Change of pace--a little policy and two pictures

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact the the 1150-page Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is one of my favorite books, I do not feel qualified to comment on Kosovo's declaration of independence, other than to quote the book, thus:

English persons...of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer.

I highly recommend this book, which is technically a Yugoslavian travelogue but in reality so much more, Moby Dick-like, almost Biblical in the multitude of ideas, facts, and ruminations it contains. However, if you can't face it, you might just read this New Criterion article.

M. drew this picture of my mother, which I rescued from the wastebasket because I think it is a remarkable likeness:

This is what we had for brunch today. Does it not look delicious? Let's pretend every meal in my house looks like this:

I baked that roll. Self back-patting now over.