Sublime

heard a story a while back about a man and a woman living in China, maybe forty or fifty years ago. They’d just gotten married, and when the bride moved into her husband’s home, she immediately started fighting with her mother-in-law over a number of petty issues about how the household should

und sogar der Ploser hatte den alten Hof, Haus und Stadel, niedergerissen und eine Pension gebaut.

The domestic hearth had a high priest, who was the father of the family; the hearth of the cury, had its curio, or phratriarch; every tribe, in the same manner, had its religious chief, whom the Athenians called the king of the tribe. It was also necessary that the city religion should have its supreme priest.

My mother was in the kitchen, grinding something in her mortar. She often ground things in her mortar, though sometimes she used the Mixmaster. If I said, “What’s that?” she might say, “Garlic and parsley,” and I’d know she was in Joy of Cooking mode. But if she said, “Look the other way” or “What you don’t know won’t hurt you” or “I’ll tell you wh