"I could never give up Mexican food. Nachos are usually my go-to if I'm courtside at an NBA game. I always, always get my picture taken with my mouth wide open and a tortilla chip sticking out of it!" Eva Longoria

I didn’t realize it at the time but I grew up in a very specialized culinary environment.  When you think of New Mexico you think of Mexican food, but when I left New Mexico I was always disappointed in the quality of Mexican food offered elsewhere.  A friend from college, Joe Martinez, educated me.  The upper Rio Grande valley – which includes most of New Mexico and southern Colorado – was culturally isolated from other parts of the Hispanic new world for a century or so in colonial times.  During that time they developed their cuisine.  It’s not totally different – just different enough to be jarring at times. 

Joe’s ancestry includes a very long and distinguished presence in this area. Joe recommended a book to me – which I endorse – “La Comída, The Foods, Cooking and Traditions of the Upper Rio Grande” by Frederick R. Muller.

For me the two biggest differences in Mexican cooking between – say – Santa Fe and Los Angeles are first, enchiladas and second, chile rellenos.  The first time I was served an enchilada in California and the tortillas were rolled up instead of being stacked (like pancakes) I was shocked.  It turns out that stacked enchiladas are very endemic to the upper Rio Grande area.  My dad always had a fried egg on top.  In New Mexico, chile rellenos are made using roasted and peeled green Hatch chiles.  In the rest of the world poblano chiles are used.  The difference takes some getting used to.

Other minor differences include: tomatillos are not used in New Mexico cooking.  They didn’t grow in the area and thus were not available.  Also the ground beef that is used – say, in tacos – is seasoned differently.  I don’t know exactly what the difference is, but when I’m outside New Mexico I always order chicken or pork in my tacos.

I worry about the future of NM cuisine.  The last time I was in Albuquerque, the waiter asked if I wanted my enchiladas stacked or rolled.  Not a good sign.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age." Tony Robbins

My wife and I suffer from entertainment overload.  In the evening when we settled down in front of the big screen TV before retiring to our bed we have a plethora of choices of what to watch.  We “never” watch current shows.  Our schedule is chaotic enough that we are most likely to miss a future live episode and lose continuity. We almost never watch – with the exception of important sporting events – TV during the day.  That would interfere with online poker, online chess, etc.  We don’t record, via a DVR, current shows because we have an entertainment overload.  We will sometimes watch the politically biased news analysis programs.  I like to watch both the “left” and the “right” version, but my wife can’t tolerate the conservative view.  She – like me – is very liberal in her political view.  I like to watch the conservative view to see how the other side is spinning the same story. But my wife will exit the room if I leave Hannity on for very long.

But, I digress.  We usually don’t watch whatever happens to be on TV live.  We have DVDs and a subscription to NetFlix.  And because we don’t watch shows live, there are ample amount of material on NetFlix that we haven’t seen.  As an example, we had never watched “Breaking Bad’ when it was on.  We started watching it when it became available on our subscription and it a matter of a few weeks – on our schedule – watched all of the episodes in sequence.  So our problem is often, “We’ve finished watching what we were watching.  What do we watch next?”

We’re currently watching “House, M.D.”  We’ll watch three or four episodes in an evening.  We’re midway through season two.  If a particular evening is filled with a social engagement – no problem, we’ll watch episodes the next evening.

Sporting events – if one is interested – have to be live.  I want to watch SoCal beat ND – not catch the score haphazardly on some news feed.

An aside,… I think Dr. House and I have the same personality.  Those who know me will recognize how easy that conclusion is to reach.  Perhaps I flatter myself.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"Culture, with us, ends in headache." Ralph Waldo Emerson

With me, puberty brought migraine headaches.  I mean the full-blown variety – auras, nausea, pounding pain.  They lasted about a day.  The aura would start as a small shimmering circle in the middle of my vision.  It would gradually – over fifteen minutes – enlarge and open into a horseshoe shape.  When it expanded beyond my field of vision the pain would start.  So I knew when I first saw the aura I had fifteen minutes to escape to a bed.  In high school I got an excuse from the school nurse and walked home – about a mile.  I later learned that physical exercise at that stage exacerbated the symptoms, but I couldn’t stay at my desk.  As I aged the symptoms diminished greatly.  I still get the auras, but when they disappear, there is no pain that follows.  I think calluses have formed on my brain.

They were most debilitating during grad school.  I did seek medical help but very little was known at that time and what was known didn’t help.  I tried every over-the-counter pain killer hoping to find an elixir.  Never did. 

My typical method of studying for a test was to sit at a table surrounded by books, paper and pencil, and chocolate candy.  The next day, during the test, the aura would appear and my test results would suffer.  I would get a migraine during a test so often I wondered if it was psychosomatic.  My GPA would’ve been significantly higher if I had known then what I know now.

I now know – proven by trial and error – that my migraines are precipitated by allergies.  If I eat a chocolate bar, four times out of five, I will get a migraine the next day.  Some soft cheeses, peanuts, and some red wines can also be triggers but with less certainty.  I love chocolate so am, with my callused brain shielding me from gross pain, willing from time to time to indulge.

Because of the reputation migraines have as a painful affliction, I suspect that many claims are made, by those seeking sympathy, to have migraines when, in reality, they have a hangover.  But I never doubt those who have an aura – the signature of a migraine in my mind.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"We must therefore firmly insist that in the organic natural sciences, and thus also in botany, absolutely nothing has yet been explained and the entire field is still open to investigation as long as we have not succeeded in reducing the phenomena to physical and chemical laws." Jacob Mathias Schlelden

I want to warn the reader – but I’m not sure of what. The most probable reason is that this post is not likely to be of general interest. I’m going to rant against a branch of science and I may get a bit pedantic. So take heed of….something. This is my second back porch, container garden posting. (See last posting about radishes.)

Some plants grow in New Mexico that don’t grow in South Carolina and vice versa. Some plants grow in both places. Surprising to me, prickly pear cactus, the genus Opuntia, grows well in both places. I always pictured it as a desert plant. Same for yucca. I have a couple of yucca plants in my landscape that give beautiful blooms. In my walks in the woods I frequently see native examples.

A plant that grows readily in NM but not in SC is the piñon ( Pinus edulis) tree. I asked some botanist friends, why does it grow in one place and not the other? They offer all sorts of theories – different humidity, different altitude, different fungi in the soil. etc., etc. Then I ask, “Have you tested this theory?” The answer is always, “No.” Science is subject to experimental test. In botany one can use a “green house” to duplicate ‘any’ environmental condition. If humidity is the problem, prove it by planting some seeds in a green house with low humidity and see if they grow. It’s not rocket science. But they haven’t done that. I currently have a 7 inch piñon tree growing in a container on my back porch – so I don’t think humidity is the culprit and I’m only a physicist. I’ve tried planting the saplings in the ground and they die. Different fungi? I don’t know, but it’s easy to sterilize soil in a green house to find out. Botanists should know the answer to this question.

When one of the primary concerns of the world is surviving a global climate change, I would guess that any fundamental botanical research to investigate how plants behave in different environments would receive funding – or should.

Botanists, wake up! Get the money, - do the research, - save the world. Why does my piñon die in the ground in SC and not in NM?

2014 Lester C. Welch

"Crisp, peppery little summer radishes are indeed the perfect way to kick–start a meal, bold enough to set the gastric juices flowing, yet barely denting the appetite." Sophie Grigson

I have a south facing screened in back porch.  My retirement activities include half-hearted efforts at container gardening – on the back porch.  Not much exercise involved so it doesn’t make me feel old.  I don’t even have to get dressed, as there are no neighbors on that side of the house.  I won’t tell you now (perhaps later) all I have done there but I do want to tell you about my current effort with radishes.  I can’t tell you the ending because I don’t know it yet.

I like to try novel things, as you will discern when I tell you other back porch stories.  Wondering this spring what new challenges to present myself I remembered that radishes, in the family garden, when I was a kid, often were my responsibility and I enjoyed eating them.  They grew well in New Mexico.  So the die was cast, 

I bought the seeds and planted them helter-skelter in a tray filled with good soil.  I fertilized and watered them regularly.  They sprouted and had beautiful leaves.

With great anticipation I pulled the first one.  There was no bulb on the root!  Just a straw sized root all the way.  I waited a couple more weeks and tried others with the same result.  I had never seen a radish with no radish.

I searched on the Internet and discovered that there are two causes for this disaster.  One cause is planting them too close together.  Apparently they sense each other and quit expanding in an effort to be a good neighbor. (I know some people who could learn from a radish.) I admit that I – in an effort not to exercise myself too much - was a bit careless about planting,  I didn’t thin out the sprouts either.  The second cause is a chemical imbalance in the soil.  Radishes need more potassium than is usually available to form a bulb.  Who knew that?  Who knew that New Mexico soil had adequate potassium?  Well, upon reflection, there are potash mines near Carlsbad.

I pulled up all the sterile radish plants and I looked for a plant fertilizer with an abundance of potassium – and found none.  But I did find a potassium dietary supplement in the human vitamin aisle.  Hell, potassium in the same for humans and plants so I bought some, dissolved a few tablets and sprinkled the tray.  I was very careful about the spacing of the seeds.  Now all I have to do is wait.

My grandparents were all farmers.  I’m sure I’ll have a bumper crop.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles." Bill Gates

There are very few environmental and economic problems that cannot be solved with sufficient energy.  With enough energy one can desalinize seawater and pump it to where the fresh water is needed.  Food can be grown in the Sahara.  With enough energy one can electrolyze water to make portable hydrogen, which by burning, one can power transportation with water as the sole product of combustion.

I read a science fiction story once (I think) where a scientist in the distant future lamented how our generation merely burned petroleum – which took millions of years to form and can’t be replaced.  This future culture had found a miraculous medical use for petrochemicals but they were extremely scarce and expensive because we had burned most of it.

There is an ample supply of energy that is ideal for the solution to all of our problems.  There is a slight problem of the lack of the technology at present to use this supply.  I’m referring to solar, of course.  For our current (pun intended) needs there is essentially an inexhaustible quantity.

However, I don’t think the answer is to cover a desert with solar panels.  I can’t prove it, but my gut tells me that such a strategy, involving an adequate scale, would alter the earth’s ecology.  All of that solar energy captured by the solar panels was formerly heating up the desert sand and affecting the atmospheric conditions.  I don’t think you can mess with that and not have consequences.

So, ultimately, we will capture solar energy that never hits the earth.  We put solar panels in space where they don’t block the view or cast a shadow from the sun – say over the poles.  The solar panels gather up the solar energy that would miss the earth anyway and beam it to ground stations via lasers.  From the ground stations the energy would be distributed globally and all problems solved.  There are a few details to work out but think of the wonders of such a system - no pollutants, no shortages.

When the sun burns out…

2014 Lester C. Welch

“In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.” James Stuart Keate

(Reader warning: pokes fun at our Canadian neighbors)

My son recently vacationed in Montreal. I have visited Canada a few times and I remember some very noteworthy Canadian cuisine:

a) Fricasséed jowl of moose. Best served with a fresh Maple leaf salad.

b) Open fire roasted spitted seal pup. Best done at the base of a glacier so the dripping ice water (see post about global climate change) can create steam to envelope the spit. Best served with a fresh Maple leaf salad.

c) Seal blubber stew. Throw in some fresh Canadian vegetables. (Ha, ha! Good luck finding any.) New pine needles as garnish will suffice. Best served with a fresh Maple leaf salad.

d) Reindeer steak wrapped in a salmon fillet and slowly thawed. Best served with a fresh Maple leaf salad.

e) Walrus fin soup, a bit warm if possible. Best served with a fresh Maple leaf salad.

Dessert was always the same: Sno Cone with Maple syrup drizzled on top.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content." Mason Cooley

My dad worked alone.  He was responsible for the signals working properly on a section of railroad track – his “district” – about 30 miles.  He was a “signal maintainer” – or, in more general terms, an electromechanical technician.  He didn’t go to an office.  His boss came around about every three months.  There were no discussions around the dining table about any obstreperous colleagues or personality conflicts.

I had no role model when I wound up in an office in my professional life and I did very poorly at office politics.  If I didn’t like someone, I let it show.  I had friends at work, of course, and they were no problem.  One generally doesn’t get to choose with whom you work.   If you don’t like someone (perhaps through your own fault) and you show it, it’s hard to work together and it affects the way management looks at you.  It adversely affects the assignments you get.

Looking back, I made some terrible choices and I’ve learned the following lesson way too late in life to be useful.

Part of any job is to get along with the people you have to work with.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"I was a very naive young man, and I may still be ignorant about a lot of things." Joe Namath

 I was raised in a very supporting extended family.  Aunts, uncles, grandparents all loved me, gave me attention and bragged on me.  My teachers in school gave me encouragement and applauded my minor successes.  Gosh, even my basketball coach for the junior varsity team (I was third string) showed great appreciation when I made a basket.  The professors in college gave me good grades and often called on me in class.  My point is that all of the adult authority figures in my life through college wanted me to be successful and were happy when I was.  That changed after college and shocked me.  I’ll relate an incident – that destroyed my naiveté - that was a ripple and altered my life drastically.

I had gone to California after college (B.S., physics) because I knew there was several great universities for grad school and there were jobs galore for anyone with a technical degree.  It was the midst of the aero-space boom.  So my plan was to get a job, establish residency and apply for grad school and it worked like a charm.  Within two weeks of arriving in California I had three job offers (while staying at the “Y” in downtown LA) and choose one that involved helping the development of ion-propulsion rocket engines.  My first real job.  As an aside, I did design a gizmo that went to the moon and back.  (For the curious, the gizmo was an ultra-high vacuum seal that was impervious to cesium vapor.)

I started applying for grad school and in February, 1964 was accepted by the University of Southern California with a good financial offer to start that fall.  I was happy and thought my boss would be as well.  After all, aren’t adult authority figures supposed to cheer when you succeed?  When I told my boss of the development I was promptly fired.  Now from a mature point of view I can understand why he would do that.  His job centered on the success of the project – not my success.  But, at the time, I didn’t understand and was dismayed.  So I was without a job with a few months to kill.  I found a part time job managing a pool hall, on Colorado Blvd. In Pasadena, that paid enough, with unemployment supplement, for food and rent.  It was in that pool hall – designed (large picture windows, carpet, no booze) to attract families – that I met my first wife by whom I had two great sons.  I talked to SoCal and they found a job for me in a nuclear physics lab for the summer before I enrolled.  A big ripple.

I never looked at authority figures the same way after that.  “What’s their motivation?”

2014 Lester C. Welch

"Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced." Edward Norton

I play online poker for play money.  Before it was outlawed I played for real money.  Never much – a few hundreds of dollars.  I lost.  When real money got outlawed I expected that the quality of the games with play money would diminish – but that didn’t happen.  There were sufficient number of people who played and wanted to win that the games maintained an interest for me. 

One, through their successes, builds up a “bank account” of play money so you can play in games with an increasing “buy-in.”  At the lowest level the games resembles bingo – purely random.  But with a bit of rationality and skill you can win more than your share and get into better games (i.e., higher buy-ins) where inherent skill plays a bigger role. 

Poker is a game of randomness and the best you can hope for is that by playing the odds, in the long run, you’ll win.  Not every pot, not every tournament, but more than your share.  I started with about 1000 chips – given gratis when you start - and now have over 15 million.  It’s taken me a couple of years to do that.  One has bad luck – and good luck.  There are unbelievable ways to win and to lose.

“Psychology Today” has a nice article   ( http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cui-bono/201103/life-poker )  about how poker is a metaphor for life.  Some of us are dealt strong hands at birth and some of us aren’t so lucky.  As humans – not in a casino - do we care for those who were dealt a bad hand at birth?

I also play online chess.  In chess there is no luck.  Complete knowledge is visible.  The two games – chess and poker – are completely opposites in how you approach them.  In poker – as in baseball – if you hit .300 you’re probably an all-star.  In chess you’re a dismal failure.

I find that in periods when I’m doing well in poker I do poorly in chess and vice-versa.  In poker you have to go with your instincts more.  “Is this a good time to bluff?”  If one never bluffs in poker, one loses.  It’s impossible to bluff in chess.

Why can’t one rely on both instincts and rationality at the same time?

2014 Lester C. Welch

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." Pablo Picasso

I’m color blind.  An ophthalmologist gave me a test and concluded that my problems lie in the fact that I was over sensitive to red.  If there was any red there it would wash out the other colors. He said, “You must really see a lawn weirdly.”  I see a green lawn the way I’ve always seen it.  Seems normal to me.  I do remember that when I started driving that the red or yellow traffic lights seemed indistinguishable.  Green was barely distinguishable.  The position of the light – top, middle, bottom – was more important than the actually color. Apparently, later, the powers-that-be, realized this and subtracted the amount of red in the yellow and green.  I have no trouble now.

One manifestation of this disability in my early days was when I put together electronic kits.  Electronic components were color-coded.  The three color bands on a resistor indicated the value.  Early on, I frequently choose the wrong resistor. I resolved that problem by not relying on my interpretation of the color bands but by using an ohmmeter.  I successfully built several HeathKits.

Then at some point in my life I got a creative urge to paint – oils, acrylics.  The typical reaction to my product was, “Geez, those colors are weird.”  They looked normal to me.  Well, of course, that led to abstract art where weird colors were de rigueur.  When you don’t know what the hell you’re looking at, you can’t complain about the colors.  I painted several pieces that I (alone?) liked.

Photography drastically changed art.  When a mechanical device could render realism, then art had to find alternative avenues – impressionism, cubism, abstractism, etc.

The artist who could realistically render a portrait found their market shrinking.  Why pay for something that a camera could do with very little expense?

One neat thing about art is that most art is appreciated after the artist is dead.  So if you’re an artist you can go to your grave and believe that your discovery will happen.  Must be comforting.  Ninety-nine percent of artists just rot in their grave but there is that one percent.

My youngest son got a degree, B.F.A, in fine art and I have a few of his paintings.  Some are a mixture of impressionism and realism.  Very creative.  I like them.

Through random FaceBook activity I found that the daughter of a classmate of mine was a gifted portrait artist.  She had studied art and I really like her work.  After some emails I found she could work from photos.  I commissioned her to do a portrait if each of my granddaughters.  I have those portraits now and they will be passed on through succeeding generations.  I have something I treasure, are heirlooms, and will last much longer than the artist.  I direct you to her homepage http://www.maryancilla.com  

So I support art and appreciate it. I’ve been to the Louve, the Rijksmuseum and several reservoirs of quality art.

I lament I can’t contribute creatively to it.

2014 Lester C. Welch

"The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites." Thomas Sowell

I think I read a few decades ago a science fiction story based in the far future relevant to “welfare.”  I’ve told this tale so many times that I can’t remember if I actually read the story or if it seemed reasonable to assume such a story should have been written.

Anyway, in this far distant future, technology and automation have advanced to the extent that there was very little for humans to do.  All of our basic needs were provided.  Food was produced, delivered and prepared at our tables by automatons.  Energy for heating, cooling and transportation was abundant.  Mankind had nothing to worry about except to enjoy the ocean breezes, play golf, crochet, and be entertained.

Of course, if you wanted to work, there were opportunities.  (I do believe that there are people who like to work.) There is always a need to fix a super-robotic thingamagig that only a human could do.  In fact, there was a cultural competition to decide who – among those who wanted to work – could.  Most people didn’t.  They’d rather relax and shoot their AK-47 simulators at a fake target of 1^st graders.

As productivity goes up because of automation, the jobs where humans excel over robots diminish.  Why should we be surprised at growing unemployment when the aim of progress is to make mankind irrelevant?

Picking cotton? – we have a machine to do that.  Planting corn? – there is a machine to do that.  Putting a fender on a Chevy? –  there is a machine to do that.  Weave a blanket?  - there is a machine to do that.  The course of the future is that there will be less and less for a human to do.

Is this the aim of progress?  To decrease the drudgery of life and increase to opportunity to enjoy it?  What does this imply for the height of the bar for “enjoyment?”

Anyway, we should laud those on welfare, unemployment and disability for they are the harbringers of the future.

2014 Lester C. Welch