PicoBlog

(This newsletter is supported by SmugMug, which offers unlimited online photo backup at better rates and terms than Apple, Google or Dropbox, plus the ability to sell prints and showcase your work in beautiful online galleries.) Driving your car on the sandy beach. Imagine it. Dream it. Do it. ncG1vNJzZmiilZuzpr7SqKWgqpGdrq560q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlno6q6rrHRZqmomZRiwbO1z2abq6Gmmnq1tMRmp6KrnaQ%3D

There is something very strange about automobiles. They are much faster and more dangerous than our brains are used to thinking about. This was more obvious to people when automoviles were new. In the early days, there was great consternation over the question of what would happen if two cars tried to occupy the same intersection at the same time. The speed and mass of the automobile were unprecedented, and the consequences of such a collision unimaginable.

Hello! Hello! Even as summer fruits and vegetables reach peak abundancy, I experience anticipatory sadness knowing that the season will come to end and that that’ll be that for corn and tomatoes, which we eat every summer evening, and peaches, which are so plentiful now that they’re packed in bushel baskets and take up half the table at our local farm stand. I know, I know – I should live in the moment.

I’ve been promising this list for a VERY long time… a master list of meals that make great drop-off meals for new parents, sick or grieving friends, or whoever in your life needs a pick-me-up in the form of a home-cooked meal. This is not your average list of lasagna, chicken and rice casserole, baked ziti, and enchilada recipes. These meals will be a serious treat for the recipient, without causing you to be stuck in the kitchen all day long.

Crosses for Change, Paris Street, Sudbury“The number of people dying from opioid toxicity increased by more than 500 per cent from 2017 to 2020, numbers show.” (Sudbury Star 09 December 2023.) A 500% rise in deaths in just four years is alarming. It is a statistic that crys for action. North American drug addictions is a medical epidemic and this crisis has to be treated as such by all three-levels of government.

🇷🇴 ROMANIA 📍 821 N. Euclid Street, Anaheim, Orange County. 🅿️ Small plaza parking lot 🥤 Beer and wineIf you can ever make it through Anaheim’s rush hour and successfully navigate into this small Euclid Street plaza just north of the 5, the rare (to LA) world of Romanian cuisine is waiting as a reward. At the crossroads of Central Europe and the Balkans, and nestled against the eastern shores of the Black Sea, Romanian food shares similarities with those nations around it but is most certainly unique.

Before I dive into this week’s post, I wanted to write a little note to you—my handsome, noble, generous, undoubtedly stylish, certainly well-read—subscribers. I started this newsletter two years ago with not much of a plan. A few days before my two-year anniversary, Counter Craft passed 10,000 subscribers. I truly never expected this to grow so large. Thank you for reading. I love you all. Today I’m talking DUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNEE. Yes, I am buying into the hype for Dune: Part Two.

As a Donald Trump biographer and presidential historian—I published three national bestsellers on the Trump administration—I took the current most popular Dungeons & Dragons Alignment Test using exclusively the answers I believe Trump would give to the questions were … ncG1vNJzZmiqlam%2FsL%2FTmpqkZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe8OupaCdn6PAbq3NnWSdqpGcvK%2B%2FjJqjop%2BeorKvwIytnKysow%3D%3D

This is the second in a series of Dutch Soccer Weirdos, on weirdos who are Dutch and also people in soccer. The first weirdo addressed was Louis van Gaal. Dutch Soccer Weirdos: Louis van Gaal I’m trying something new over here at Soccer Stories. It’s an intermittent series called Dutch Soccer Weirdos. One of my first stories in this newsletter was about Johan Cruyff, the arch-Dutch Soccer Weirdo. The other day, it dawned on me that the Netherlands, my birth country for whose national team I still root, has given the sport two things.