Today’s miscellany

Remember honeycrisp apples?  They first appeared a couple years ago, I forget when exactly.  Wow, were they delicious.  I’m usually not a fruit-eater but this apple was extra-tasty:  juicy, sweet, crunchy.  Yum.  Sure, they were $1.99 a pound instead of $0.99, but I’d splurge. 

Then they disappeared.  Now they’ve reappeared — but at $3.99/lb this is far more of a splurge than I ever imagined an apple would ever be!

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Who remembers Pre-Cana?  Catholics among you may remember the requirement about “being open to children” as part of what it meant to be married.  And a Dear Prudence column I came across when reading something else on Slate is a pretty clear illustration of why the Catholic Church teaches this — a reader writing to Prudence that her husband, with two children from a prior marriage, was adamant that she never get pregnant, and, when the woman did fall pregnant, was furious, and celebrated her later miscarriage.  She became pregnant a second time (despite his vasectomy) and was writing on how to tell him the news, when she was quite certain his reaction would either be abandonment or extreme pressure to abort.

This situation replays itself multiple times in advice columns.  There’s something seriously wrong with one’s worldview when it involves being married (or, really, in any kind of sexual relationship) and considering the possibility of a pregnancy to be intolerable and unacceptable.

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Planning your vacation?  Me, I’m just looking to our return trip to Europe, which won’t happen for a couple years yet.  Our favorites?  Borgo Sicelle — centrally located between Florence and Siena. 

And this tiny bungalow in Munich.

which was a tight fit but perfect for our family.

And, in the category of “things you won’t see in the U.S.”, Maulwurfshausen. Sorry, the site’s in
German, but take a look at the pictures:

The home page image is interesting, to be sure, but not that remarkable.

But look at this:

and this:

Because the whole thing is built by kids, kids who in the US would never be permitted to touch a saw without extremely close parental supervision.