What the Boss Likes – Brothers Bright, Whitestone Motion Pictures – Appalachian gothic

I'm very fond of American myths dealing with our own monsters and magic.  This started with reading stories about Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan,  a strange turn when I read "The Lottery" and the Cthulhu mythos, the stories about "Silver John" by Manly Wade Wellman, and into role-playing games like "Deadlands".    Southern gothic is a subset. … Continue reading What the Boss Likes – Brothers Bright, Whitestone Motion Pictures – Appalachian gothic

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – a star in the east…. wait a minute…

I think I’ve mentioned here on this blog somewhere that I ran the planetarium when I was in college as a work-study job. Every November and December, we ran a Christmas star show, which showed that the story was a lot of nonsense. But people still flocked to it because they didn’t pay attention and … Continue reading Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – a star in the east…. wait a minute…

From the Kitchen and the backyard – crispy sticky rice, cheesecake, a mutant challah, plus a possum

After cooking the Thai flavored pork shoulder for Thanksgiving, we decided we needed another side dish for it since there was about 8 pounds of pork to eat.   The December 2016 Food & Wine magazine presented yet another Thai flavored recipe and that’s what was made as a side to accompany the rest of the … Continue reading From the Kitchen and the backyard – crispy sticky rice, cheesecake, a mutant challah, plus a possum

Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – fundamentalist white rural America

White, rural fundamentalist America is where I grew up.  This article on Raw Story (which seems to have come from Alter Net) gets it very much right. http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/the-dark-rigidity-of-fundamentalist-rural-america-a-view-from-the-inside/ "When you have a belief system that is built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and … Continue reading Not So Polite Dinner Conversation – fundamentalist white rural America