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Friday Randomness ~ 11/11/11
First off, let’s take a moment to thank all of the Veterans this Veterans’ Day, for their patriotism and service. There is a sad, lovely poem written during the First World War, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and surgeon, after he witnessed the death of a friend. Lieutenant Colonel McCrae died of pneumonia during the war, in 1918. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were…
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Fall Back…
Love it or hate it, it’s that time….Daylight Saving. Fall back, meaning that you turn your clock back an hour and get an extra hour of sleep. You’ll come home in the darkness, and perhaps it shan’t be quite so dark when you’re trying to awake in the morning. I like the evening sun, but I also like the morning sun, so I wonder if perhaps the answer isn’t to be found so much in fiddling with the clock and nature, but rather with moving closer to the equator. Either that, or following our bodies’ clocks, which would be closer to sleeping more in the winter and less in the…
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How Progressive Taxation works
(click the tax tables to enlarge) I’ve been hearing a lot about a proposal to simplify the tax code lately, using a flat tax, which would tax everyone at the same flat rate. Cain says 9%, and would add a Federal sales tax to the mix. Perry says 20%, but doesn’t mention a sales tax. The idea is that we should all be taxed the same rate, because it’s more fair, and that having one tax rate would simplify things. Well, before you fire your accountant (job killers!), remember that it’s not the withholding tables that make things complicated. It’s the exemptions and deductions and credits. So really, in order…
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The Solitude of Prime Numbers
The image of Michela playing with a twig and breaking up her own reflection in the water before sliding into it like a sack of potatoes ran through his head like an electric shock. Exhausted, he sat down a couple of feet from the river’s edge. He turned around to look behind him and saw the darkness that would last for many hours to come. He stared at the gleaming black surface of the river. Again he tried to remember its name, but couldn’t. He plunged his hands into the cold earth. On the bank the dampness made it softer. He found a broken bottle, a sharp reminder of some…
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Soft Shell Chicken Tacos
Back before the internet gave me good cooking ideas, in the days of ridiculously slow modems and no real websites to visit, we got a little spiral bound cookbook produced by Sargento Cheese, called Simply the Best, filled with ingredients that utilized their cheesy products. We have a few quick favorites that we find ourselves returning to, again and again. The recipe we probably make move in this cookbook is for Soft Shell Chicken Tacos. It’s stupidly easy, and really tasty. And if you have some of the chicken mixture left the next day (we usually do, because I double the recipe) it makes an AMAZING omelet, with either some…
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Body Image for Girls
Starshine wrote a post a little while ago about the hyper-sexualized advertising she sees at the local mall, and brought up her concerns about raising her sons to be respectful of women and not objectify them, when they are surrounded by these images. She brings up a good point, and it’s important to raise our boys to understand that this is just advertising, and that the majority of women and girls do not go around in their underwear, with ‘come get me’ looks permanently on their faces, bent into unnatural positions. It’s a fantasy, and not even one that’s very interesting or original. As the mother of a daughter, my…
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Friday Randomness
Nothing earth shattering today, so we’ll dive on in, OK? Just a bunch of randomness that’s been swimming through my brain a bit. We’re trying Genevieve on a new drug. She had stopped eating, which had us really concerned. Or, to be more accurate, her eating was very sporadic and unpredictable. She didn’t want her kibble, so I started making her some homemade food. She liked that for awhile, but then seemed to tire of it. We’d try to hand feed her, and she’d just turn her head away. She was always happy to eat dog treats, cheerios with milk, that kind of thing, but not regular dog food. She…
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Roasted Tomato Marinara
It’s been a mild, cool summer, with lots of foggy cold or cool days. I shan’t complain. I love those kind of days. Because I’m thankful for the mild weather, I have decided to not complain when it gets hot hot hot, which it finally did, in early September. When it gets above 90, it’s difficult to keep the house cool, even with the a/c cranked up. When it gets above 100, I don’t like to turn on the oven or even the stove for very long. Right around this time, Cherry came by with a crop of tomatoes from her dad’s garden. YUM. What to do with so many…
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Chile Corn Custard Squares
Another family birthday party, and this time we decided to go straight to the appetizers. Everyone brought one or two, we all sampled, and by the time we were finished, we were full. Not too full for cake, but still, pretty full. I had been looking on Bon Apetit.com for recipes, and came across two that inspired me with their gorgeous pictures. One was a winner, and the other just so so. Today’s recipe is the WINNER. Really good, really easy. Did I mention that they’re good? One might even say, delicious. Give these a try for your next pot-luck or dinner party. They’ll be a hit, as long as…
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The Forgotten Garden
Cornwall, 1900 – Eliza has been living in abject poverty, hidden in the attic with her brother. Her brother makes money cleaning chimneys. Eliza cleans and launders clothing that Mrs. Swindell brings in, for money. Mrs. Swindell strains the broth that they eat before feeding them. No reason to waste meat on children such as them. Their mother recently died, but before she did, she warned Eliza and Sammy to always be careful, always watch out for the bad man, the bad man who is searching for them. London, 1913 – A 4 or 5 year old girl hides in the dark, just as she has been told. She’s waiting…
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Friday Randomness
I don’t have a lot to say, but I feel like I should say something…I mean, I like blogging, so I need to blog, right? OK. Here are a few random thoughts coming through my head right now. Is anyone else exhausted by the coverage of the anniversary of the attacks on September 11th? I know I am. That day will never be forgotten…it was a horrid horrid day, and it was captured on video, played over and over again for all to see. I don’t want to see those buildings falling, or people jumping to their deaths, or people covered in ashes, or the desperate ‘have you seen this…
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Who Put the Labor in Labor Day?
We did, that’s who. When I think of labor day, my mind first thinks of the end of summer…the crisp fall weather on the horizon, the cool weather clothes, school starting up again, the return of the good TV shows… Then there are the Labor Day celebrations…one last bbq of summer, maybe a trip to the beach, the lake, or the shore… For some people it is a chance to get caught up with some chores around the house, to enjoy a 3-day weekend by sleeping in one extra day, maybe see some friends. I agree with all of these things. Not a thing wrong with any of them. But…
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The Other Wes Moore
When I was in college, there was another woman with my name (Julie Ward (click to read the story of her murder, the mystery of it, and the obstruction of justice at the hands of the British police)), who was murdered in Africa. I remember seeing an article in the paper about it, and clipping it out and hanging it on my bathroom wall, with a certain degree of gallows humor. I wrote on the clipping, “One Down…”, because it reminded me of The Terminator, when Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to the front door, says “Sarah Conner”, and then kills the poor woman. I know, it’s sick. I was young. But…
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One Day
At twenty-three, Dexter Mayhew’s vision of his future was no clearer than Emma Morley’s. He hoped to be successful, to make his parents proud and to sleep with more than one woman at the same time, but how to make these all compatible? He wanted to feature in magazine articles, and hoped one day for a retrospective of his work, without having any clear notion of what that work might be. He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should…
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Update from Genevieve
Hi Everyone, this is Genevieve! Guess what I figured out? After all of these years with my pack, eating that stupid kibble they give me, being grateful for every day, I finally decided I had had enough. I just couldn’t take it anymore! I mean, they make all of this delicious smelling shash (J’s note…Gen calls food ‘shash’), and the best I can hope for is to smell it, and once in awhile I get a bite, and one scoop of stupid kibble in my dish. Not fair! So I went on a hunger strike. Oh my goodness, did I scare the bosses! They would coax and beg me to…