Gone without a trace

Kabul, the Afghan restaurant on Second Street, has closed. My sister and I walked past their spot at some point while she was here, and there was no sign of them—just papered-over windows and a sign announcing that soon a new sushi (!!) establishment would open in that space.

I was crushed. Kabul's lunch buffet was a culinary treat—delicious, interesting food (their milk pudding sprinkled with crushed pistachios, alone, was worth the price, which was extremely reasonable, considering you could eat as much as you liked, and I liked it all). Their dinner menu, I thought, was less tasty, for some reason, but there always seemed to be a decent crowd in for the dinner hour (though not so for the lunch). The staff were wonderful, too, gracious and friendly and always ready to answer questions about the food and extoll the virtues of Afghani cuisine.

So now we get another sushi place. Whoopee. Time was, Davis was overrun with Chinese food and pizza places, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a college town. But though there is still plenty of pizza around, there haven't been any new ones opening recently, and Chinese is losing favor (Kabul opened in a spot vacated by a Chinese restaurant that itself hadn't been there all that long). Now it's Thai and sushi, both of which are fine. But who needs so many, and who needs another sushi place when the loss is Kabul? OK, I know it's not the sushi joint's fault; not enough people thought Afghan food was what they wanted to eat on enough days. Even as much as I liked it, I wasn't what you'd call a regular customer, just a now-and-again one. And restaurants fail at astronomical rates. Nevertheless, I'm sorry to see Kabul go; I hope the owners manage to open somewhere where maybe they'll do better. I know I'll miss that milk pudding.

Holey feet

I'm getting seriously worried that once again we Dems will manage to waste our energy bickering amongst ourselves like kids in the back seat, while the Republicans (who should by all rights be ridden out of town on a rail or at least pilloried in the town square for all to mock and pelt with rotten eggs) will sit back and watch their supposedly smart opponents hold their feet out and wait for the self-inflicted shooting to begin.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are highly intelligent, experienced, dedicated, passionate candidates. Either one will do a better job of leading this country out of the mess W. has created than John McCain will (and even he wouldn't, couldn't, be as disastrous as our current idiot). I said from the beginning that though I'm favoring Barack and voted for him in the primary, I would happily and strongly support whichever one got the nomination. Still true. But here's what I'm worried about. I worry that if this thing goes all the way to the convention, the nastiness between our two very good candidates will have weakened our position and given much ammunition to the Republicans' already scurrilous attack machine (and if Clinton is our nominee, that's like adding hydrogen to the blaze). I also worry that if Clinton wins the nomination, all those voters Obama has been able to galvanize into believing things can really change, that the political process can, indeed, include them (the young, the marginalized, the cynical), well, they'll slip back into the shadows, disillusioned and bitter. (Remember the '60s, when we thought we could change things? Me, too.)

These things may not come to pass, and I may be fretting about this stuff needlessly. Our case against Republican policy may be strong enough in the minds of voters to overcome the smears and dirty campaigning they'll employ, and those voters Barack has appealed to may stay on board with Hillary, especially if he can convince them of its importance. And maybe those whole thing is evidence of how democracy works and I should be thrilled that we have two such great candidates that are strong and appealing to so many of us. Which I am. But I've seen too many holes in too many Democratic feet in recent years, and I'd prefer to see those holes shot in the Republicans' policies.

As I was saying before that interruption . . .

I bought these tulips from Annie Main at the farmers' market Saturday morning. Here's what they looked like then . . .
and here's what they looked like today . . .

I knew they'd blow up on me in practically no time, but I don't care . . . they are magnificent, even as they open wider and wider.

On Friday afternon, I put my sister on a plane back to Birmingham, England. She'd been visiting for two weeks, about half of which we spent in Southern California visiting relatives and friends, including our Aunt Marie, who turned 89 this past Sunday; our friend Ruth Schmitt, who will celebrate her 91st birthday later this month; and my sister's first meeting with my granddaughters, who are now 7 and 5 years old. All the traveling and visiting were the cause of my hiatus from this blog (I did have my computer but it turned out I had no way to access the Internet). Were this a perfect world, and I a perfect blogger, I would fill in the gaps with anecdotes and photos of her visit. But it's not likely to happen, at least not in any coherent way. Life moves on, and quickly, and there's nothing like keeping pace with the blog posts to bring that emphatically home.

Tomorrow the voters in Ohio and Texas may give us a clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination. I hope so; it's time to focus before McCain gets too much of a head start telling voters how much better he is at national security than either of the Dems. Sorry, John; promising me eternal war doesn't make me feel all that secure. It's time for a change.