February blahs

"In spite of Hegel, the Victorians were not a dialectically minded age; they did not think naturally in opposites, of positives and negatives as aspects of the same whole.  Paradoxes troubled rather than pleased them.  They were not the people for existentialist moments, but for chains of cause and effect; for positive all-explaining theories, carefully studied and studiously applied.  They were busy erecting, of course; and we have been busy demolishing for so long that now erection seems as ephemeral an activity as bubble-blowing"--The French Lieutenant's Woman

It's February, and not much has been happening.  But Wednesday was warm enough to go out on a walk!

My sister gave me a hot air fryer for my birthday, so I've been looking up recipes that use it. (We've already made French fries with it.) You can make doughnuts with a lot less fat...

Last week John P. and I saw Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake.  It was good, not great:  the original just had a bit more pizzazz. (It still had a truly great score.) Afterward we ate Middle Eastern food at a place with great rice!

I'm halfway through The French Lieutenant's Woman.  It's quite complex in a "postmodern" way, seeing the Victorian era through a decidedly 20th-century prism.

I've started reading Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization for my History Meetup.  It's about the Dark Ages period when classical learning survived by being transcribed in Irish monasteries. (The first chapter discusses the Roman Empire's fall and points to how the tax-collecting curiales class got squeezed between higher government demands and stiffer taxpayer resistance.)