credits are up to date for my upcoming state medical license renewal. Georgia requires physicians and, I think, advanced practice providers to have 40 hours of CME every two years. I may have that amount already, but I need to check.

>104 Morphidae: Until this week I was of the mind that trump was an idiot. However, I'm becoming more convinced that he may not be just a "smart person", as he claims, but also an evil one who knows exactly what he is doing, with his even more sinister white nationalist henchman Steve Bannon guiding him every step of the way. The news that trump has chosen Bannon as a member of the National Security Council, and demoted the director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is possibly the most frightening thing that he has done since he took office less than two weeks ago. We'll all have to pay close attention to trump and his associates, and not fall for "head fakes", as one chilling article mentioned this weekend.

>105 FAMeulstee: I was far too distracted to be able to enjoy Madame Verona, Anita, both by the frightening events taking place in this country, and by my desire to start reading 1984 and We Are All Moors ASAP.

Thanks for the hug. You're right, all hope is not gone, so long as decent and moral Americans fight back against this fascist regime.

#73 & #77

Here is the recipe I used. It comes from King Arthur Flour - one of my favorite sources for recipes, flour, and baking materials.

Classic Whole Wheat Bread

1 to 1 1/8 cups lukewarm water*
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey, molasses, or maple syrup
3 1/2 cups King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour, Organic White Whole Wheat Flour, or Premium 100% Whole Wheat Flour
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast, or 1 packet active dry yeast dissolved in 2 tablespoons of the water in the recipe
1/4 cup Baker's Special Dry Milk or nonfat dried milk
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
*Use the greater amount in winter or in a dry climate; the lesser amount in summer or a humid climate.
Instructions
In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and stir until the dough starts to leave the sides of the bowl. For easiest, most effective kneading, let the dough rest for 20 to 30 minutes in the bowl; this gives the flour a chance to absorb some of the liquid, and the bran to soften. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased surface, oil your hands, and knead it for 6 to 8 minutes, or until it begins to become smooth and supple. (You may also knead this dough in an electric mixer or food processor, or in a bread machine programmed for "dough" or "manual.") Note: This dough should be soft, yet still firm enough to knead. Adjust its consistency with additional water or flour, if necessary.
Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl or large measuring cup, cover it, and allow the dough to rise till puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 to 2 hours, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled work surface, and shape it into an 8" log. Place the log in a lightly greased 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan, cover the pan loosely with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the bread to rise for about 1 to 2 hours, or till the center has crowned about 1" above the rim of the pan. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.
Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, tenting it lightly with aluminum foil after 20 minutes to prevent over-browning. The finished loaf will register 190°F on an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center.
Remove the bread from the oven, and turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool. If desired, rub the crust with a stick of butter; this will yield a soft, flavorful crust. Cool completely before slicing. Store the bread in a plastic bag at room temperature.

TIPS FROM OUR BAKERS
Why the range of water in the dough? A lot depends on the weather, the season, and how you measure flour. You'll need the lesser amount of water in the summer; or when it's humid/stormy; if you measure flour by weight; or if you sprinkle your flour into the measuring cup, then level it off. You'll need the greater amount of water in winter; when it's dry out, and the humidity is low; or if you measure flour by dipping your cup into the canister, then leveling it off.
The liquid sweetener you choose makes a difference. Molasses produces the darkest loaf, one with old-fashioned flavor. Honey yields a lighter, milder loaf. Maple syrup makes a less-sweet loaf — unless you use real maple syrup, in which case it'll be similar to a loaf made with honey, albeit with a faint hint of maple.
If you're someone who tends to taste whole wheat as somewhat bitter, try substituting 1/4 cup of orange juice for 1/4 cup of the water in this recipe. A bit of orange juice tones down whole wheat's somewhat tannic taste.

I used King Arthur Premium 100% Whole Wheat Flour in this recipe and the honey. I also used 2 tablespoons of Vital Wheat Gluten in the recipe. This gives a nice fluffy loaf that is more like bread that can be purchased at any grocery bakery. If you want a truly classic wheat bread don't use the vital wheat gluten.

>107 benitastrnad: Thanks for the recipe.

>106 kidzdoc: congratulations on aceing the PALS Darryl.

>106 kidzdoc: Congratulations! It must feel good to have that out of the way.

I'm sorry to hear you're planning to postpone traveling to Europe for the time being, but I can understand how vulnerable you might be feeling. I suspect that most Brits will be sympathetic rather than antagonistic towards you as an American at this time, but the risk of terrorist acts could well be higher here as well as in the US, thanks to Ms May's waffling. It sickens me that because of Brexit we apparently need to suck up to the Trump administration (oh how I hate typing that phrase) in order to get a good trade deal. It is truly terrifying to see how easily the checks and balances are being overridden - and that many people don't have a problem with it.

Yes, I am sorry that you are considering changing your travel plans.
You could visit Canada- Montreal has a big Chagall art show on and Toronto is my home town but the weather could be bad- rain or snow or just plain damp.

>110 Sakerfalcon: deep sigh in agreement with you there Claire.

I think you have got to do what you are most comfortable with Darryl. For me, I would avoid say Egypt (which I love), but would go to Paris, as its risk level is probably the same as London anyway, despite they have suffered more recently. I think if you have lived in London over the past 50 years, you will just pick yourself up and move on from the occasional extreme outbursts in the city, you have no choice if you remain here. It's harder to deal with if you have never had to.

Hi Darryll, delurking for a moment. You have lots of good things going on in your thread, despite the bad times. :(
Thanks for the link to the Wellcome Bookprize, very interesting.

Congratulations, and back to lurking;)

Hurrah for acing the PALS!

I'm disappointed (for you, and for me as I was planning on gatecrashing the next trip and bringing the boyfriend as I've been talking about LT a lot) that you're considering postponing the trip but I absolutely understand why. The boyfriend felt the same about going to Europe just after the Brexit vote but he said the trip was very genial, and just required a clear cut approach to making sure people knew he hadn't voted in favour of leaving as early as possible in any extended conversation.

I'm sure the read of 1984 will be both illuminating and terrifying in equal measure. I think as long as people keep standing up and doing the right thing, making it clear to the politicians that certain actions are reprehensible, and being as active as possible at being kind in their community and proactive in the things we ARE able to alter or have a say in, we might make it through. It is heartening to see how many people and governments are trying to fight the good fight, even though I'm feeling let down by May's feeble reaction to Trump.

>107 benitastrnad: Thanks! I love KAF, but I don't think I've seen this recipe (they have so many!). I'll try it. Though what they mean by maple syrup, if it's not real maple syrup, I have no idea. Mrs. Butterworths? I'll use the real thing, or honey, or molasses - I have all three and use them frequently.

>100 kidzdoc: There's a Twitter post I've seen a couple times - can't dig it up at the moment. A quote from an Iraqi, to an American in Iraq - along the lines of, "I always thought you Americans hated Muslims and wanted us out of your country, but thanks to the actions of your President Trump...now I know you like us and want us there, I've seen the protests." Which, of course, doesn't say anything about what ISIL may or may not be planning. But if Trump's stupidity manages _not_ to be a recruiting point for ISIL etc, yay.

>106 kidzdoc: Have you seen the (again, on Twitter - probably elsewhere too, but that's where I see it) posts from "Propane Jane", a psychiatrist, saying that Trump's behavior strongly indicates he's actually mentally unbalanced - suffering from narcissistic disorder? I don't disagree there's evil there, but I'm getting the impression it's not Trump - Bannon et al may be just using him as a puppet. A charismatic puppet, good at demagoguery - but he says what's put in his mouth, with his own spin.

I have real trouble believing this is real. Isn't it an Onion story? This stuff is so impossibly over the top - how can it be happening?

>106 kidzdoc: Wow, that's a lot of testing! I'm sure you'll pass all of them with flying colors but I'm sure it will be good to have it over with.

Congrats, Darryl, on the test score! We never had any doubt, ya know! :-)

>115 jjmcgaffey: - Yesterday, a friend of mine from Philadelphia sent me an email she received from her sister-in-law. Neither of those 2 are the type to usually send or forward such things but it was a copy of an article (or letter, not sure) that had been sent out by someone named Heather Richardson, a history professor from Boston College (I googled her and she certainly seems legit and accomplished and knowledgeable). Anyhow, what she was saying (apparently, she first posted this on facebook, and I'm paraphrasing here) was that from the events of the last few days, it has become increasingly apparent that this is the beginning of the slippery slope to a dictatorship in the USA. I don't want to spread fear, and certainly don't have the background knowledge in history, or US politics or any politics, actually, but her arguments (and she did lay them out in plain language) made sense. I wondered to myself if trump was actually smart enough to orchestrate such a movement (her phraseology was *a shock event* to distract from the hidden agenda) by himself. I didn't think so. But then, what you have just said, above, re Bannon and others using him as a pawn, does seem to jive with this, too. But is he that easily manipulated? I thought that he doesn't listen to anyone, takes *advice* from no one.

I am also not sure what is intended for the general population to do with this knowledge. But I do feel it's important that the more people can be accurately informed, the better. It's so important to learn from the mistakes of history. In WWII Germany, many German-born Jews, for instance, never thought for a moment that things could get nearly as bad for them even while they were indeed, getting bad (and worse). I think that, if nothing else, people have to be vigilant and prepared, and that includes getting educated. It's a new reality (if not an *alternate* reality) these days....

>117 jessibud2: "...of the slippery slope to a dictatorship in the USA."

So what in the world do we do? He and his people don't care about the people or demonstrations, no matter how massive. Don't care about the law. Don't care about the Constitution. Don't care about the truth. How do you stop someone like that?

>118 Morphidae:- I asked those same questions, when discussing this with my friend yesterday. I don't know the answers. I am not even American so know even less than most about such things. But, aside from how little he cares for anyone or any thing (other than himself), if he does indeed break any laws, wouldn't that be something that could be a starting point? I will have to go look up the word *impeachment* so I can get a more specific definition to help me understand that word. But why would he be dealt with any differently than any citizen who breaks a law?

>118 Morphidae: He and his people absolutely do care deeply about the demonstrations. They pretend they don't in public, but they do. And there are plenty of other people who notice as well. Harley-Davidson just cancelled his trip to visit their headquarters because they were worried about protests. Members of Congress are starting to oppose his nominations and proclamations because they are getting record numbers of phone calls from their constituents. It's in the administration's best interests to pretend that everything is fine and dandy, but it's day 12 and they have already been hit by dozens of lawsuits. The important actions to take now are to call your government representatives at all levels and let them know what you think, and get ready to vote!

I am starting to hear of boycotts from the arts, as well:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/linwood-barclay-us-travel-1.3960372

As Barclay says, it isn't as if he expects his decision to have an impact and he isn't suggesting that others follow. He just had to follow his conscience on this and do what he felt was right.

#115
It should be real maple syrup. I used honey and the bread was very good. In fact, I gave a container of the turkey soup and a loaf of the bread to friends of mine. When I looked at my phone this morning there was a text from him that he LOVED the soup and the bread was great. His wife e-mailed me today and said that she had to have the soup recipe. The soup recipe was from America's Test Kitchen. It was good soup, but I didn't think it was that good. I think that it is so rare when people make homemade soup that they forget the way it should taste.

Darryl, I think you should go to London as planned, just leave your "Make America Great Again" red cap at home ;-)

I'll be traveling to Bangkok in March for work and am debating about taking some vacation afterwards.

>121 jessibud2: I understand there are group of soccer fans in Vancouver who also plan to boycott any travel to the USA as well. I know some of the big tech companies in Vancouver are also seeing the Trump administration as a chance to attract more " brains" to Vancouver, as well as to our University. A lot of talented people come from the Trump travel ban countries.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3220806/vancouver-southsiders-wont-organize-trips-to-t...

I've only read When Breath Becomes Air and The Tidal Zone, so thanks for posting the listing for the Wellcome Book Prize. I would like to read How to Survive a Plague next I think.

Thanks for posting that thoughtful message. I don't think Trump is all that smart (or all that dumb either, for that matter) but he is mentally unbalanced and a consummate con man which makes him very dangerous. My fear about impeachment is that it would just further inflame his already angry-white-men supporters and could lead to some serious unrest. That said, perhaps that's what we'll have to do to survive as a democracy. We certainly do need to be mindful of the comparisons with the rise of dictators in the past and not let ourselves go down that slippery slope.

So sad, so angry, so worried...

Thanks for the list. I've read When Breath Becomes Air and The Gene: an Intimate History and really enjoyed them both.
Am currently reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and plan to read his Homo Deus sometime in the coming year.

Bellevue by David Oshinsky is waiting for me at the library....hope to swing by there later today.

Have a good weekend, Daryl.

Rachel Maddow reported on this positive event the other night. If Texas can respond like this, I do believe there is hope!

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/01/31/texas-capitol-rally-muslim-advocacy-day-...

Wow! Good on you Texas!!

>106 kidzdoc: Congratulations on doing so well on the PALs, Darryl. We do indeed live in concerning times. I heard someone here say that they cancelled their plan to visit the US because of fear of the new policies. It does seem like the plan is to isolate the US.

Darryl, not sure where you are. Hope you are ok.

I thought you might find this article interesting. I certainly did. It was written by Atul Gawande (author of Being Mortal). It's long but well worth the time. Parts of it, the way he brings in other, non-medical examples to illustrate a point, remind me also of the first book of his I ever read, The Checklist Manifesto.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/the-heroism-of-incremental-care

He really is a good writer, and a remarkable man. Don't know if you caught it on my thread, a couple of weeks ago, but I recently borrowed a dvd from the library. It was a one hour episode of a tv documentary featuring Gawande, and was, in essence, like an extra chapter for the book Being Mortal. I highly recommend it if your library has it.

>119 jessibud2: "why would he be dealt with any differently than any citizen who breaks a law?" There isn't a clear and definitive answer to this question, but basically, the President is the embodiment of our executive branch of government, and the executive branch of the government "executes" the law, hence the name. So, in essence, the question is "who can prosecute the Executive himself?". (I'm not talking about impeachment--that's a Congressional process to remove the President from office, not to prosecute him criminally.) This was extensively briefed and argued during Nixon's term, but there was never a judicial determination. So, it remains an open question as to what happens if a President commits a crime. (We know Nixon's take on it was, the President cannot commit a crime, because by definition if a President does something, it isn't criminal. I suspect the Current Occupant subscribes to the same philosophy.)

Google "What Happens if Trump ignores a judicial ruling"
I was surprised at the number of articles that were written over the past weekend.
Basically it leads to a constitutional crisis.

Sharing jessibud2's concern for you, Daryl. Especially since it is the season for respiratory issues and your asthma concerns.

>132 laytonwoman3rd:, >133 tangledthread: - Thanks for your input. I will continue to try to educate myself and (attempt to) understand what the heck is going on!

Darryl's been spotted around FB so hopefully it's only that he doesn't have enough time to write full length replies etc :). All seems as OK as it can be during such times, and from a quick skim of his FB wall - lots of proactive link sharing.

Yeah, I was wondering where he might have gone...

Thanks for the update....not on FB here.

>135 lunacat: - Oh good. I am not on facebook, either, so it's good to know he's out there!

So tired that he fell into a pot of soup he was making? Hope you can swim Darryl, and will be surfacing soon.

Sorry for my prolonged absence. I finished another busy work stretch on Sunday night (Super Bowl Sunday, which needless to say was a unbelievable let down for long term residents of Atlanta and fans of the local football team), and was off on Monday and Tuesday, but I was tired, a bit depressed (not about the football game), not feeling very sociable, and in continued dismay and shock at what is happening in Washington. I'm on back up call the next three days, and after I was certain on Tuesday night that I was going to be needed today I was surprised and very pleased to learn that I wasn't called in to see patients. Having three days off in a row, something I haven't had in a month, is highly invigorating, and it lifted my flagging spirits substantially. In the worst case scenario I'll work tomorrow and Friday, but if I'm lucky I'll be off until Monday.

I'm much better rested today and feeling much more productive. I'm about 1/3 of the way through We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities by Anouar Majid, which is very good and very relevant to the extreme Islamophobic policies of the trump administration. Hopefully I'll finish it today, so that I can resume reading 1984.

On the cooking front I've made two new recipes that I'm very fond of, Jamie Oliver's Open Spanish Omelette, the second of his four omelettes that I've tried, which I had for breakfast on Monday and Tuesday, and a simple but very tasty One Pot Garlic Parmesan Pasta, which I had for dinner yesterday. I made a midmorning run to Publix, since I haven't been there in over two weeks (as I worked the past two weekends), and bought ingredients to make two old recipes, the Mexican themed chicken matzoh ball soup that Jim introduced me to last year (thanks again, buddy!) and Moroccan lentil and vegetable stew, along with one new one that I'll make for dinner, Baked Greek Shrimp With Tomatoes and Feta, courtesy of The New York Times. I'm very eager to try the fish stew recipe that Deborah (@Cariola) posted on my second thread last month, so I'll go to Whole Foods later this week to buy seafood for it. Publix has a decent but not outstanding seafood department, unfortunately, but my closest Whole Foods Market is barely more than a mile from where I live.

Sorry to hear that you're so worne out. I hope you could relax a bit and won't be needed for the next two days.

>140 kidzdoc: Good to see ya, hon. Sorry about the Falcons. Did you get to see the halftime show? Lady Gaga was something else, wasn't she? Hope you enjoy your meals.

>107 benitastrnad:, >108 thornton37814: Thanks for posting the recipe to the Classic Whole Wheat Bread here, Benita! I'd like to give it a try as well, as I love freshly baked bread, and I'm highly eager to expand my cooking repertoire and try new reicipes. I'll probably make it in late March, now that I've decided to stay in Atlanta instead of traveling to London.

>109 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline!

>110 Sakerfalcon: Although I will be off from work for two weeks at the end of March I won't travel to London as I usually would, Claire. After this week I'll have another tough six weeks of work ahead, and if the winter season continues as it has so far I will be much better off recharging my battery and taking care of necessary business, i.e., accumulating sufficient continuing medical education credits to allow me to renew my Georgia medical license, studying for the American Board of Pediatrics recertification examination, and doing what is necessary to be sure that I'll be able to regain hospital privileges at Children's this summer. I should be able to use that time to accomplish all of those goals, so that nothing will be hanging over my head for the remainder of the year.

Hopefully I can visit London in April or May, although I won't know for certain until the work schedules for those months are published. After this month I'll have earned another vacation free month in June, which I'll spend in Europe, as usual. Although I haven't made any definite plans, I'm thinking of spending the first week in Amsterdam, the next week in the Basque Country (Bilbao and San Sebastián), and the remaining 1-1/2 to 2 weeks in Portugal (Coimbra, Porto and Lisbon) before I return to the (Dis)United States. Margaret, Fliss (and hopefully Rachael and Rupert, along with some of her friends) and I have already made reservations to go to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer (21-25 August, if I remember correctly), and I'll likely spend 1-2 weeks in London afterward. The 20th year reunion of my medical school class runs from 14-16 September in Pittsburgh, and this year's National Conference & Exhibition of the American Academy of Pediatrics takes place in Chicago from 15-19 September, so I'll probably fly to Pittsburgh on the 13th, see my classmates on the 14th, and fly to Chicago early the following morning for the AAP NCE, although I may skip the reunion altogether. So, it's entirely possible that I may only make one trip to London this year, although I hope that I can visit at least twice.

I and several of my American friends were very dismayed and disgusted by Theresa May's recent visit to the US, as we were hoping that she would stand up to trump and disavow his most extreme policies. I've been following what's been happening in the UK from a distance, as I've been reading selected articles from The Guardian online and, particularly, articles from Fliss, Rachael and Rupert that they post on Facebook, and the situation there seems nearly as dire as it is here.

Glad to see you here, Darryl.
May & Trump are like a worse version of Tatcher & Reagan in the 1980s :-(

>111 torontoc: Thanks, Cyrel. I'll definitely stay in Atlanta in late March and not travel anywhere, as I'm sure that I'll be gassed and there will be plenty for me to do here. I also need to renew my passport, which expires this summer. I wouldn't be able to travel to Europe on the current one, as it's less than six months from its expiration date.

>112 Caroline_McElwee: Although I would love to travel to London in March I would be much better off staying here, so that I can enjoy my European trips without anything hanging over my head. Hopefully I can make it there in the spring, but if not I'll visit in late August and early September.

Time for a nap...

I think you are very wise to have some time at home to recharge your batteries, especially as you still have an amazing amount planned throughout the year Darryl. And good to sort all the business practicalities out so you know you are done and can just enjoy your European leisure time then.

I too was disappointed in May, but not surprised, as we don't share politics. It seems British political leaders have an obsession with clinging onto US coat-tails, whether the US is being well led or not (thinking as much Bush/Blair here, as Thatcher/Reagan). I think on the whole though, the Brits will prove to be ante-Trump, and run some interference where possible.

I wish there were more ballsy Republicans to obstruct Trumps plans, they will live to regret not doing so.

Ha, we were writing at the same time, enjoy your nap.

Glad you're back with us. I was starting to get a little concerned! And I'm glad the matzo soup recipe is a fave for you. You certainly paid me back with the chicken mafe!

>143 kidzdoc: It definitely sounds like a good idea for you to rest up in March and recover from the gruelling work stretch, and make sure you are fit for travel later in the year. Maybe you will be able to get some reading done and try some new recipes!

Good to see you, Darryl. You have had such a busy, busy time. I'm glad to know you'll have some time off end of March to catch up on necessaries.

See that you've decided to stay domestic rather than opt for international travel in the next few months. Hoping this means you might fit in another trip Boston way. Lots of room for you here!

Welcome back. We've missed you. I know how much you enjoy travelling, but sometimes it is good to just relax at home.

>106 kidzdoc: late to the party here, but wanted to congratulate you on your exam results. I have not taken an exam in sooooo long. Im sure the pressure can affect results.

>143 kidzdoc: your domestic and international travel plans sound purposeful and well-planned. Im sure a spell at home will see you right in terms of what you send like you need to accomplish at work over the next while! And plus, you'll also get to do a lot of home cooking.

Those are a lot of heavy things that you have to accomplish this year, Darryl. It sounds like the best plan to get them out of the way first. It is also amazing how tasks pile up at home. I find that I need time off just to get caught up at least once a year.

Darryl--Glad to see you posting here. Your plan to stay local and take care of business sounds like a good one. It's a trade off for me: less travel photos (which means I don't get to live vicariously through you) but potentially more recipes (which make me immensely popular with my family)!! I still win!! ; )

Thinking about you down there in Orlando....oops, clearly I mean Atlanta. You know, they're all the same but whichever one didn't have any terrorist attacks. :-)

Happy Saturday, everyone! I did have to work Thursday and Friday, as my partners who were on call on Wednesday and Thursday admitted an obscene number of patients to our service, especially Thursday when the long call doctor received 10 admissions in less than an hour and 22 admissions in 3-1/2 hours, and the overnight crew set our new all time number of admissions, with 28 admissions between 8 pm and 7 am. That made for 50 admissions in 14+ hours! It takes us anywhere from 20-30 minutes for simple cases and 45-60+ minutes for complicated ones to complete an admission, so it was a hellish 24 hours for everyone involved in that onslaught. I wasn't on call yesterday, but I had a hectic and unnecessarily painful day, but fortunately I'm off this weekend after working the last two weekends, so I can relax the next two days.

I'll stay inside most of the day, even though it's supposed to be gorgeous outside, as I need to cook for the upcoming week. I'll make chicken matzoh ball soup shortly, and Moroccan lentil and vegetable soup this afternoon, and I'd like to give Deborah's fish stew a try tomorrow. I should be able to finish We Are All Moors by tomorrow as well.

I'll focus on catching up here, and if I have time I'll visit others' threads later today or tomorrow. I have a full work week next week, so I'll probably go back into hiding after Sunday night.

>113 EllaTim: Thanks for visiting and for your lovely compliment, EllaTim! I should be able to resume posting and regularly reading by the end of next month, but hopefully before then. I hope to get started on the Wellcome Book Prize longlist next week.

>114 lunacat: Thanks, Jenny. I definitely won't travel to London in March, more so because I need to catch up on rest and job related and personal requirements by the end of that month than because of the current political situation in the US. If I were to travel there I would likely be chronically tired after working a tough 6 week work stretch that lies ahead of me, and I'm not the most pleasant person to be around when that is the case, to put it mildly. I'll almost certainly travel to London before or after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in late August, so hopefully we can meet up then.

>115 jjmcgaffey: I haven't heard of or seen anything by "Propane Jane", Jennifer. I'm inundated with horrifying news about trump, President Bannon, and his minions as it is, so I'm not eager to search out more information about his idiocracy.

>116 RebaRelishesReading: Right, Reba. It may sound like a lot to do, but it isn't nearly as bad as it sounds, and as long as I put a bit of effort into it I shouldn't have any problem completing these requirements. I've already passed one of the recertification examinations conducted by the American Board of Pediatrics in 2009, after I passed the original certification exam in 2001, shortly after I finished my residency, and the exam wasn't that hard. I will need to do some review work, though, to ensure that I'm up to date with all of the latest recommendations and guidelines, especially ones that deal mainly with primary care pediatrics and not with the care of hospitalized children.

>117 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley! It was good to get the PALS recertification course out of the way, especially since I was facing a deadline of being suspended from the Children's medical staff if I didn't pass the exam. I think I'll take the course in the fall of 2018, so that this time pressure isn't hanging over my head in early 2019, during our busiest time of the year.

I and many of my fellow liberal friends here do fear that we may be heading into a dictatorship, where the rights of individuals, especially members of racial and religious minority groups and the LGBTQ+ community, are trampled, and information and facts are squelched by the current administration, including medical and scientific research. With any luck I won't have to work on Earth Day, April 22nd, as I would like to participate in the March for Science, either the one here in Atlanta or another one if I'm out of town.

>118 Morphidae: How do you stop someone like that?

I think there needs to be attacks on multiple fronts, by individuals, members of Congress, and the judiciary system. trump is apparently obsessed with his ratings, and is easily wounded by personal attacks (thank you, Saturday Night Live!), so we need to continue to ridicule him and his minions whenever they make gaffes, including this week, when Press Secretary Joseph Goebbels Sean Spicer repeatedly referred to the terrorist attack in Atlanta, when he "clearly" meant to refer to Orlando. The only terrorist attack that has occurred here in the past 25 years was the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, which was carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph, a far right wing racist white American male, who killed two people during the Olympic Games. As has been reported repeatedly in the past two weeks, toddlers and domestic terrorists kill far more people than foreign born ones do, and no one from the seven countries in trump's ill fated ban has killed anyone on American soil. There are considerably more deaths in the US caused by lightning and vending machines than foreign born terrorists, so I think trump would be far better off barring vending machines and jailing toddlers and far right wing white men than going after brown skinned people from other countries. Can we start by putting Steve Bannon in Guantanamo?

>119 jessibud2: It amazes me that I, as a physician, have to jump through far more hoops to be able to practice medicine in the US than a presidential candidate does to become the leader of the (formerly) free world. It seems as though anyone who wants to run for POTUS should know the US Constitution, the branches of government, and the most essential laws of this country, and be very knowledgeable about this country and other countries that are the most important to the US and to the world. I'm not convinced that trump could correctly select his anus from a random hole in the ground, and how we managed to choose him to become our next POTUS is completely beyond my comprehension, as is the fact that 53% of white women chose a creepy sexist pig who bragged about grabbing women's genitalia over an intelligent and strong female candidate. As I said previously I'm just a dumb black guy, so I'm obviously not smart enough to understand anything.

>120 norabelle414: Good points, Nora. Hitting him in his wallet is another key element to defeating, or at least defusing, Cheeto Jesus. Those companies who have expressed support of him, like Under Armour and Uber, need to be shunned, and those who have disavowed him or his unholy spawn or expressed support for refugees, like Chobani, Nordstrom, Starbucks and Target, should be supported even more.

>121 jessibud2: Thanks for posting that article about Linwood Barclay's decision to postpone his book tour to the US until the immoral travel ban had been lifted, Shelley. I liked his comment at the end of that article:

"Millions of us north and south of the border are looking ahead to the next four years and wondering what will we feel we have to do next to resist and fight back against what we feel are really unfair ideologically based decisions that are hateful."

That certainly applies to millions of us within the borders as well.

>122 benitastrnad: I think that it is so rare when people make homemade soup that they forget the way it should taste.

That's a sad comment, but I think you're right, Benita. It's so much easier to buy canned soup than to make it from scratch, and apparently the vast majority of the current generation of American teenagers and twentysomethings don't know how to do much in the kitchen, other than heat up microwaveable meals. I suspect that it's also cheaper and easier for people on limited incomes to buy canned soups than to make fresh ones from scratch. Fortunately, as I've said previously, my parents, particularly my father, frequently made soups when I was a kid, and it was easy to get fantastic soups in restaurants in Jersey City and NYC, so I was spoiled and only rarely bought canned soups as an adult. I can't think of the last time I had a can of Campbell's, Progresso or another soup for a meal...I probably haven't had any in the past four or five years, here, in my parents' house, or elsewhere.

>123 katiekrug: I won't go to London in March, Katie, as I have too many things that I would be better off doing in the last two weeks of late March to early April. I might make a quick trip to New Orleans or Charleston, though, and I'll definitely visit Europe in June and in August/September, at least.

One of my partners just came back from a vacation in Thailand, and she loved being there.

>124 vancouverdeb: A lot of talented people come from the Trump travel ban countries.

Right, Deborah; this includes thousands of physicians who practice in rural and underserved areas of the US, where few doctors like myself are willing or able to work. Many of those regions are infested with trump supporters, who would be faced with fewer health care options if foriegn born doctors are banned from practicing in the US, especially if the Affordable Care Act is overturned without a viable option.

I liked one meme that I saw on Facebook this week:

"They're stealing our jobs!"

Yes, Gary, you with your high school diploma. Muhammad the neurologist is stealing your job.

Speaking of soup, I think I'll take a nap now (I had to get up early to finish my off service notes before 8 am and can barely keep my eyes open), and make chicken matzoh ball soup for a late lunch. I'll pop back in later today or tomorrow.

>161 kidzdoc: both CNN and NPR have current stories about the immigration ban and rural doctors:

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/02/11/514399475/trump-travel-ban-s...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/10/news/economy/visa-ban-rural-doctor-shortage/

Soups are so easy to make, help to clean out the fridge, and are so much healthier than canned soups...especially on the sodium front.

Just bought a rice steamer yesterday and have been looking through the accompanying cookbook. Didn't realize it could be used for so much more than rice. Yum!

Hello, Darryl. I picked up twenty prestamped postcards at a PO run yesterday to send to both the good guys and the bad in Washington D. C., including our Commander in Tweet. It's an easy action.

My local PO says they are running out of the prestamped post cards.

>160 kidzdoc: 53% of white women who voted that is. And I'd like to know where you got that statistic. It seems awfully high to me considering every woman I know did not vote for him.

>161 kidzdoc: I'm all for prepared foods but soup isn't one of them. I think they have a nasty after taste. We make our our soup and the only thing we don't make ourselves is the stock. We get Swanson's broth.

Thanks for the information on rural doctors and the travel ban. Not something I thought of.

>164 Morphidae: The 53% white women statistic has been widely reported.

here by the NYT

and here with a look at all the statistics

The Guardian cites a CNN exit poll

It seems to be a well known, well reported and verified statistic.

>165 lunacat: Well... jeez. (Not the word I wanted to use.)

Yeah, that's a mind-boggler. How is that possible? It was one of the keys to his winning.

>166 Morphidae: Sorry. I just..........well, I knew it was a verifiable statistic so I thought I'd best share it................ :/

>161 kidzdoc: - If I am remembering correctly, wasn't Abraham Verghese one of those *foreign born* rural doctors, at the beginning of his career? His book The Tennis Partner told that story, didn't it?

I don't know about The Tennis Partner but My Own Country certainly was.

>170 Morphidae: - Oops, yes, that was the one I meant.

>165 lunacat: The 53% white women statistic has been widely reported. I find that statistic hard to believe. Repeating something many times aka "widely reported" doesn't make it true just an accepted statement.

Happy Sunday, Darryl. I hope your 'battery' gets recharge.

Happy Sunday morning, everyone! I slept quite a bit yesterday, especially since I'm fighting off a cold, which has so far remained mild. I didn't do any reading yesterday, but I did make a pot of chicken matzoh ball soup last night, although I didn't have any for dinner. I'll make a pot of Moroccan lentil & vegetable soup today, and since my back is acting up I'll probably take it easy and possibly stay inside again today, as I start another five day work week tomorrow. I'm supposed to have a third year pediatric resident from Emory working with me, so hopefully it will be a relatively easy work week.

>125 cameling: You're welcome, Caroline. The Wellcome Book Prize longlist looks like another good one. I bought The Tidal Zone last year, so I'll probably read it in March. I had planned to read Miss Jane this month, but I have yet to finish a book since late January, so that may end up being a March read as well.

>126 RebaRelishesReading: Well said, Reba. Unfortunately I think the best way to defeat trump and his arch conservative allies is for his supporters to realize that he has sold them a bad deal, and that they are far worse off under his administration than they were under Obama. That will likely entail a great deal of suffering, for these individuals and the country as a whole, but it may be necessary for real reforms to take place.

>127 tangledthread: You're welcome, tangledthread. I'm eager to read The Gene, as I thoroughly enjoyed Siddharta Mukherjee's first book, The Emperor of All Maladies. One of my partners owns Bellevue, so I'll either borrow her copy or buy my own.

>128 ronincats:, >129 RebaRelishesReading: I'm glad to hear that Austinites stood up for their Muslim neighbors. However I'm sure it woud have been a different story if Texas Muslim Capitol Day was held in a smaller and more conservative town outside of liberal Austin!

>130 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. It will be, um, interesting to see what changes are made by trump that affect travel to this country by those coming from abroad, whether they are citizens of this country or not. I saw a couple of frightening stories about proposed new requirements for those entering the US, but I suspect (or at least hope) that those were unfounded rumors, as I haven't seen anything mentioned about them in The New York Times so far.

>131 jessibud2: Thanks for mentioning that article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker, Shelley. I recently renewed my subscription to the magazine and I have that issue, but I haven't opened it yet. I'll try to get to it later today or sometime next week.

>132 laytonwoman3rd: Yep. I'm sure that trump views himself as above the law, after his repeated Tweets of Outrage by anyone who opposes him. I wonder if he's made any additional comments on Twitter after the latest episode of Saturday Night Live...no, nothing yet.

>133 tangledthread: I doubt (or, again, at least hope) that trump won't induce a constitutional crisis by opposing a decision by one of this country's high courts. However, I have no faith that the new US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (typing that made me nauseous) will provide more than a token opposition to trump on anything of significance.

>134 jessibud2: We'll all have to stay well educated and informed, Shelley!

>135 lunacat: Spot on, Jenny. I have been far more active on Facebook than on LT, as it's easier to keep up and read and post links there on my mobile phone if I have a few minutes of down time between seeing patients or before or after work than it is to post replies to messages here.

>136 drneutron:, >137 tangledthread:, >138 jessibud2:, >139 Caroline_McElwee: I'm back for the moment, although I suspect that my activity on LT will be limited to catching up with posts on my own thread on my days off until the second half of March.

>141 Ameise1: I was needed on Thursday and Friday, Barbara. The first day wasn't too bad, but Friday was very unpleasant. Hopefully Monday will be a much better day.

>142 Morphidae: I'm not a fan of the Falcons, Morphy, so I was only mildly disappointed by their monumental collapse in the Super Bowl. I was on call in the hospital on Sunday and was seeing patients and writing notes during most of the game, including the halftime show. I saw the last quarter and overtime after I got home, and I managed to see a few seconds of the interception that Tom Brady threw that was returned for a touchdown as I was putting on a protective gown and gloves before I saw a patient in the PICU.

>144 FAMeulstee: May & Trump are like a worse version of Thatcher & Reagan in the 1980s.

I agree, Anita! Hopefully the two of them won't be around as long, though.

>146 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. We are usually not very busy for most of the first quarter of the new year, which gives us a chance to recharge and do necessarily tasks after the busy holiday season. That hasn't happened so far this year. One major factor in our busyness is that our sister hospital on Emory University's campus has been full and on diversion for most of the past 4-5 months, and since we're larger and are able to expand by building up (we just opened a newly built wing on the fourth floor with 30 new beds the week before last) we are basically doing the work of two hospitals, with far less support than the other one does. The other hospital is fully stocked with residents and fellows, who do most of the work for the attending physicians, but my partners and I do nearly all of the work at our hospital, with little help from the residents, and there are very few fellows there. Fortunately the system announced on Thursday that the current children's hospital on Emory's campus will be replaced with a far larger one (500-600+ beds) that will open in the next six to eight years, I think. That will help tremendously, although it does nothing for us at the moment.

I'm still hopeful that we're nearing the end of this extremely busy stretch, although there still isn't any light at the end of the tunnel.

I would have hoped that the British Prime Minister would have been forceful in her opposition to trump's travel ban when she visited the US last month, but obviously that didn't happen.

>148 drneutron: Thanks, Jim. I put off making the chicken matzoh ball soup until last night, as I had no time to do so on Thursday or Friday, although I haven't tasted it yet. Oh...that reminds me; I need to post recipes and photos of the three new dishes I made earlier this week. I'll do that after I finish catching up.

>149 Sakerfalcon: Right, Claire. I've only read four books so far this year, and only one or two since the first week of January. I do want to look for good recipes in some of the cookbooks I've acquired lately, and my two week break in the second half of March would be a good time to do so.

>150 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy. I'll certainly have a regular presence on LT by the end of March, and hopefully before then. Apologizes in advance if I don't keep up with everyone else's threads between now and then.

>151 michigantrumpet: Thanks, Marianne. Hopefully I can squeeze in a trip to Boston sometime this year, although I definitely won't do so in March, and probably not before the summer.

>152 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori. I would love to go to London in March, but I'll be much better off staying here, although I am contemplating a quick trip to Charleston or New Orleans.

>153 LovingLit: Thanks, Megan! I suspect that my first trip abroad won't take place until the beginning of June, which is my vacation free month off from work. That will give me time to renew my passport.

Darryl, our Justin Trudeau is set to meet with trump in Washington tomorrow, for the first time. I'm sure you know that Trudeau and Obama had a special chemistry and excellent relationship. It's been a bit tense here, wondering and anticipating how the new regime will connect (not sure if there is any connection but I think the *honeymoon* may be over here in our country, with Trudeau, in recent weeks, but that's another story). One of Canada's most famous political cartoonist's, Aislin (aka Terry Mosher) has a cartoon today that I'm not so sure I understand. It just shows 2 hands in a handshake, one with an American flag cufflink and the other, with the Canadian flag. However, the Canadian hand is wearing what I take to be a blue surgical glove. Is he saying that he hopes we don't get *infected* by the new American regime? Aislin is usually very good at getting to the heart of any political matter and it's rare that I don't get him. What do you think? I will post a link here but it changes every day, obviously (and is shared by 3 or 4 other cartoonists, though Aislin is the best-known among them) so have a peek today if you can.

http://montrealgazette.com/tag/aislin-and-pascal-editorial-cartoons

>154 Familyhistorian: Right, Meg. Normally I can catch up on beginning of the year tasks in January and February, but this year I've barely been able to do more than catch up on sleep and do necessary chores at home.

>155 Berly: Thanks, Kim! Three new recipes are coming shortly, and possibly a fourth, as I think I'll try another of Jamie Oliver's omelette recipes for breakfast shortly. It's just past 7 am here, and since I bought a lot of groceries at Publix on Wednesday I won't need to go there this morning, as I usually would. Let's see...I've made his silky omelette and the open omelette, which I had for breakfast yesterday. The other two are a basic folded omelette with mushrooms and garlic, which is nothing special, and a frittata, which looks very nice, although I don't have all the ingredients I need to make it, especially ricotta cheese. I think I'll just have a bagel with cream cheese and a banana.

>156 TadAD: Ha! Hello from Orlanta, as Melissa McCarthy referred to it during her latest brilliant portrayal of Sean Spicer on SNL last night.

Morning, Darryl! Happy Sunday! Hope life is treating you well, along with those books.

I know you love your international literature, so I am sure you have read my current book, Silence. Not far in, but I can tell this is going to be very special.

Oh, yeah- I loved The Assault. Thanks to you and Paul for putting it, on my radar. What a good writer.

>162 tangledthread: Thanks for posting the links to those stories about immigrant physicians, particularly ones from the countries listed in trump's travel ban, who provide essential care to people in rural and underserved areas. There were two Perspective articles in The New England Journal of Medicine last week, along with this article in The New York Times, which I posted on my Facebook timeline a few days ago:

Trump’s Travel Ban, Aimed at Terrorists, Has Blocked Doctors

>163 streamsong: Well done, Janet!

>164 Morphidae: I see that Jenny has already answered your question, Morphy. The 53% figure came from a CNN exit poll, and other ones I've read have also shown that a majority of the white women who voted chose trump, by 53-54%, and only gave Clinton 42%. In comparison, 94% of African American women and 68% of Latinas voted for HRC. I haven't yet found a breakdown of Asian women voters, but Asians in general went for HRC 65%-29%, so I assume that at least 2/3 of Asian women chose Clinton.

Bottom line: if 2/3 of white women had voted for HRC, she would be our currrent president.

>165 lunacat: Thanks for stepping up and posting those links, Jenny. I had assumed that this statistic was well known, as it was widely reported in major media outlets in the US and abroad.

>166 Morphidae: Yep. I was shocked when I first saw that statistic, as were many of my partners, particularly the liberal white female ones. Nearly all of them were embarassed and outraged, particularly when they saw how decisively women of color went for Clinton, and several made vicious comments about their group that I can't repeat here!

For the record, the vast majority of the physicians in my group are quite liberal, along with a clear majority of the physicians and physician assistants, whereas most of the nurses and nurse practitioners are conservative and voted for trump. Many of the physicians are not native Southerners (my group has more Pennsylvanians than Georgians), whereas very few of the nurses grew up outside of the Deep South, where nearly all whites vote for Republican candidates, regardless of who is running or what they stand for. Lyndon Baines Johnson is reported to have said ”We have lost the South for a generation" after he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, referring to Southern whites who had loyally supported the Democratic Party up until then. The veracity of that statement is in doubt, but the truth of it has been proven, except that the South as a whole has been lost to Democrats for two generations, and probably at least three.

>167 jnwelch: Yeah, that's a mind-boggler. How is that possible? It was one of the keys to his winning.

There are multiple factors in trump's "victory" (although he lost the popular vote badly, and was only chosen by a minority (one third?) of registered voters), but if you had to choose only one IMO it would have to be the fact that white women only gave HRC 42% of their vote. From what I've read and can understand (as the reasons white women who chose trump gave don't make much sense to me other than conservative talking points that seem to be memorized more than created independently), these brainwashed Kool-Aid drinkers thought it was more important to limit immigration, support men like their husbands, and provide jobs and a decent standard of living to dying towns and regions in the middle of the country. They seemed to be highly distrustful of HRC, and, although it is shocking to me, they were somehow able to dismiss trump's misogynistic comments and behaviors and find him more trustworthy than Clinton (WTF???).

I and my liberal partners remain gobsmacked at this collective sellout; I think we all expected that the hypermacho and misogynistic trump would win the overwhelming support of white men, but we all thought that white women would come out decisively for HRC and give her a narrow victory. Unfortunately we were dead wrong, as were the prognosticators and pundits.

Ultimately these women who voted for trump, Stein or Johnson, or who didn't vote at all, sold out the women's rights movement IMO, and women of color are furious at white women as a whole for doing so. Now that Republicans are in charge of all branches of the national government, and since it's very possible that there will soon be a conservative majority on the Supreme Court once Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg step down (hang on, RBG!), there will likely be a significant regression of all the hard won rights that women earned over the past half century, including reproductive rights, work place protections and equal pay. This may be a cynical statement, but I'm left to conclude that those white women who voted for trump care more about their race than their gender as a whole, their bodies and freedoms as individuals, and the rights and futures of their sisters, daughters and granddaughters.

Stupidity. It all boils down to stupidity, that ANYONE could think that trump was the better choice. Not only white women (though clearly, their votes mattered greatly), but there were also minorities (Hispanics, many women, and others of his targeted groups) who voted Republican. It can only be stupidity, to not see him for who he is.

And I don't care how many times it's explained to me, I will NEVER understand the logic of a system that allows winning despite over 2 million fewer votes. Never

Chiming in at the women who voted for trump:
I recently realised that opressed search approval from those in power. So instead of working together to defeat those in power, or striving to equality, they fight eachother to get the attention of the powerfull.

I read a thought provoking essay earlier this week by Ali Tharrington, a white woman who voted for HRC and carried a sign reading "White Women Elected Trump" to the Women's March in Washington last month:

What happened when I took a “White Women Elected Trump” sign to the Women’s March

Here's a photo of Ms Tharrington carrying her sign during the March:

>169 jessibud2:, >170 Morphidae:, >171 jessibud2: My Own Country is Abraham Verghese's brilliant memoir about coming to the United States to practice medicine in east Tennessee (Johnson City, TN if I remember correctly), in a region that was mainly served by physicians who were born and trained abroad. I remember one comment from the book about the number of doctors who had the last name of Patel, and that anyone who discussed them would have to indicate their specialty, e.g., "GI Patel", "Neurology Patel", "Surgery Patel". Verghese was an infectious disease specialist, and he was practicing there when cases of AIDS began appearing in Appalachia in the 1980s. My Own Country is a fantastic book, and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

I own The Tennis Partner but I haven't read it yet; I need to, though! I think it's set in east Tennessee, but it's mainly about Verghese's relationship with a physician colleague who struggled with alcoholism and/or substance abuse.

>172 Familyhistorian: I find that statistic hard to believe. Repeating something many times aka "widely reported" doesn't make it true just an accepted statement.

That statistic is hard to accept and to understand for many of us, especially on the political left, but I've seen it reported repeatedly in numerous articles and polls (whether 53% or 54%), and I have yet to see a single piece of information that argues against it. If you find one, please let us know!

>173 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. I'm starting to have some mild back spasms, so I will take it easy and stay inside today.

>183 msf59: Hi, Mark! As I mentioned above I've been extremely busy at work since the beginning of the year, and have had no time to read. Hopefully I can finish We Are All Moors today, though.

I loved Silence, Shusaku Endo's masterpiece. I gave it 5 stars and wrote a lengthy review of it (1037 words!) on LT several years ago.

I'm glad that you also liked The Assault.

>186 DianaNL: Happy Sunday to you too, Diana!

>188 jessibud2: Stupidity. It all boils down to stupidity, that ANYONE could think that trump was the better choice. Not only white women (though clearly, their votes mattered greatly), but there were also minorities (Hispanics, many women, and others of his targeted groups) who voted Republican. It can only be stupidity, to not see him for who he is.

Spot on, Shelley. Although white women were, IMO, the main reason why trump was "elected" president there is plenty of blame to go around. People of color didn't go to the polls in the numbers that they did in 2008 and 2012, and trump gained a greater percentage of their vote than McCain did in 2008 and Romney did in 2012. Almost as astounding to me as the 53% white female vote is that 8% of African Americans chose trump! WTF were these dumb asses thinking? Roughly a quarter of Latinos and Asians also chose trump, despite his numerous racist and anti-immigrant comments and proposed policies.

I suppose that I could make a personal argument for choosing trump if I was selfishly thinking of myself and no one else, as the upper middle class, along with the upper class, may see their taxes cut significantly. Obviously I care much more about others who are less fortunate than me or at risk of having their rights or standards of living trampled under a far right presidential administration and Congress, though.

>189 FAMeulstee: Interesting comment, Anita. I did read one article that suggested that at least some women who voted for trump were impressed with his power and masculinity, even though they (presumably) were offended by his misogynistic comments. I don't think I'll ever understand what these women were thinking when they chose him.

>181 jessibud2: Sorry, Shelley; I missed seeing your post the first time around. Yes, it does look like a surgical glove, and the gloves that I wear when I encounter a patient with a contagious disease, so I'm left to make the same conclusion that you did.

>187 kidzdoc: Well said, Darryl. I still can't wrap my mind around it, but your description of the pro-Trump white women voters is the best I've seen. There are an awful lot of people that got us into this deplorable situation, many very predictable, but I sure didn't see that one coming.

>192 kidzdoc: I somehow missed that you loved Silence so much. With that, and Mark liking it, I'll move it up the WL.

Yep it is a bit confounding how women of any colour could have voted for trump but those with a penis didn't have much cause to do so either IMHO.

Good to see the judiciary is doing a job of frustrating him so far.

Have a great Sunday, Darryl.

Morning Darryl! Just trying to get caught up after a weekend offline. Hope your work week is light and your cold leaves you!

I hadn't read that article before and I was struck by the number of women who claimed "Hillary lies" and thought Trump was honest. Dear God, it does make me wonder about the ability of folks to make choices worthy of a democracy!

>190 kidzdoc: Indeed excellent and thought-provoking. In fact, I'm still mulling it over. One thing about the January 21 March that I found so heartening was that what was originally billed as a "women's march" became a demonstration of support for so many interrelated causes. Yes, women's reproductive rights were front and center, but so were the rights of immigrant women, poor women, children (one of the most poignant images I remember was a young girl, probably about 9 years old, holding a sign that said "I survived cancer and Mr. Trump just made me uninsurable"), women of color, queer and trans women.... It seemed like there was a perhaps new appreciation of the intersectionality of human rights.

In the past few weeks, as tensions have boiled on our campus subsequent to the inauguration and the presence of vitriol-spewing Milo Yiannopoulos and a related shooting (which did not end in death, but still...), I have found myself struggling with despair to go with my anger and fear. As Ms. Tharrington points out, we must translate the emotions into action. I have called my members of congress more in the past 3+ weeks than ever before and we have a stack of postcards and stamps at the ready. It was discouraging that all the calling about DeVos failed to have the impact it seemed like we were on the verge of having (and isn't it interesting that the one cabinet member who almost got blocked was the woman? - I don't know what exactly to make of that but it seems certain that there is irony imbedded within).

Anyway, thanks for posting the link to that article. I will add myself to the host of folks who are following her work. As a white woman, I found myself struggling a bit with her message (lord knows I did vote for HRC!), too. You know, feeling defensive. But it's the same as the conversation I had with my aunt in Tennessee back in November, when she expressed wonder at the notion that we white people should apologize for slavery -- I tried to explain to her that I didn't own slaves, either, but I clearly benefit from the legacy of the institution and the privilege that accrues to me based solely on the color of my skin. That is her point, I think (Tharrington's, not my aunt's). White women, as a group, sold out and opted to vote in solidarity with their race rather than their gender or the needs and plight of any other marginalized/oppressed group. And the policies and plans of this administration are likely to adversely affect me much less than they will adversely affect all those groups whom we sold down the river.

When I started writing this post, I had no idea I would write so much. I feel tempted to delete it and just leave a drive-by greeting, but I'll refrain from that impulse and leave my comment in the hope that it contributes to the discussion.

I hope you are feeling better soon, Darryl. I'm home my own self today with a horrible cold. It's just a cold but I do hate them.

I have read this latest series of posts with interest and regret. Regret because I don't have time to spend lingering and writing replies and encouragements to all my fellow book readers. Interest because I have alternatively laughed and cried at the wisdom expressed by my fellow LT'ers in dealing with the psychological fallout of this catastrophic watershed in the politics of our country.

To the person who said that white women voting for Trump could only be explained by the word "stupidity" - I laughed out loud at that statement. So true. Tragic and funny at the same time.

I think that all of us have to stay informed and involved in order to weather this hard time.

Apologizes in advance for my bitter comments from this weekend! Fortunately everyone here seems to have taken it in the spirit that I intended; those white women (the overwhelming majority of my friends in this group and on LT) who voted for Hillary Clinton have nothing to feel guilty or defensive about, and I certainly didn't intend to castigate any of you, or for that matter anyone who did stay home or voted for shomeone other than HRC. As you can tell I'm still angry about the election, even though it's been three months since Election Day, and that is because I love this country that has given so much to me and my family, and I remain very afraid and worried about what lies ahead of us all.

>194 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. My comments about white women voters were distilled from comments made by my female colleagues at work, and numerous articles written by women that I've read, so I don't claim that my statements were independent judgments, although the fact that so many women on the left feel this way lends credence to what I said, I think.

White women, IMO, were the wild card in this election. I and I assume many others had assumed that 2016 would be the year that white women decided the presidential election, and would cast a historic vote that would allow us to have our first women president. (I specifically denoted "white" women, as the percentage of women voters of color wasn't enough to make a difference; there aren't many black, Latino or Asian women voters in Wisconsin, Iowa or even Pennsylvania!) Well, they did make a difference, but unfortunately it was the opposite of most of us thought that it would be.

I am very fond of Shusaku Endo's work taken as a whole, but Silence was fantastic. Several of us read his novels during a quarter for one of the now defunct groups on LT, Author Theme Reads, I think.

>195 PaulCranswick: I can understand why a majority of white men voted for trump. Those who are in power want to preserve it for as long as possible, and if they feel threatened by minority groups, who will become a majority of eligible voters in the not too distant future, they will take steps to consolidate that power and limit the effects that the Others have. I expected that a majority of white women would align with their gender; instead, they seem to have sided with their race. As one commentator on CNN said after it was clear that trump had "won" the election, this result was, hopefully, the last gasp of white supremacy in the United States.

Hopefully the judiciary will continue to thwart trump's most egregious policies, although I fear that he will subvert the law to meet his most devious and immoral aims.

>196 ChelleBearss: Hi, Chelle! Today was a far less busy day at work, and it helped that I had a very good pediatric resident to share my patient load. She'll be working with me though Friday, so this week should be a much better one than the past weeks have been.

>197 RebaRelishesReading: Right, Reba. There are a disturbing number of Kool-Aid drinkers out there, male and female, who accept far right wing talking points as though they were the gospel truth. I have no idea how to relate to or convince people like that, or the anti-vaxxers who deflect any and all attempts to educate them on the benefits of vaccinating their children.

>198 EBT1002: Excellent post, Ellen; please do not delete it! I first read it on my mobile phone on the way home from work, and it certainly does add to the discussion. Forgive me from replying to it at the moment, as I'm struggling to stay awake after a very poor night's sleep last night.

>199 benitastrnad: Thanks for your comments as well, Benita. Hopefully I'll post a coherent reply tomorrow, once I get a good night's sleep...

>180 kidzdoc: That will give me time to renew my passport.
That reminds me, I need to renew mine! It has been out of date since quite a few years ago. When I realised it was expired I felt edgy, as have had valid passport since I was 7. But then I got used to the fact that me and a mortgage and young children meant that I needn't hurry. However, there might be an Australian trip coming up at some point. SO id better get on it.

>187 kidzdoc: Ultimately these women who voted for trump, Stein or Johnson, or who didn't vote at all, sold out the women's rights movement IMO
This is also my opinion. Of course, I'd add men to that list, even though it's out of context with your post. I guess people just took it as self-evident that women would vote for a woman.

Well, 63% of white men voted for Trump, so I think it's white people in general, and not especially white women who are the problem. The thing that annoys me is when folks complain that the D's shouldn't have focused on identity politics. Trump is the one who focused on identity: white identity.

>201 kidzdoc: I can understand why a majority of white men voted for trump. I only say that I can't but then I'm not American. In the U.K. I was very depressed by the following report last week, which confirmed what everyone believed, that the future course of the UK being decided by the people in society who have the lowest levels of education, with age being the second most important factor.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38762034

>200 kidzdoc: I expected that a majority of white women would align with their gender; instead, they seem to have sided with their race.

I don't have any particular insight since my wife, daughters and at least one sister (the other does not discuss politics) are not in favor of Trump or his policies in the slightest. However, I do live in a red county in a blue state and, not surprisingly, have a number of friends on both sides of this divide. The impression I get from the guarded conversations (as everyone tries to stay civil with each other) is that there is a serious misjudgment about what "America"—I use that term loosely—is most angry about. That misapprehension seems to drive a lot of the surprise that people didn't go in whatever direction was anticipated.

Somehow, a certain segment figured it out, capitalized on it...and voilà, Trump.

Interesting discussion here, unsurprisingly. I, too, am confounded by Trump's win and continued support... It's one of the reasons I am participating in the group reads of the books recommended by the NYT after the election. So far, I've finished The Unwinding and the impression I am left with from that one is that a large swath of people feel let down by both parties and so rallied around this idea of an "outsider" on non-Establishment figure (which Trump really isn't...). I am looking forward to the other books and to wrestling to understand what's going on. It's imperative to understand the problem so we can address it. To simply write off 62 million people as "stupid" isn't going to help or change a thing.

>187 kidzdoc: To me the most disheartening breakdown was on the divide in education in the electorate. While Clinton won the educated vote by a decent margin, Trump won the educated white vote 49% to 45%. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-...

This is astonishing and really disappointing to me. It is one thing for the less educated to be taken in by a con man but to have more people who have a college degree think that he was a better choice doesn't make sense to me. It is especially surprising to me given that my educated Republican friends all rejected Trump and either voted Democratic or didn't vote for President at all.

>200 kidzdoc: Also, I find it slightly consoling that people remain angry about the outcome. I continue to struggle with a white hot rage towards Trump and his supporters. I do not like how uncharitable and indifferent to their fates that it has made me.

"I expected that a majority of white women would align with their gender; instead, they seem to have sided with their race." I really don't think that explains it. I find the Current Occupant as reprehensible as anyone else does, and I did not vote for him. But I certainly didn't choose HRC over DJT because she was a woman. I would have been much happier with Joe Biden, for example. When Clinton lost the nomination to Obama in 2008, I was thrilled. It really minimizes the depth of the dissatisfaction with the status quo that brought about the situation we now find ourselves in to reduce it to black and white, or male and female. And as I know a fair number of people who did vote for DJT, I have to take exception to characterizing them all as "stupid". Short-sighted, yes. Hopeful that he might bring about changes that would help them despite knowing him to be a man they would never invite to dinner, yes. Deceived, no doubt. It's complicated, but I love many Republicans, and I know a lot of them struggled with the decision. I can't tell you how many people I know who declared they were going to "hold my nose and vote for Trump." Yup, they made the wrong decision, and the consequences aren't going to be pretty. But I don't think we've quite grasped the reasons for it yet.

I applaud the interesting and respectful tone of the many comments here.

I would point out that when we talk about XXX% of women or XXX% of men etc, we are talking of the percentage of THOSE WHO VOTED, not of the totality of the people in the US. I am still staggered by the number of people who either did not vote or who decided to cast a 'protest vote' for a third candidate.

Of those who did vote, let us not forget that HRC did win the popular vote by many million. The election was lost by some very close votes in a handful of states. Had just a couple of those states fallen the other way, I don't think we would be having this hand wringing discussion.

The extent of this navel-gazing, I think, is particularly liberal/leftist in nature. I don't recall any of my Republican friends engaging in such angst-driven displays of 'whither the conservative cause' after the 2008 or 2012 elections. They just doubled down on the obstructionism and waited out the storm.

Good discussion my friends.

A discouraging article on the News Hour tonight, involving two Texas cities offer a microcosm of the nation's deep political divide. Unfortunately, I can only get a link for the whole program, not just that article.

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365960463/

Happy Saturday, everyone! It's nearly 3 pm and I've just finished breakfast and am nearly done with my morning cup of coffee. I woke up early to finish off service notes from Friday, as I crashed at 9 pm last night, shortly after I arrived home (the pediatric resident working with me this week wasn't a top notch one, although she is very nice and will ultimately become a good pediatrician, so I had to do far more work than I normally would). I went back to sleep for what I thought would be a short nap, then woke up four hours later. I'm beat after another tough work week, and I could easily go back to sleep now, which I may do after I catch up here.

We continue to be insanely busy in the hospital, and those of you who follow me on Facebook probably saw my post about my hideous long call on Wednesday, when I and my partners admitted 22 patients in a little more than six hours, the worst one I've ever had (but not the worst one of the year in my group). The resident wasn't as much of a help as she should have been (although I do like her as a person); she only saw three of those patients, compared with the nine that I saw; my partners saw the rest of the kids. This has easily been the worst of the 18 winter seasons I've worked at Children's, and my partners and our specialist colleagues are all exhausted and, admittedly, pretty crabby as a result.

There hasn't been much movement on the reading front, and it's been roughly a month since I finished my last book. Hopefully I can finish We Are All Moors this weekend, although I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Although I decided to cancel my planned trip to London in March there is a good chance that I'll be off from work for all but the first week of April. My partner who makes the schedule mentioned to me and the group that we are well overstaffed for that month, and she originally offered the entire month off to someone who could take advantage of it, although she reneged slightly and said that the person who took her up on the offer would probably have to work the first week of April. I told Tracy that I would accept her offer if no one else did, since I'll be off for the entire month of June as usual, but if I do get it I'll likely travel to London then. I'll find out on Tuesday night, and I'll start making plans once I hear from her.

Oof. I am getting sleepy again, so I think I'll take another nap now, and catch up here later today or tomorrow.

Wow, I hope your schedule eases up soon. Sounds like you've been buried!

Darryl, these weeks have been brutal. I have seen your FB posts (although, as always, I take days at a time away from FB because it feels like a black hole into which I can so easily find myself magnetically pulled). I do hope it eases soon and that you are lucky enough to get all but the first week of April off, along with your June vacation. You certainly deserve it.

Just keep taking care of Darryl, along with your heroic care for the children who find their way to your shift.

I have been lurking more than posting recently. Hope things lighten up for you and the hospital Darryl, and that you get that long relaxing break to plan for in April.

Sounds like you have been incredibly busy and overworked lately. Hopefully you get some down time much before April!

Take care, you worked too hard during last few weeks.
Happy weekend, Darryl.

Thought some of you would like today's editorial in the Detroit Free Press titled Immigration is Our Wake Up Call.

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/02/18/editorial-immigrant-rou...

I baked bread yesterday and had my first flop of many years. I did Honey Whole Wheat but used a different recipe. It was a failure and that recipe will not be one that I use again.

I hope this is an encouragement to all of you would be bread-bakers. Even those of us who have baked for years have flops. This is especially true of bread because yeast is a living organism and sometimes it doesn't respond well to environmental conditions or to extraordinary manipulation such as was in the recipe I tried yesterday. As they say, live and learn.

It sounds like you have been through a trying time, Darryl. I hope it eases up soon.

Woo! Four days down, one day to go in this work week. Fortunately our census has decreased significantly this week, probably because this is spring break for most schoolkids in Georgia. We're still busy, but not insanely so, although my partners who were on call yesterday and today did have many more admissions that the team has had since Saturday. Hopefully we'll get a break next week, although I wouldn't bet the farm, or more than a dollar, on that happening.

For the past month there have been a lot of patients, either ones admitted to hospital or who were seen in one of the urgent care centers or emergency departments at Children's, who have tested positive for influenza (especially influenza A (H3N2)) or norovirus, a gastrointestinal virus that is highly contagious. I've seen well over a dozen patients this month who tested positive for either virus, but hopefully the prevalence of both viruses will decrease soon.

Although my group's April schedule hasn't been published yet it appears as though I'll only have to work the first seven days of the month, according to conversations I've had with my partners. If that ends up being the case I'll only work one week between March 20 and May 1, namely that first week of April. If that's the case I'll definitely travel to London in the second week of April, and stay there for at least two weeks. I'll keep my London area LT friends posted once I get more information.

I'm still zero for February on finishing any books, but hopefully I can get one or two done by this weekend.

Catching up...

>202 LovingLit: Sounds good, Megan. Although my passport doesn't expire until July 31 I'll have to renew it before I can travel to Europe, as those countries require that travelers' passports are valid for no less than six months from their expiration date. The vacation to Germany of one of my favorite nurses at Children's was temporarily put on hold last year, because her father's passport was due to expire in less than six months from their travel date. She tried to tell him that he needed to renew his passport before they left, but being a stubborn guy he told her that it wasn't necessary. He found out as he was checking in at ATL that he couldn't board the flight because his passport hadn't been renewed, and they had to postpone their vacation by several days until he could get a new one. Needless to say Katie was royally pissed off, especially since she told her father that he needed to renew it.

I guess people just took it as self-evident that women would vote for a woman.

I would have thought, clearly naïvely so, that white women would have recognized that their hard earned rights as women would be placed in severe jeopardy by a far right, highly misogynistic president. I and many other people were clearly wrong on this account.

>203 banjo123: Well, 63% of white men voted for trump, so I think it's white people in general, and not especially white women who are the problem.

I expected that white men would overwhelmingly favor trump, but I, again, naïvely, thought that white women, as a whole, would chose HRC over the p*ssy grabber in chief, as women of color did by at least 2:1. So I still credit white women as a whole for allowing the most misogynistic, xenophobic presidential candidate in American history to be elected POTUS. Well done, trump loving ladies; don't come crying to me and those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton when your rights and privileges are taken away by ultraconservative white men.

>204 SandDune: I feel likewise about small town and rural voters in the UK, who, from what I understand, were more likely to benefit from being members of the EU than those in more affluent areas of Great Britain. If they suffer as a result of Brexit then they have no one to blame but themselves, and I feel zero sympathy towards them and Americans who voted for trump when their standard of living plummets, as it almost certainly will.

>205 TadAD: The impression I get from the guarded conversations (as everyone tries to stay civil with each other) is that there is a serious misjudgment about what "America"—I use that term loosely—is most angry about. That misapprehension seems to drive a lot of the surprise that people didn't go in whatever direction was anticipated.

Right, Tad. There clearly is a huge amount of misunderstanding on both sides in this country, and many liberals like myself are extremely angry and are deeply hostile to the trump administration, and those who support him and his xenophobic policies. I've been in a constant state of anger and disbelief since Inauguration Day, as have many of my partners and like minded colleagues at work, and seemingly every day there is a new revelation that fans the flame of our collective outrage.

I and my partners of color have noticed that some white familes, especially ones from small towns and rural areas in Georgia, have been far more hostile to us in the months since trump was elected into office, including one father who wore a MAGA (Make America Great Again) cap and chastised any of the staff who didn't vote for Cheeto Jesus. I had to deal with a very hostile redneck father this morning, who clearly didn't want a n*gger taking care of his lovely white daughter. I returned his hostility with an equal degree of it, put him in his place, and told him what we would be doing for her, in a highly paternalistic manner that I would normally never use. He backed down, and I refused to shake his hand, or follow up in the afternoon as I did for the rest of my patients and their families.

I assume that there will be a continued increase in racist incidents against people of color and religious minorities by whites emboldened by their president, as has already happened against Muslims, Jews, and Latinos. I've become less friendly and more distrustful of people down here as a result, and these attitudes and incidents have firmly convinced me that the United States, or at least the Deep South, is no place for me to live after I retire, which will hopefully be in the next 5-10 years.

>206 katiekrug: To simply write off 62 million people as "stupid" isn't going to help or change a thing.

Good point, Katie. It's been hard for me to keep this in mind these past 4-5 weeks, given the daily horrors that have come from the White House, as I am intensely angry at those people who voted for trump or chose not to vote at all. I read an Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof in today's edition of The New York Times a couple of hours ago, on the metro ride home from the hospital, which spoke to your point:

Trump Voters Are Not the Enemy

I need to get started on The Unwinding, so that I can start to understand these 62-63 million Americans who voted for trump. At the moment my sympathy for them is close to zero, and my anger at them is at a white hot level.

>207 Oberon: It is one thing for the less educated to be taken in by a con man but to have more people who have a college degree think that he was a better choice doesn't make sense to me. It is especially surprising to me given that my educated Republican friends all rejected Trump and either voted Democratic or didn't vote for President at all.

Exactly, Erik. At least one of my partners, who happens to be one of my closest friends, almost certainly voted for Il Dunce, although the vast majority of them, including registered Republicans, chose Clinton, didn't vote, or chose one of the fringe candidates. She and I remain on excellent terms, although I have not discussed anything political with her in well over a year, as doing so would undoubtedly fracture our friendship permanently.

Also, I find it slightly consoling that people remain angry about the outcome. I continue to struggle with a white hot rage towards Trump and his supporters. I do not like how uncharitable and indifferent to their fates that it has made me.

I couldn't agree more. Many of my favorite patients and families, oddly enough, were poorer whites from small towns and rural areas in Georgia, and prior to Election Day I treated those families with a great deal of respect and affection. My attitude towards them has unfortunately changed, as I now view them with suspicion until they prove themselves to be decent people. I now prefer to care for children of civilized metro Atlanta families and families of color, rather than those who feel emboldened to act in a racist manner towards me. As a good Lutheran I hate that I feel this way, and that I've become very unfriendly towards whites who I view as hostile or threatening, but I don't feel comfortable letting my guard down at the present time.

I love "Il Dunce" as a play on Mussolini :)

ETA: Thanks for sharing that Kristof column. He makes several good points. Like you, I am finding it hard to see past the gut-level anger and concern, so it's good to have some cooler heads in the conversation.

>208 laytonwoman3rd: I'd like to think that you're right, Linda, but I still don't understand people like that at all, and why they could not see the danger that trump represents to our civilized democracy. I don't want to see anyone suffer as a result of his policies, but it will be hard for me to be sympathetic toward trump supporters who do, at least at the moment.

>209 michigantrumpet: I'm particularly disappointed at people of color, especially African Americans, who didn't vote or, astonishingly, voted for trump. Amazingly, 8% of AfrAms voted for Il Dunce last year, versus 6% who voted for Romney in 2012. I don't know a single African American person who wasn't anything other than intensely opposed to trump, or who are not as equally outraged as I am about the first few weeks of his presidency. Clearly there were huge numbers of closet trump supporters amongst people of color and white women that the prognosticators and pundits weren't able to uncover until Election Day.

>210 ronincats: Thanks, Roni. I didn't see that episode of the PBS NewsHour, but I'll try to view that particularly story this weekend.

>212 drneutron: All of us, including the hospitalists, ED physicians and specialists at Children's, and my friends in private practice, have been buried this year, Jim. This is easily the worst winter of the 18 that I've worked here, and most of us suspect that this is the new norm, rather than a blip. Our busyness is exacerbated by the departure of two of our core physicians, who chose to quit the group at the end of the year. We've been short staffed since January, and the ones of us who remain have had to work far more shifts than we normally would as a result. I've worked well over 100% of a full time equivalent since January (I normally work 80% of full time), and for this five week stretch I'm working 125% of full time. Fortunately I'll be done with this stretch in mid March, and my work schedule will become very pleasant from then until October or November.

>213 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. I need to take a break from Facebook, as it's only been stoking my anger, although reading The New York Times everyday is enough to maintain my outrage at trump's immoral policies.

Most work days it's all I can do to see patients as quickly as possible and finish my progress notes at home before I fall asleep, and weekends are spent catching up on sleep and doing necessary chores in preparation for the upcoming week. That has everything to do with my poor reading output since early January. Fortunately I can see a light at the end of this very dark tunnel, and hopefully my foul mood will improve once I emerge from it.

>214 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. Hopefully I'll find out in the next day or two what my April schedule will be, although my conversations with my partner this week make it all but completely certain that I'll be off from work for all but the first week of that month.

>215 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle. Other than weekends I won't have any breathing room between now and March 20, but hopefully our workload won't be as intense the next three weeks. I should have relatively smooth sailing after that, though.

>216 Ameise1: I think I'm a hard worker, Barbara, and I give everything I have to my patients and their families (at least the ones who treat me with the same respect that I give to them, which fortunately is the vast majority), but this winter has been taxing and emotionally exhausting for all of us. If next winter is as bad as this one I'll have to seriously consider how long I want to continue in my current position.

>217 tangledthread: Thanks for posting that article, tangledthread. I'm starting to feel very sleepy, so I'll look at it this weekend.

>218 benitastrnad: I'm sorry that your bread recipe didn't work out, Benita. We can't be successful all the time, even the best of us (which certainly doesn't include me), and some things are out our control and cannot be remedied, even with our best efforts.

>219 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. Fortunately I'm not on long call any day this week, although I've helped my partners who were on call with admissions the past two days, which made yesterday and today far more busy days than Monday and Tuesday were.

>223 katiekrug: I came up with "Il Dunce" independently, Katie, but a Google search will show that I'm not the only person who thought of it.

Like you, I am finding it hard to see past the gut-level anger and concern, so it's good to have some cooler heads in the conversation.

Right. I was steaming a bit when I read the Op-Ed page in today's NYT, but this article made me pause, at least temporarily, and not vilify or denigrate those Americans who did choose trump.

Very sleepy now...hopefully I'll check back in tomorrow after work.

>223 katiekrug: re "il dunce"--I saw him referred to on the internet as the Mango Mussolini, one of my favorite appellations so far.

Sorry you've been so inundated with work. I left a message for you on your profile page which I don't know if you've seen. I am going to London with two friends with whom I study art history in April. We would like to see something in the theater, but none of us is familiar with the London theater scene, and I wondered if you had any recommendations. We will be there the first week in April.

Glad to see you made it out of your intense period of work! Did you get/ are you getting any rest and rec?

>220 kidzdoc: I'm glad you've had a quieter spell at work and hope that the arrival of spring will see off some of these infections that have been bringing patients in.

Great news that you might be coming to London in April! I will be away in Devon from 18th-23rd, but around London the rest of the month. Hopefully we will be able to meet a couple of times at least.

>222 kidzdoc: I'm horrified and saddened to read of how you're being treated by some of the families you see at work. I remember you saying how very rarely you encountered racism so it's awful to see this change, and to think that the parents are passing on those attitudes to the children who you are trying to help. Discrimination of any sort is appalling, but in a situation where a child's health/life is at stake it's just unfathomable to me that the race/gender/whatever of the doctor who is there to help could be at the forefront of the parent's mind. There was a case reported soon after the Brexit vote where a patient went in for an x-ray and asked the technician "When are you going back where you came from?" How that technician resisted the urge to reply "Right now" and leave the patient stranded there I do not know. They are a stronger person than I. And so are you, for remaining patient and giving the children the best of your care, despite their parents' behaviour.

What a lovely stretch of days off you'll have! Enjoy

Ack! Sounds like you're being worked to the bone and bone tired.

>222 kidzdoc: This post makes me very sad, Darryl. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Another LT Jewish friend has posted about her fear, and that makes me indescribably sad, too.

I really enjoyed The Unwinding - it was very eye-opening. I enjoyed the background on some of the current Washington players. It's episodic so you can easily dip in and out during a busy schedule. I have the next one, Strangers in Their Own Land in hand to start next month.

I have one FB friend that I periodically unfollow because I can't read what she writes. But her husband has metastasized cancer and so I check periodically on her home page. How can we be so divided and going backwards?

Darryl, I'm bone tired just reading about your work schedule. So glad that you have some down time coming. It'll be great if you get to London again ... you're always so generous in taking all of us along!

*I'm back* Have just been trying to find the LT friend who read Mulisch's The Assault. I requested that my library order the book, and it did ... then I couldn't remember where I'd heard about it. Found your review on the book page and have you to thank for this one.

Darryl, I just want to say thank you for your honesty about your experiences in Trump's America. I'm following every word, and you know I agree with your analysis, and wish you didn't have to experience the now-encouraged racism. This is a major step backwards after Obama. Anyway, Debbi and I are thinking of you, and sending all the positivity we can, buddy.

>222 kidzdoc: I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear that the treatment you're receiving is deteriorating. I guess those with that kind of mindset now feel that they have permission because the "highest" in our land are showing that kind of example.

I'm fairly liberal and, to be honest, I haven't found a single thing so far in Trump's actions as president that I agree with, and most of it makes me boiling mad. This is not to say that I was blindly supportive of Obama—there were some things he did that I thought were ill-judged—but the worst I could say was that "honest people can honestly disagree." However, policies can be reversed, executive orders countermanded, individuals unfit for office can be replaced. In my opinion, what is more damaging to the fabric of our society...because it's harder to reverse...is the deliberate and calculated encouragement of intolerance and hostility. History shows us that it's hard to curb those horses once they've been let go.

What Joe said, Darryl.

Sorry to hear that work is so exhausting right now. It doesn't help not having some real down time to rest, but also to process what is going on, and maybe find a productive way to channel your anger into some kind of organised campaign.

Like Claire, I will look forward to catching up with you in the spring.

{{hugs}}, Darryl. I'm not even living in the States and everything about the current state of affairs makes me boiling mad. It also scares me, when I read about what is happening to you and others - many others - who are not trumpistes. It's disgraceful and frightening. What >235 TadAD: said. And I think I would feel exactly as you do about being concerned about knowing who to trust. But hold your head up, my friend. You are on the right side (not politically; you know I don't mean that!) of this insanity.

Sounds like the worst of the heavy hospital load is over, Darryl. I hope you get to enjoy some reading now that the worst is over.

It is the intolerance that has been encouraged by the rhetoric indulged in by the current US administration that is the worst part of the current atmosphere. The message put out has encouraged intolerance in not only the US but in other countries.

I thought of you when a friend recently said: "We're going from Obamacare to Wedontcare".

Happy weekend, my friend.

If you have any time left over in your April travels, come to Boston!

I've decided that instead of feeling helpless and angry because of these fools, I will look for creative, effective acts of resistance, like the Russia/Trump flags handed out at CPAC yesterday:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/cpac-russia-prank

And the generous act of this reporter's descendents:
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-closer-look-the-best-and-the-brightest-stev...

And will be supportive of organizations that thwart their goals: ACLU, Antidefamation League, Planned Parenthood, Southern Poverty Law Center.....

Take care and be well....

>240 tangledthread: I wonder how much the donations to those types of organizations has increased in the last 35 days.

>241 TadAD: paging dr. google: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/us/aclu-fund-raising-trump-travel-ban.html?

Happy Saturday, everyone! I was far too optimistic about the temporary decrease in our census, as my team started out today with 90 patients, as compared to 52 on Tuesday. Thankfully I'm not working this weekend, but I'm sure that we'll very busy next week.

I only have four days to get at least one book read in February; it's probably been at least 15 years since I last failed to read a book in a month. I haven't read anything in nearly two weeks, so I'll catch up on this thread and get back to We Are All Moors after a late morning or early afternoon nap.

I have tried several new recipes lately, and will try at least one more this weekend. If I have time I'll post them here later today or tomorrow.

>228 arubabookwoman: I haven't had any spare time to look at messages, Deborah, due to work, completing continuing medical education credits for my upcoming state license and hospital privileges renewals, and studying for my board recertification exam; sorry! The London theatres I go to the most are the National Theatre, the Almeida Theatre, and the Young Vic. Caroline McElwee, who lives in London, goes to the theatre often, so she would be a better source of information about the performances that are on now than I am.

>229 LovingLit: I was more optimistic than realistic about the end of our busy stretch, as were my partners who worked this week, Megan. My work day started at 7 am, and since I was on short call I admitted four patients between then and 11 am. I left work just after 6 pm, had a quick dinner at home, worked on my progress notes until 9 pm, when I couldn't stay awake any longer, then spent two hours earlier this morning finishing those notes for the doctors who will be caring my complicated crew of kids this weekend. I still need to do a literature search later today about one of my patients who has a rare condition, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, who isn't getting any better and may end up being permanently disabled if we can't identify the source of the cells that are producing these antibodies. I should do that before I engage in any pleasure reading.

>230 Sakerfalcon: I also hope that we'll finally start to get a break next month, Claire. "Spring" in Atlanta usually starts in late February, and that's definitely the case now, as it's been warm and sunny for most of the past two weeks, with high temperatures mainly in the upper 60s to upper 70s F (20-26 C). Unfortunately the viruses have decided that it's still winter time, particularly RSV, influenza and norovirus, which are all at very high levels in metro Atlanta and in our inpatient population.

Ah! My partner just posted the final April work schedule late last night. As she promised, I will work the first seven days of April, and then I'll be off the rest of the month! So, I'll definitely travel to London then. I'll probably leave on the evening of the 9th, fly back to Philadelphia after a 10-14 day stay, and visit my parents for 7-10 days, as I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving. I'll need to get my passport renewed ASAP, so that I have it in hand by the time I leave Atlanta.

I ended up giving away that patient with the (presumably) racist father to one of my white male partners yesterday. He wasn't thrilled about seeing the kid after he heard my account of what had happened, as he is a good liberal, but he understood the situation. She was an easy patient to give away, though, as she had an uncomplicated illness and should have been able to go home.

Fortunately I had a nice set of new patients and families yesterday, which included a poor uneducated white family from rural Georgia whose two week old baby was transferred from the PICU to our service in the afternoon. I knew I would like them from the moment I entered the room, despite our cultural differences, and we had a very pleasant and fruitful conversation about the problems the little guy was having, as they asked several thoughtful questions that told me that they were engaged and far more intelligent than their appearance would suggest. All of the other families I encountered yesterday were a pleasure to work with, and even though it was a hectic day it was a rewarding one, although I did get an evil stare toward the end of the day from a racist redneck white woman who was presumably a mother of a hospitalized child. I was talking with one of my favorite nurses when this woman walked by, and I returned her look with an equally hateful one. I admittedly have a mean streak (as at least one LTer knows!), and if I wasn't working in the hospital I would have made a very nasty comment to that, um, woman.

>231 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle! I'll only work seven days between March 20 and May 1, which will be a nice reward for this brutal winter at work.

>232 streamsong: I'm definitely tired, Janet, as I rarely sleep well during the days that I'm on service. Most of us also sleep poorly when we're working, probably because our brains are in overdrive and we are processing information about our most challenging patients overnight. I often wake up thinking about them, as I'm constantly worried that I didn't do something right or am missing something, and it takes me at least an hour or two to calm back down and be able to return to sleep. I decided to take 1-2 Advil PM tablets prior to bedtime this week, which contain diphenhydramine (Benadryl) as a sleep aid, and doing so allowed me to sleep through the night. I didn't take any last night, and as a result I was awake between 1 to roughly 3:30 am, as I usually would be if I didn't take that medication. Fortunately I have nothing planned for today, so I'll take an afternoon nap soon.

>233 lit_chick: This post makes me very sad, Darryl. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Another LT Jewish friend has posted about her fear, and that makes me indescribably sad, too.

My Jewish friends at work, especially one of my partners who I love to pieces, are also horrified and very worried about the direction the country is turning. Rachel and I talked several times this week about the rash of anti-Semitic incidents, the heartwarming story about the American Muslim organization that is raising funds to help repair a Jewish cemetery in St Louis that was vandalized, and the fear that she has for her family, her Jewish friends, and our Muslim colleagues, particularly our partners and the residents who wear the hijab in public. I'm seriously considering purchasing a canister of pepper spray or some other small personal protection device to keep on hand in case I encounter any violent racists in public, or see one of them harassing or assaulting a member of a racial or religious minority group.

Here's a link to the story about the pro-Jewish Muslim organization from NPR's Morning Edition, which I listened to on Wednesday:

Muslim-Led Fundraiser To Help Vandalized Jewish Cemetery Be Repaired

You may have also heard about the attack on two Indian immigrants by a white trump loving racist in suburban Kansas City earlier this week; he was kicked out of a bar in which the two friends, both engineers, were peacefully sharing drinks after work, after he spewed ethnic slurs at them and told them they should go back to their own country. He returned to the bar and shot them several times, wounding one of them fatally.

Hate Crime Is Feared as 2 Indian Engineers Are Shot in Kansas

Yep, I'll definitely order a pepper spray canister this weekend, at least. Welcome to trump's Amerika, everyone.

So sorry about your experiences. I go from mad to sad to worried to embarrassed and back again. The very ugliest parts of Amerika are definitely out now and I don't see it getting better any time soon. If he were to be impeached (which there is every reason to do) I fear there would be at least a near civil war. Ditto if he were to be killed. Such a mess.

>243 kidzdoc: I'm glad you had more positive interactions with families to counteract the racist encounters, Darryl. It breaks my heart to hear you talk about your "mean streak", because I've always admired your compassion and devotion to your patients' welfare. If little ones are sick, and have ignorant parents as well, you might be their only hope on a bad day. And, of course, no parent is at his or her best when their child is ill--I've been there, I know. I'm also glad you'll get a good long rest in April. If you burn out, the world of medicine will lose big time. (And so will you.)

I'm having a bit of a hard time thinking of standing up to racists as a mean streak. I don't think I've ever seen you be mean - but there's nothing wrong with refusing to accept that kind of crap.

I agree - I think it is morally right to intervene if someone is being attacked (either physically or verbally) on the basis of their race or religion. Bad things happen when good people do nothing.

>228 arubabookwoman: - I'm also enjoying the term "Dorito Benito" as a Mussolini-related Trumpnomer. I think I also saw "Cheeto Benito" as a similar one.

Today Elijah Cummings said that every day, there is a new disturbing revelation or incident. I am horrified at what is happening. I've been trying to do everything I can - marching, phone calls, emails, town meetings. Our country has gone almost instantaneously from a mostly respected one to worse than any third world country.

It is so saddening dear friend to read of your travails and the crap you are facing by what I want to presume is a tiny deviant minority of people.

I don't think this is a liberal or socialist and conservative issue - this is an issue of basic human decency and the acceptance of the obvious fact that we are each of equal quality as people. I don't agree with Theresa May's politics particularly and I didn't agree with David Cameron's but I would accept them as basically decent human beings who are tolerant and largely unprejudiced. We have different views as to how an economy should be arranged but we strive towards many of the same things. UKIP in the UK is leaning towards the baser instincts in many respects and I am worried about the attitude displayed to some of the Eastern Europeans in England since the referendum, but it will basically not really be tolerated in the UK.

I am not unique in loving my friends and cherishing their right to go about their life unhindered. I am moving to the UK mate, in part because I am fed up with the blatant racism of the Malay first mentality here and I can only hint that I would welcome you as a neighbour with open arms!

Also sorry to see that London will not be graced by your presence in March but I trust it won't be too long.

Hang in there buddy - a lot of us care quite a lot about you.

I am deeply discouraged by the attitudes I hear in Alabama these days. A woman, who is a close friend of mine, told me the other day that "we put up with your president, so now you can put up with ours." I was shocked. I was speechless. I didn't know we had a yours and ours president. I thought the president was for all of us. I knew there were presidents from different parties, and some I disliked on a personal level, but none of them did I ever consider to be somebody else's president. I have stopped talking about anything political to anybody I don't know and after that statement from last week I will be much more circumspect in any remarks I make to people I have known a long time. All of these things make me a more fearful person. Electing the Great Orange person has done more to make me fearful than anything Osama Ben Laden, ISIL, and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan did.

I forgot to tell you that I only have two years to go before I retire.

>222 kidzdoc:

Hi Darryl,

Stopping in to say hi. I just tried to skim your whole thread (quite a feat!) with emphasis on your political discussion .

I had to deal with a very hostile redneck father this morning

I was horrified, but not surprised, by the ignorance and hatred of that white man expressing how he didn't want you taking care of his white daughter. The amount of hatred spreading in our communities is unprecedented (or should I say unpresidented?).

My former work colleague and later my boss, a black woman who lives in Maryland, said she experienced her first episodes of outright discrimination several times this month. She said she was "shaken to the core", never having had anything like this happen to her in her life. She is 68 years old. She now fears for her 83-year-old mother who still travels independently throughout their community. She did not share with me exactly what happened. It's everywhere, and it's ugly.

I feel a great amount of anti-Semitism despite all of the mouth given to the fact that Trump and others in his administration are not anti-Semitic. I don't believe that for a second. What the administration is doing toward Jews is putting out scripted talks and appearances. I feel this in my gut. The author Gavin De Becker always said to trust your own instinct. I am truly terrified. My parents, refugees from Nazi Europe, are probably turning over in their graves. I'm glad they're not alive to see what has happened to the country they loved.

Sadly my three-year-old grandson was present in one of the many Jewish Community Centers housing preschools that experienced a bomb threat. My heart went into my throat when I went to pick him up and all I saw were emergency vehicles around the building. Of all the days to leave my phone home, I never got the message that the kids had been evacuated. It was a bitter cold day when it happened and the kids had to leave quickly with just a coat and without any of their belongings or lunch. When I went to pick him up in at the building that sheltered him, he had been scared that I would never find him there after they had a "fire drill" at his school. My soul was torn in half.

I've become very unfriendly towards whites who I view as hostile or threatening, but I don't feel comfortable letting my guard down at the present time.

I so totally understand what you are saying.

I'm terrified. We need to stand together and support one another.

I'm scared and sorry for what you and other minorities are going through. Sometimes I can't even read the articles because they make me so upset. Please take care of yourself.

That's so sad about you having to deal with racist parents more frequently Darryl. This is all like a nightmare slowly unfolding. I'm glad you're such a wonderful doctor and don't let the parents' treatment of you affect your good care of their children.

My dad isn't being the most polite either - he's been wearing an "F*$% Trump and if you like him F*$% you too" shirt around town. He's already been attacked by one person. He won't listen to reason and only wear the shirt indoors. I'm just happy it's a sweatshirt so he won't be able to wear it in the March for Science in DC in April!

Funny thing is, I managed to make it through that entire presidential election dating a Trump supporter, but our relationship didn't last through the first week of Trump's presidency. That was just too much. Oh well! Try, try again.

Dude, you should check The Kitchen. NPR had a story today about Obama's former pastry chef. He's now making meat pies to sell at a theater doing a production of Sweeney Todd...

I posted the recipe.

Hi Darryl. I am sorry that work is so hard because of all the overtime and the increased negativity. I am very glad you got the days off in April and that your future travel plans await. Gotta have something to look forward to! Hugs.

Missing you!

Hello, Darryl!

I hope things are going vaguely OK for you and that your patient census begins to calm down soon. I'm so saddened to see what is happening in the US :(

Missing you here Darryl although I was pleased to see you more upbeat on FB yesterday. Take good care dear fellow.

Another pal stopping by to wave, Darryl.

Third person stopping by to wave but I'll add in a hug, too.

I will jump in here too. Hey Darryl! Call home, will ya? (even if your name isn't *ET*)

*Hi* Darryl. Hope all is well.

Hi, Darryl - I spent night before last in the hospital (cat bite), in the ER observation rooms. Couldn't _see_ what was going on, but I could _hear_, and it kept making me think of you and comments you've made about events at your hospital. Added a bit of amusement and interest to a rather boring time!

Hi Darryl--Just checking in again. Sending hugs. And food thoughts! I was out last night with my daughter and some friends. We had Italian. I tried the Rigatoni Zuccati with roasted butternut squash, wild mushrooms, spinach and rosemary in a light cream sauce. So good!

Hope you're doing okay, buddy.

Happy Saturday, everyone! Thanks for thinking of me, and for keeping my thread warm. We continue to be busy at work, but the worst of this horrible winter is now behind me. I finished my last long call (the 1000-2200 shift from hell in which the ED, PICU and outside clinics, urgent care centers and hospitals can admit hordes of sick kids to our service) of the month on Tuesday, and given my long breaks off from work in late March and most of April I won't have another one before May. I do have to work all seven days next week, but after next Sunday I'll have worked 15 out of 19 days and won't have to work the rest of the month. I have another seven day stretch beginning on April 1, but I'll be off for the rest of April. I've made my hotel and flight reservations to travel to London; I'll leave on the evening of the 11th, arrive at LHR the following morning, and return to Atlanta on the 26th.

Still nothing to report on the book front. (Book? What's a book?!) It's all I can do to finish my progress notes after dinner on work days before I conk out (I had to get up at 6 am to finish yesterday's notes and my preliminary discharge summaries, as I fell asleep trying to do so last night). Most Saturdays I've been too woozy and brain dead to think about reading, and Sundays are largely spent cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and preparing for the upcoming work week. So, it's possible that I may not finish any books before the week after next.

Having said that I am enjoying The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas, and it's possible (though very unlikely) that I could finish it by tomorrow. However, I'm already feeling very sleepy, even though I had a good night's sleep and it's only 8:30 am. I'll catch up here, on a limited basis, as best I can now, and later today I'll create a new thread, since this one is getting very long in the tooth.

ETA: Hmm...my eyes are glazing over looking at the number of messages I have to catch up with! I think I'll be lazy and thank all of you for your heartfelt concerns and comments, and start fresh with a new thread.

Thanks for the note to check out The Kitchen, Jim. I'll do that later today. I also need to post several new recipes there that I've tried and liked in the past few weeks.