i L i n d

Yesterday’s media moment came as we were driving home listening to the end of KHON’s 6 p.m. newscast, which is simulcast on KSSK radio. Joe Moore was into his “Did you know…” bit, this time going on about the small herrings caught off the coast of Sardinia, known to us, he said, as sardines. Then he got into banter about whether he ever eats sardines, something he denies. Kanoa Leahy then chimed in about that sardine that gets mashed into a caesar salad. What? Gentlemen, those little fish in your salad are anchovies, not sardines. And it’s not really clear whether sardines really get their name from Sardinia, although I found several references to that theory. The dictionary definition refers to the word’s source: “[Middle English sardin, from Old French sardine, from Latin sardÄ«na, from sarda, a kind of fish, ultimately from Greek Sardō, Sardinia.] So which came first, Sardo or Sardinia? Maybe someone else can find the definitive answer.

The Seattle Times reports that bonds issued to pay for an extension of the city’s light rail line will take half a century to pay off.

I was in search of something else yesterday and ran into this item which appeared last year on KUAM News in Guam:

Three men were busted relative to a check scam that began on the Internet. Guam Police Department spokesperson Sergeant Joe Carbullido says the owners of the Hagatna Corner Store allegedly found a check scheme on online portal Yahoo! where they downloaded checks and then deposited them into their business bank account.

The men managed to deposit $155,000 worth of checks, cashing about $21,000 of that amount before the Bank of Hawaii realized the checks were bogus.

That doesn’t offer engender a lot of confidence in Bank of Hawaii’s routine security. Perhaps their standards are different in Guam than here.

On a heavier note, a story in yesterday’s Washington Post by Laura Blumenfeld looks at the psychological and social damage done to interrogators who engage in torture.

A former American interrogator described hiding torture victims when officials came to inspect the prison.

Then a soldier’s aunt sent over several copies of Viktor E. Frankel’s Holocaust memoir, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Lagouranis found himself trying to pick up tips from the Nazis. He realized he had gone too far.

At that point, Lagouranis said, he moderated his techniques and submitted sworn statements to supervisors concerning prisoner abuse.

“I couldn’t make sense of the moral system” in Iraq, he said. “I couldn’t figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, ‘Be creative.’ “

It’s a very disturbing account on so many levels.

We wanted to do something special Sunday night. Our Sunday dinners with friends down the street have been a weekly routine over the past couple of years. I cook a big pot of something, Meda makes a huge salad, and then we carry it all over to their place and consume vast quantities. This week was the last supper, so to speak, as their house is in escrow, the movers come in today, and in a few days they move to a hotel before shuttling off to new assignments in Washington.

Something special? I pulled out the bottle of Beringer 1989 Private Reserve Cabernet which was given to us sometime around our 25th wedding anniversary, if I’m not mistaken. It’s been in a closet for at least a dozen years. We’ve thought about opening it several times, but the occasion never seemed quite special enough. It survived our 50th birthdays, our 35th anniversary, and several other not-quite-suitable occasions. But now the time had come.

The question we faced was whether it would turn out to be be wine or vinegar.

First problem: the cork simply crumbled, disintegrated really, as the corkscrew was inserted. Eventually we dug much of the corky crumbs out of the top of the bottle, then pushed the remainer down into the wine. First smell–somewhat vinegary, but not necessarily bad, so we set the bottle aside to breath for an hour and a half or so and hoped for the best.

“It’s the thought that counts,” Tom said while we waited, looking at the 1989 vintage. I know that’s right, but it would still be nice to present both the thought and the wine. Hmmmmm…at first sip, it was a bit on the right side of vinegar. The 18 years in the bottle had transformed the wine. It felt more syrupy, and seemed to cling to the tongue more than wine I’m used to. It was, well, different. A nectar rather than a quick drink. Probably past its prime, but what do we know anyway about such things? It was certainly good enough for a toast to good friends and, with the thought that counts, a good farewell moment.