Read a Banned Book!
So you may have heard a thing or two about recent book bannings.
Buy banned books or borrow them from your local library!
What’s Cooking: Jarcuterie
Anyone who knows me well knows that I love a good charcuterie board! Whenever I go to a party or some other function where food is being served, I go straight to the charcuterie and pile up on cheese, crackers, nuts, dips, fruits, and everything else. I especially loved a vegetarian charcuterie.
But the pandemic has curbed many social gatherings in the last two years, and I don’t think I will want to eat from shared food settings like buffets and charcuteries anytime in the near future ever again.
However, last December, I was invited to a holiday party canceled at the last minute because of the Omicron surge. Instead, the party host had a jarcuterie delivered to my home. That’s right; a jarcuteire, which is a small charcuterie in a mason jar!
A single-serving charcuterie; what a brilliant idea!
American Slavery Lasted Into The 1970s
Slavery may have officially ended in 1865, but there is evidence that Black people were enslaved well into the 1960s and 1970s. Check out this video.
Getting Nostaglic For “The Real World”
Over the holiday break, I watched The Real World Homecoming for New York and Los Angeles. I watched the original first three seasons of the show 30 years ago (yeah, I’m that old)! I really enjoyed the social experiment of bringing together people from vastly different backgrounds “to see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” I lost interest in the show after season five because it started to evolve into a “hookup” show.
I learned a lot about others from watching this show. The first time I saw an openly LGBT person on TV (Norman from New York), the first time I saw a woman talk openly about her abortion (Tami from Los Angeles), and the first time I saw someone talk openly about living with HIV (Pedro from San Francisco) all happened on The Real World.
So, it has been great to watch the reunion homecomings and see how much – or little – the cast has changed. Too bad there are no plans to do a homecoming for San Francisco. There could be many reasons for this, including primarily Pedro Zamora’s death, but also the original house the cast lived in was significantly damaged in a fire 20 years ago, and any lingering animosity towards Puck and Rachel Campos, who is now a Fox News personality from the rest of the cast.