Fragments, Memories, and Explorations

Hi. I paid for this site a while ago and thought I would use it. So far, I’ve used it as a bill to pay once a year. But I think I can do more. I’m not really online anywhere else right now, so how about I use this place for that — my own little corner of the internet. I’m thinking it’ll be a nice place to see what I’m up to and what I’m thinking about. I don’t know how to do (make? run? design?) websites, so, lol, maybe this won’t be any good. That’s okay.

It is rainy and grey this Sunday afternoon in Buffalo. Fall weather is coming, which always makes me really happy. I was taking walks in the park a lot this summer, and I hope to do some more while the weather is like this. Strong breezes and air that is good to breathe.

I made Creamy Corn Soup with Basil last week, and I’m thinking of making it again. I don’t know whether the corn being in season is the reason or what, but the soup had a really nice creamy consistency even though there’s no milk or cream. If I were serving it for a group, I would strain the soup — I bet the bits of corn would work great in another dish. At home, though, I liked it just fine as is.

Right now, I’m halfway through a book from 2007, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by an anthropologist named David W Anthony. It’s a lot of fun so far. In it, he lays out the case for his hypothesis of where and when it was that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European originated. So many nice, leisurely set pieces: patterns of sound change over time, interpreting the archaeological remains of pre-literate societies, and how herding and foraging societies influenced each other. Among the interesting tidbits: in Indo-European (or proto-? Don’t quote me to closely here), there was a distinction between moveable and immoveable objects. The word pecu referred to moveable wealth, and it’s where we get words like pecuniary and impecunious. The passing mention of tenon and mortice technology also made me want to branch off and hit up a book just on wheel technology. I mean, can you really do ancient wheels justice in a book like this? Obviously, no.

I took the attached picture last month. It’s of woods along the Susquehanna River in Binghamton. It’s so beautiful there.

That’s it for now. Talk to you later!