Rachel Laudan

Thanks to Hector’s new handrail, our stairs, though less elegantly Barraganesque, are less devastatingly dangerous. A time to leave things behind, let things go, to plan for the future.  I love these moments, sometimes self-imposed, sometimes imposed by others, when you can turn a corner.  After so many years, still that sense of excitement. And [...]

Linguists use the term loan words for terms borrowed from another language.  Would this help clarify the discussion of what are popularly called “fusion cuisines?”   The more I think about this term, the more it seems to me to obscure more than it clarifies.  Cuisines are complex structures with culinary/social/political/aesthetic/economic/religious/health/even environmental goals, rules for achieving [...]

Yesterday I talked with a fried who commented that Christmas was a time for memories.  So here are a couple of mine. As children, our Christmas stockings always had a tangerine in the toe. With luck we got a second from the wooden bowl in the breakfast room, its peel glowing, its juice so sweet [...]