She is nearly 70 years old, with wonderfully brown gnarled, wrinkled hands and eyes that are creased from smiling. She hand-makes all of her own clothes and sews dolls for my little sister. Abuela is very lonely… her husband already passed and her kids live far away. She misses her grandkids. Abuela comes around our place for the company almost every other day.
So this morning, my little sister and I went to visit the Abuela to return the kindness of her vegetables with some homemade soup.
It’s a funny joke we have, that if you can make a perfect posole you are wife material. I was joking around with my friend beforehand to see if I was worthy of marriage, and my little sister thinks me failing is the best thing in life, so of course she wants to ask Abuela when we arrive.
We’re wearing masks and gloves and can’t give her the big hug like we want to, but Abuela is always happy to see us. We bring the pot of soup to her table. My little sis, the little shit that she is, immediately asks, “Abuela, is Reina ready to be a wife yet?”
And Abuela immediately shifts her entire mood. Her face literally becomes this:
Abuela’s look pierces through my heart.
“Who are you trying to impress? A man or a woman?” she asks, deadly serious. We have broached the topic of marriage. It is her domain now.
And I, Rei, gay as the fourth of July, cannot believe that either Abuela clocked me instantly or that she could possibly have a fascinating past of her own.
I thought about lying, but my little sister was there and I don’t like to lie in front of her. So I was honest and said I was trying to impress a woman.
Without a response, Abuela carefully tries the posole. The room is silent.
“For a man, it’s good,” she says after a moment. “But, you’ll need to work harder to impress a woman.”
All I can do is politely nod. I have so many questions.
Now Abuela is tired. She wants to eat and relax in peace, so she waves us away. We make sure she’s settled, and then my sister and I go home.
I can’t believe my 70 year old Abuela said BI RIGHTS
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
⁂
Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
incredible pompeii book fact that i will think about forever:
Garum, a sort of Roman fish sauce, was everywhere in Rome and apparently Pompeii was particularly famous for their garum industry. There’s lots of sources both in and outside Pompeii, and several different manufacturers and sellers have been found in the city.
The part that I can’t stop thinking about: jars of garum have been found with labels advertising it as kosher.
I mean, of course you hear about the conflicts between the Romans and Jews. They were very much in one another’s orbits. But still, the fact that there was apparently enough of a market in Pompeii to specifically create and sell kosher fish sauce… you know?
Here is a source for this! See “stamps on jars of garum” at the bottom of the page.
(I wanted to link to a good source by a reliable archaeologist for this, because the first thing that comes up when you Google it is a site which also claims there is archaeological evidence for Noah’s Ark, the seven plagues, and Young Earth Creationism - I don’t want anyone to dismiss this verifiable and very important fact out of hand because some drongo is throwing it in with “strata prove evolution doesn’t real”)
O the graffiti at that link.
And now I need to work “The one who buggers a fire burns his penis” into casual conversation.
:)
Hey @petermorwood, have you got that garum link from the other day?
Better still, I’ve got several, including a couple with their modern name, “colatura”. (I keep misreading that as “coloratura”, prompting some very odd mental images.)
The one you’re thinking of is from Terre Exotique, €14,90 for 100ml.
This one’s from Maison Dehesa, about €22,00 for 100ml.
Darker versions may be more concentrated. Looking further for “colatura” rather than “garum” turned up a brand which comes with an eyedropper (€24,40) or a spray (€18,15).
Both suggest a sauce used With Restraint.
I’d already worked that out from the prices… :->
Max Miller of Tasting History did a piece on the recipe.
