USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
The last time FISA 702 was up for a vote most GOP Members of Congress voted to add a warrant requirement. Why won't leadership allow votes on reform to happen this time?
That refusal to allow reform votes the reason why the process has gotten stuck, and the only way to fix it
Watch to the very end when they tell the senator’s staffer there’s no recording allowed, as they drive him to the ground after physically removing him from a press conference.
Yes, their position is that there is no recording allowed at a press event
Creating new criminal and civil claims against providers based on broad terms and low standards won’t help kids. But it will undermine digital security for all internet users. https://t.co/U44ZUoFMhY
It took us 6+ months to put together this "short" summary of EFF's work, and I couldn't be more proud to lobby for these ideas. Time to (skirt) suit up!
EFF isn't backing down on our privacy and free expression priorities under the new Congress and administration. Here's our memo to incoming officials previewing how we'll fight for the rights of the American public. https://t.co/p7frINmhql
Support the future of @VUCommodores. ⚓️⬇️
#VandyUnited will elevate each sport, transform the athletics footprint on campus, build the best student-athlete experience in college sports and create an immersive gameday experience for Commodore Nation. https://t.co/gxV5EQqPnt
Imagine how confused the bachelorettes on Broadway must be. Just trying to dance to Friends in Low Places for the 17th time and suddenly there's goalposts outside.