Last Day of Chanukah

Saturday night was the seventh night of the holiday. 
Sunday evening we will light eight candles (plus the one used to light the others).

Sunday morning on the shortest day of the year. The sun struggles to rise over our neighbor’s house.
The lights of Chanukah are sympathetic magic: one more each evening to coax the sun to stay longer.

Alice’s plants are enjoying a brief moment of sunshine in our living room while she is traveling.

Chanukah Murals

“Israeli graffiti artist Dudi Shoval delivers a powerful message through a mural created in the wake of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre.” (link)

Recent work by an Israeli muralist (from Facebook)..
Shared with Sami’s Murals.

Chanukah Mural After a Shooting 5 Years Ago (link)

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

“Noopiming”

 

Noopiming  is a book about many things. It’s more like a collection of poems than a novel, but it also has characters — vivid characters — and social history about the life of Native Americans in Canada, both rural and urban. Here’s a wonderful passage about birds:

“It is a place where birds congregate because there is no other place left. There are more than three hundred species there and so it is well known by ornithologists and birdwatchers, and in the fall and spring the migrating songbirds and shore birds stop on their way to something better. … Asin watches the boreal owl hunt for voles at dusk, and then Asin rides back to their apartment. The boreal owl is antisocial and nocturnal, like Asin. They are a sit-and-wait predator the size of a robin. They sit fifteen to twenty feet above the ground in trees, close to the trunk. The summer is their breeding season. While there are considerably fewer species of birds than there used to be, birds are still engaged in the building blocks of their nation, and they work to reproduce not just their bodies, but all the structures, behaviours and beliefs that enable large-scale survival. There are large-ish colonies of double-crested cormorants and black-crowned night-herons. Asin does not have a life list of birds they have seen, because unlike most other birders, that’s not why Asin is here.“ (pp 110-113)

Boreal owls (from google)

Of course there are lots of passages about food as well. Here is one of my favorites: 

“In the spring, Adik, Akiwenzii and Sabe ate duck and turtle eggs. In the summer, they picked buckets full of berries, tended the garden and fished. In the fall, they were the busiest. They riced. They harvested the garden and cached it away for later. They hunted ducks and geese. They hunted deer and moose, dried meat and tanned hides.” (p 178)

This is an unconventional book. so I can’t write a conventional review. I checked, the reviewers at the time the book was published didn’t do it justice, in my opinion. It’s hard to read, but it’s worth the effort. 

Chanukah

Four nights so far!

At the table

Latkes and salmon

In the Kitchen

Alice grating the potatoes.

Len’s bread.

 

The World Is a Cruel Place

 “TB is both a form and expression of injustice.”

In Everything is Tuberculosis, author John Green reminds lucky American readers like me about one of the biggest privileges that they enjoy in this world: specifically, middle-class Americans have an exceptionally low chance of contracting TB. Further, if they do become infected, American medical care improves their chances of getting over the terrible symptoms, which were so familiar in earlier centuries.

Consider this summary of the statistics about deaths caused by TB:

“Just in the last two centuries, tuberculosis caused over a billion human deaths. One estimate…maintains that TB has killed around one in seven people who’ve ever lived. Covid-19 displaced tuberculosis as the world’s deadliest infectious disease from 2020 through 2022, but in 2023, TB regained the status it has held for most of what we know of human history. Killing 1,250,000 people, TB once again became our deadliest infection.” (p. 84)

In this rather short book, Green manages to survey the effects of TB throughout history, and its current ravages throughout the world. His perspective is broad, including medical information, social history, and cultural factors about the disease. He provides insights by telling several personal stories about historic figures, members of his family, and a young TB patient named Henry whom he met in Africa as he collected information for the book. 

Here is the conclusion of the book: “We cannot address TB only with vaccines and medications. We cannot address it only with comprehensive STP [search, treat, prevent] programs. We must also address the root cause of tuberculosis, which is injustice. In a world where everyone can eat, and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance. Ultimately, we are the cause. We must also be the cure.” (p. 183)

From the World Health Organization website:

”In 2024, an estimated 10.7 million people fell ill with TB worldwide, including 5.8 million men, 3.7 million women and 1.2 million children and young adolescents. TB is present in all countries and age groups. TB is curable and preventable” (Source: 10 facts on tuberculosis, 13 November 2025)

Wuthering Heights

 

Wuthering Heights is much more melodramatic than I expected. I can't remember why I decided to read it this week. While reading, I remembered almost nothing from any earlier reading, which took place as part of the assigned curriculum sometime during my high school or junior high school years.

Heathcliff, the enormously evil and perverse main character, is definitely despicable — perhaps to an exaggerated extent. I was startled to realize that one of the clear reasons given for Heathcliff’s seemingly inborn, perverted nature is that he is a black man: I was somewhat shocked at the fact that his race is considered to be a part of his character. His racial difference is a key from his first appearance in the family, when the housekeeper/narrator describes him as "a dark- skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman." (p. 3).

At the beginning of the housekeeper’s story of the twenty years when she knew Heathcliff and the other members of the family, she tells how the father of the family at the center of the novel had come home with a street urchin he had found. Returning weary and cold, he has brought not gifts but this street child – who is racially different. He shows his wife and children what he has under his great-coat:

"'See here, wife! I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but you must e'en take it as a gift of God; though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil.' We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy's head I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child." (p. 31). 

As the narrator Ellen, the faithful servant, struggles to understand the emerging nature of Heathcliff -- spiteful, harmful, and vengeful -- his racial identity seems to be one of the causes:

"Heathcliff - I shudder to name him! has been a stranger in the house from last Sunday till to-day. Whether the angels have fed him, or his kin beneath, I cannot tell; but he has not eaten a meal with us for nearly a week. He has just come home at dawn, and gone up-stairs to his chamber; looking himself in - as if anybody dreamt of coveting his company! There he has continued, praying like a Methodist: only the deity he implored is senseless dust and ashes; and God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his own black father!" (p. 158). 

The housekeeper, in her narrative, dwells on Heathcliff's "blackness of spirit that could brood on and cover revenge for years, and deliberately prosecute its plans without a visitation of remorse." (p. 204). At the end, she still expresses her cosmic incomprehension of the nature of this evil man: 

"'Is he a ghoul or a vampire?' I mused. I had read of such hideous incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. 'But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?' muttered Superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness." (p. 300).

While Heathcliff, with his overblown nature, dominates the novel, the other characters are somewhat pale in comparison. Though each one has his or her own identity, they aren’t nearly as compelling. All in all, I found the novel somewhat overblown — I can see why it’s considered as good material for adolescents.

If this novel is still part of the school curriculum, I wonder if the teachers bring up this racist theme. The novel is in the "common core" that's recommended for college prep, but I don't know if that means it's discussed in classes. Times have changed greatly since I read it in school! 

Blog post © 2025  mae sander

The Polio Vacccine

Some time early in my elementary school years, our school installed a “Public Address System.” The new  PA System enabled the principal to make announcements each morning. Sometimes (I’ve forgotten how often) there would also be announcements from kids in individual classrooms. The announcement that I remember, which was made occasionally, was the statement that a member of a particular class had been diagnosed with polio, and that the class hoped that he or she would soon recover.

Some children recovered and came back to school. Others didn’t recover, or came back much later, wearing a brace or using a crutch, after a long stay in the hospital. I remember one boy whose arm didn’t grow after this illness. I remember one girl whose legs were different lengths, and how she was in a short body-cast for months, while still attending school. In retrospect, during their long absence, these kids must have been in some sort of physical therapy, but in the classrooms, we didn’t know any details. 

Jonas Salk, 1914-1995

Above all, I remember the joy with which everyone welcomed polio vaccine, and the gratitude towards the researchers who had developed this miracle.

As a preschool child, I had mumps, measles, and chickenpox. I was lucky and recovered quickly. Other kids didn’t have it so good. Vaccines meant no one had to have this experience. My mother remembered being sick with whooping cough and diphtheria as a child, and always expressed her relief at having been able to vaccinate us.

I’m thinking about this now, as our brilliant leaders are trashing public health requirements for vaccines. They have forgotten what it was like to have kids in your schoolroom disappear for weeks or for months or forever. They have forgotten my mother’s gratitude, and those other mothers’ losses. They have forgotten those crutches and body casts. We’re headed again for tragedy.

AI Summary of  Polio Vaccine Policy

POSTSCRIPT: The World Health Organization website includes a detailed history of vaccines throughout history: “A Brief History of Vaccines.”

Update: Immunization program for polio

From the Guardian December 15: polio vaccine being administered in Pakistan.
The ongoing campaign plans to immunize over 45 million children.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Mysteries and Celebrations

Say this author’s name (pseudonym) fast and you hear “Edgar Allen Poe.”
He’s actually a Japanese imitator of early European mysteries, and lived from 1894-1965.

The tales are truly creepy!

The author Edogawa Rampo

There’s a new book in the “Dark Materials” series by Philip Pullman.
I read this short story about the characters in the series, but I’m not sure what I’ll read next.

Happy Food

Alice’s Tomato

Miso Soup at Slurping Turtle

Slurping Turtle Sushi Roll

A Year Ago Today

On December 12, 2024, we were birding in Tobago.
We enjoyed seeing the Trinidad Motmot, found only in Trinidad and Tobago.

The day ended with an exotic drink on the beautiful veranda of our seaside hotel.

Coming Soon: Latkes for Chanuka (photos from previous years)

Photos © 2014-2025 mae sander

New and Old Objects in My Kitchen

These frying pans that once belonged to my grandmother were in constant use in my mother’s kitchen.
Because I have a smooth-top stove, our only recent use for them has been as a steam source for baking.
The water in them has resulted in rust, as you can see.

Saturday was the December sale of the Ann Arbor Potter’s Guild.

Photos © 2025 mae sander

The Joys and Sorrows of Household Objects

 

The essence of this book is in these quotes: “Certain kitchen objects become loaded with meaning in a way that we are not fully in control of.” and “Certain articles of kitchen equipment can also make us feel safe and at home when in reality we are neither.” (pp. 4, 31)

This book is fun to read because it explores the many and varied ways that so many objects acquire meaning in our lives as cooks and as eaters. Some of the stories are personal, involving Bee Wilson and her family. Other stories are taken from friends and even from books, but all concentrate on kitchen gear and how even a large stand mixer can have emotional significance. 

A quote I liked, putting the love of crockery into a special perspective with respect to history and also of her friend Paola’s relationship to her pressure cooker (a special thought for me, because my mother had a special relationship to her pressure cooker) —

“It was only with the adoption of cooking pots – which happened as long as 16,000 years ago in East Asia and 12,000, give or take, in North Africa – that what we think of as cooking emerged. For the first time, hunter-gatherers could nourish themselves with grains and a wide variety of plants which needed long cooking in water to make them digestible. For Paola, the pressure cooker has been as transformative as those first cooking pots thousands of years ago. ‘It enabled me to cook certain vegetables that take time’ is how she summarised it when we met. She used this giant hissing pan to boil potatoes, soften cannellini beans, stew peppers to oily sweetness. More than that, it is a tool that has enabled her to eat deliciously and healthily in good times and in bad.” (p. 127)

 

From an online search: a pressure cooker like the one my mother used
 in the 1950s.

Family Objects in My Kitchen Now

Reading The Heart-Shaped Tin made me think about the few remaining things that I still have from the household where I grew up. Many years ago, I had a large number of such family hand-me-downs, but over time they wore out in one way or another and have been replaced (including that for a long time, I used my mother’s pressure cooker and her stand mixer, both now replaced, as well as her heart-shaped cake pan). 

Reading Bee Wilson’s stories of kitchen objects that represented family memories made me try to think of the few remaining items that I received from family.

My mother’s rolling pin and a more recent one.

Salt shakers that once belonged to my mother.

My great-grandmother’s platter, used for Thanksgiving Dinner this year.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Culinary Historians’ Dinner

The Culinary Historians meet for this December’s themed meal:
first each person describes the history and content of the dish they contributed to the feast!

My plate of delicious foods.

The Ann Arbor Culinary Historians was founded around 40 years ago, and has developed its own traditions, including a winter theme meal. The theme for our meeting this evening was “Food from the Gilded Age.” The 18 members and guests who attended made a variety of dishes, using a number of cookbooks published in the late 19th century, and the food was very interesting and also very tasty.

From the Literary Club website.

The group’s themed dinners, which take place twice a year, are held in rented space at the Ladies’ Literary Club in Ypsilanti (founded 1878). The club’s historic building is an enjoyable location for the dinner: it is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is considered to be one of the most important Greek Revival structures in Michigan. It also has a very modern kitchen and beautiful dining room for preparing, serving, and consuming the members’ contributions.

Gilded Age cookbooks on the buffet table.

Desserts

Trifle and chocolate cookies

“Russian Punch Tart” — a delicious layer cake.

Some of the Main Courses and Appetizers

Smoked salmon canapes.

Chicken in mayonnaise, made by hand.

A traditional dish: Kedgeree with cooked eggs. I associate it with breakfast buffets in Agatha Christie mysteries.

Our contribution: tomato and shrimp salad from a recipe in the cookbook La Cuisine Creole by
Lafcadio Hearn, 1885.

Photos © 2025 mae sander