Pi Day

Yesterday was pi day and I decided to make a lemon meringue pie.  I could not find my pie cookbook (which I found this morning, after the pie was made) but found another recipe that sounded good, though it took more steps and even as I was making it, I thought it called for too much sugar (and it was too sweet...next time I'll use 1/2 cup less, if I use this recipe again).

I also got a usable crust, though I still don't have my pie dough crust mojo back again. My recipe (which came from Julia Child) makes a double crust, so I made that and used about 1-1/2 of the dough for the crust and I still couldn't get it to roll out large enough to make a decent border on the pie without cutting and pasting bit of dough.

But the meringue was spectacular and when it was all finished, I was very happy with it.

It's Walt's favorite pie, so he was happy with it too and said he was going to have another piece for breakfast this morning.

Now that my "whatever it was" is cured, I find that I am going back to my old sleeping schedule, where I start out on the couch, so I can stretch out, and then midway through the night move to the recliner.  When I had the "whatever it was," I was unable to either lie down right on the couch or to get up without assistance, so stopped doing it, but I do like it now that I can do it again.

The difference this time is that the recliner is so comfortable that the combination of couch and recliner time adds up to pretty darn near 8 hours of sleep, something I have not enjoyed in years...perhaps decades.

I also was the kind of person who bounded out of bed as soon as I woke up to get an early start on the day.  But you don't need to do that if you have no plans for the day, and I am learning the art of dozing.  More and more I am not waking up until 9 and then lounging about for another hour.  It's the luxury of old age!

This morning, the hunkering down had more to do with shock than the usual laziness. At least one gunman killed 49 people and wounded more than 40 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques in the country's worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern condemned as terrorism.

The gunman, a 28-year-old born in Australia (whose name I do not want to print), streamed footage live on social media before and during the massacre, in which 49 men, women and children died while in their place of worship. It showed him driving to the first mosque while listening to a song idolizing Radovan Karadžić, a Bosnian Serb former politician and convicted war criminal who served as the President of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War who was jailed for genocide and other war crimes against Bosnian Muslims.

The weapons today's shooter used were decorated with the names of people like Ebba Akerlund, an 11 year old killed in a truck attack in Stockholm in 2011, which killed 4 and injured 15 and Charles Martel, who is hailed by white supremacists for defeating an invading Muslim force at the Battle of Tours in 732.

He posted 74-page “manifesto” online which lists various neofascist aims, including the creation of an atmosphere of fear among Muslims.'

Hatred and terror has come to that country which, like Switzerland, has hitherto been untouched by the horrors that have plagued so much of the rest of the world.  The rise of "white nationalism," targeting Muslims and Jews is nothing new, but there seems to be a growing escalation, not the least helped by our government's acceptance of groups like the KKK and NeoNazis.

Where will it end? I hurt for those who are suffering today and wish I could be hopeful about anything that could be done to stop the violence, but I fear I can't.