Crazy Stable

Maybe it's the excessive anticipation of X-Men III around here, but I've been wishing for a device like Cerebro, Dr. Xavier's telepathic mutant-identification machine, that would put me in contact with all the most kindred souls in the Blogosphere. Because even a brilliant engine like Technorati can't tell me if there's somebody out there weaving magic from one of my tertiary obsessions (the Holy Shroud? the Brontes? tidal coves?) unless I think to go look for them first.
Well, at least one sometimes stumbles on them. Here are a few new additions to the elite CrazyStable blogpond at left. I keep my blog-rolling, and blog reading, pretty limited, because I am prone to OCLD (obsessive-compulsive linkage disorder), a neurosis in which the sufferer’s butt melds into the computer chair from excessive explorations of other people’s blogrolls. But I love these too much not to share. In no particular order:

The Inn at the End of the World: Not only has bagpiper/cultural commentator John Cahill also named his blog after a fragment of Chesterton (hey, great idea!), but he shares a brace of the Stablemistress’ curious passions, including paleo-Catholicism (with a nice shot of social justice to balance the lovely liturgical wonkiness), Anglo-Celtic curiosities, and conservatism, all served up with a twist of dry wit. John, where have you been all my life?

Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina: I avoid food blogs, afraid I’ll wander forever in a happy stupor and never emerge except to stumble, glassy-eyed, to the kitchen clutching a freshly printed-out recipe. (In one toe-dipping exercise, I quickly wound up chuckling through a home-cooking site somewhere in India, loaded with mouth-watering recipes and charming anecdotes. We ate well, but I got little work done that day.) As I discovered during a brief foray into infertility blogs (don’t ask), some topics seem to fuel outrageously good “amateur”-writers-you-never-heard-of, and food/cooking/baking is among them. One of the sweetest (pardon the pun) of the foodbloggers is Bakerina, a young lady in Astoria who has flirted with the culinary profession and shares her joy (and jam, and bread, and cake, and frustrations) with the rest of us. How can you resist someone who calls her day-job “LutherCorp”? (Another dazzling food writer/cook is my cousin Derek, but he is too busy becoming a brilliant architect to post to his blog Ex Culina more than once a semester or so.)

A Brooklyn Life: A group blog, apparently, by clever young things living the life Spouse and I would aspire to if we were Brooklyn newlyweds instead of mid-life muddlers. This bunch make the cast of “Friends” look like the cast of “Cocoon.” It’s fun to fantasize about leaving the Child with a kindly wet nurse in the countryside and then checking out their tips on bands in Billyburg and Red Hook, cool places to eat, and wacky stuff happening around town. And even if you’re not into lofts, alt-rock and graphic novels (more Spouse’s fantasy world than mine), you've gotta love writing like this dismissal of “The DaVinci Code”:
“Rather than paying your hard-earned cash to watch Gump and Opie get all Sister Wendy on the bible…”
(Instead, they suggest an “interactive café” involving “two lovely professors, one panda and a live audience of the hopeful and depressed.” Whee!)

Sci Tri: Quiet, illuminating notes and reflections by a fellow science writer, Robin Lloyd, who was gracious enough to link to CrazyStable. She’s written on the scientific exploration of human happiness, a topic deeply relevant to me, the heterozygous lab-rat offspring of the world’s greatest optimist and the world’s darkest pessimist (see below, “Taking Sides”). I’ve been fascinated that, amid all the clinical trials of antidepressants, some docs study what makes people resistant to depression. Life in the CrazyStable has produced a keen interest in the mechanisms of human resilience, much as a sinking ship sharpens one’s curiosity about the seaworthiness of lifeboats. I plan to explore several of her links on the topic.

But right now I have to go make dinner. I don’t need to check Epicurious for a recipe, now…do I?