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Love is the Answer
(graphic found here) Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald Ted and I watched a very interesting episode of Bill Moyers Journal (you can watch the entire episode by following the link…it’s about an hour) the other day, one which dealt with Faith and Social Justice. The panelists were Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien, three heavy hitting scholars and members of the social gospel movement. They were discussing what our ethics and values say about our society, most specifically how our system encourages greed and immoral conduct, and the culture of indifference in which we find ourselves. They argued…
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(Just Like) Starting Over
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Fortunate Son
Fortunate Son is Walter Mosley’s parable of color and class in America, exemplified by two boys, one black, one white, who live together for a few years as children, and consider themselves to be brothers. Tommy is the black brother, who was born with a hole in his lung, which curses his health and strength his entire life. He spends his first 6 months of life in the hospital, visited every day by his devoted single mother, who comes to see him as soon as she gets off of work. Eric is the same age as Tommy, and is born in the same hospital. He is described over and over…
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The Cola Wars Continue
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgq4knffRKc[/youtube] We’ve been hearing a lot about High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Sugar lately, and we decided to do a very low-tech cola taste test on Saturday. I went to my local grocery store, where I procured one Pepsi, one Coke, one Mexican Coke (aka, Coke with sugar), and one Pepsi Natural (aka, Pepsi with sugar). Ted wanted to try some other cola brands as well, but at $7.80 for four sodas, we decided that four were enough. We decided that a blind taste test was best, so I marked the bottoms of some paper cups with the four varieties, and we each had a sample of all four. We…
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Kim Wilde ~ View From A Bridge
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM_v3Vd5ay4[/youtube] My brother Richard used to have a Kim Wilde album, Kids in America, which he listened to a lot, and so I listened a lot. I’d like to say that I was really into her, but I was too dorky for that, and at the time was more likely to be listening to Air Supply. Then a few years later, she covered “You Keep Me Hanging On“, which I loved loved loved. Is that dorky of me, to get into a cover? (Ted’s answer…yes)* Anyway, a year or so after that, when Ted and I were dating, he made me a mix-tape (a sure sign of 80s love…the mix-tape…
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Google Reader
Any readers who access my blog via Google Reader have surely noticed an abundance of prescription drug ads in my posts lately. It appears my blog was hacked. Joan told me about it over a week ago, and I looked around but the power was out that day and it seemed like a Google issue, so I forgot about it. Then today, Michelle emailed me about it, and I thought, hmmm, maybe I should look into this some more. So I searched around about WordPress/Goodle Reader issues, and found a page with some solutions, but they were above my technical ability to execute…so I asked Ted’s friend, Rahul, and he…
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I Am the Flag
Ted was born in Ontario, Canada, and came to the Bay Area at the ripe old age of 1. When the family naturalized as U.S. Citizens 5 or 6 years later, some neighbors gave them a little book, titled, I Am the Flag: A Portrait of America, by Lawrence M. Jones. It’s kinda groovy, with very early 70s illustrations. I thought it appropriate to copy here, for Independence Day. I am a composite being of all the people of America. I am the union if you are united. I am one and indivisible if you are undivided. I am as strong as the weakest link. I am an emblem of…
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Happy Anniversary!
16 years ago today, I made the best move I’ve made in my life. I married my best friend, my partner in crime, my love. I think we all make mistakes in life, or wonder about the path not taken. We wonder how things might have been different if we had taken x job, or moved to y city, or finished school (or not finished school). One thing I know, is that I have never regretted the decision to marry Ted. He has been, and always is, the best husband I could ever want. Someone who is always on my side, always has me back, always trusts me to do…
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Jalapeno Jelly Glazed Salmon
gorgeous picture found here I saw this recipe on my current favorite cooking show, America’s Test Kitchen, and it looked so easy and delicious that I decided that I had to try it. The beginning of this week was ungodly hot, with Sunday topping out at 108, and Monday a more reasonable, but still toasty, 97 or so. So grilling is the perfect way to avoid heating up the kitchen. This recipe was truly delicious, and I suspect we’ll be having it again, especially since I still have 1/2 jar of jalapeno jelly in my fridge, and no idea what else I would use it for. I’ve grilled fish before,…
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Jewel ~ You Were Meant For Me
I have a soft spot for this song. I had kind of forgotten it, but a few weeks ago it came on while I was driving around, and it brought back memories of when Maya was a toddler, and a HUGE Jewel fan. She especially loved this song, though Foolish Games came in as a close second. Look closely at the picture above, and you’ll see that she’s holding a printout of the cover to Jewel’s Pieces of You album. She would carry it around with her, sleep with it, everything with it. One copy would get torn or wet or lost, and Ted would print out another one. We…
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Friday Dog Blogging
Hi Everyone, it’s Genevieve! I have to tell you about the craptastic time I’ve had lately! You know how Medium Boss posted a video of me running around like a puppy? Well, that was about a month ago, and I haven’t done it since. So the bosses are worried. And what do they do when they worry about me? They take me to the vet! BAD BOSSES! Why can’t they just give me steak and see if I feel better? Sigh. So they first took me to the vet for my peeing, to see if I had something wrong like an infection (?What’s that?). Well, I could have told them…
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Thursday 13 ~ Some things I’m glad I can do, some things I haven’t bothered to learn, a few I wish I could do.
(Things I can do) Ride a horse. Maybe not well (yet), but I’m not afraid of them, and I’m glad that I feel confident enough when I ride that I don’t need someone there guiding me. Swim. I love swimming. I know people who are afraid of the water, never learned to swim, and it makes me sad. Such a free feeling, and a way to feel your body in a totally alien environment. Cook a nice meal. I truly enjoy cooking, and I’m thankful to my mom for making Richard and me start chipping in with that chore when we were in High School. That gave me some time…
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Help?
Hi All, I don’t use a reader, I’m old school and click the blogs I want to read from my sidebar. One of my bloggy friends, Joan, told me that my blog is coming up in Google reader with a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs next to it. Once she clicks the link to my blog, all is well… Has anyone else had this issue? Any idea of how to fix it? I’m on WordPress, but hosted on our own domain. I updated to the newest version, but it made things kinda wonky, so I reverted back to my old version of WordPress. Help? Anyone? UPDATE: It looks like this is…
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The Solace of Leaving Early
Langston Braverman walked out on her PhD oral exams, and came home to small town Indiana to recover from that which ails her. She is so wrapped up in her own pain that she has no energy left to pay attention to what is going on around her, and there’s a lot going on. Her childhood friend Alice has died, leaving two young children behind, and Langston is so self-absorbed that she isn’t even the least bit interested in how her friend died, doesn’t want to attend the funeral, just wants to hide in her parents’ attic and try to figure out what to do with her life. While Langston’s…
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Wonderful Weekend
Our weekend started with a dinner to celebrate Juneteenth, including bbq chicken, potato salad, a tex mex salad that I found at Scribbit, and a wonderful nectarine and raspberry crisp. Very nice. Saturday I got up and out the door, and went to my first of 6 weekly horseback riding lessons. Yay! This was the assessment lesson, where the instructor found out more about me and my previous experience, and watched me ride a bit, so she could correct my seat, my feet, etc. I have to say, I really, really liked it. The lesson is more than just riding, you also learn about caring for the horse. So I…