Found through a link from an old FEN co-worker –
You know, now and again I wonder if the habits of frugality ingrained by almost fifteen years of living pretty close to the poverty line have turned me into my grandmothers – especially Grannie Jessie who was reputed to pinch pennies so hard that a booger would come out of Lincoln’s nose. I have never had a brand-new car, a totally-new-to-me house, and only occasionally a new piece of furniture or major appliance – the last two such items have come from the Scratch-and-Dent Store. Now and again I do have a brand-spanking new minor appliance – usually freebies from Amazon Vine. There was an electric kettle, gotten for the price of having to write a review of it. The same for the shop-vac, a great clumsy thing and no prize for appearance, but by god, it will suck the paint off a Buick fender. The usual small appliances though, are lightly second-hand; there was the once-top-o-the line Zojirushi bread machine, from a vast community-event garage sale, almost untouched and in the original box for $5. My most recent favorite small appliance toy was the vacuum-sealer, also bought at a yard sale for $5 – and also once top-o-the-line as well as also being barely used. Now, though – I think I have struck some kind of nadir, as far as slightly-used kitchen appliances go. But there is a bit of a back-story.
My kitchen is a small one; storage space at a minimum, you see – and I have a constitutional dislike of kitchen gadgets which only do one thing, and one thing only. Not for me an item like the electric waffle-maker that I remember that Mom had in her kitchen; about twenty-two inches square and eight or ten deep and which only made waffles. These appliances that I give shelf and counter space to ought to be good for more than one task, or amazingly, dazzlingly efficient at that one task … and for extra points, small and easily stashed away. I bought a KitchenAid stand mixer, yea those many years ago, precisely because it had multiple useful attachments, many of which I also purchased.
The current stove does not have a griddle option. (Once we lived in a rental house which had one, and I loved it.) Such things are, apparently, only an option in the high-end gas stoves these days, which is fair enough. One can make do with any number of electric griddle appliances, and there … there is where my multi-tasking option comes in. We have a small electric Delonghi indoor grill (bought at Williams-Sonoma when they were on sale and I was working at one of the reliable but deathly-boring corporate jobs) and a Toastmaster electric griddle, gotten through one of my daughter’s employers who intended donating it to a thrift shop. Both of them are quite adequate to the tasks required … but I had a hankering for something that would neatly combine their various functions … two, two, two in one! And maybe even more … I saw information on-line about a Cuisinart multi-griddle which would do all this and more; it could be a Panini-press, fold out and lay flat to be a griddle, or a grill, and had any number of different dish-washer safe plates, which could be swapped out … yes, that would be exactly the ticket! I put it on my Amazon wish-list, and some months ago, I spotted the exact same multi-griddle for an enticingly-reduced price at an HEB-Plus supermarket. Yes, I’d have to do a bit of finagling; including going halfsies on it with my daughter … but we put it into the shopping cart, and continued through the produce section. There we were approached by a middle-aged woman and her husband who asked most politely if we were going to buy it. I answered yes, I had been looking at and thinking of buying one for months and it all seemed providential … and she launched into her tale of woe. Yes, she had one, had been given it as a Christmas present from her husband … and to make a long story short, it proved to be a total disaster. The handles and catches for the interchangeable plates melted, it didn’t work anything as advertised, bits and parts had been replaced by the manufacturer, it still didn’t work anything like it had been represented to … and. It’s kind of more personal than reading a one-star review on Amazon, when a total stranger comes up and tells you that the item is a total dog. She advised us very strongly to give it a miss.
Which I did, sneaking it back onto the shelf from whence it came, with considerable regret; yes, it was a bargain, compared to the original price, but not at the price of the hassle involved. My daughter and I concluded that maybe Cuisinart was going to come out with a new and improved model soon, which would fix many of the problems, and that was why this one was on sale. I’d wait until the new and improved model to be available. There’s always time.
This week, though – when I was doing the early-morning jog that my daughter insists that we ought to do, in the interests of our health and well-being – I joggled past a house in the neighborhood where the residents had put out a stack of stuff on the curb. Look, I pay attention to this sort of thing, especially at bulk-trash pickup time. We’ve scored no end of useful elements for the garden, this way. We know the family in this house to speak to, since they put out some nice things on the curb before. Paring down the possessions, they said; a relatively-newly-wed blended family. (These days, two adult persons marrying and merging their once-separate households usually have two of everything … so, yes; good and usable stuff extraneous to current needs being put out on the curb. I can totally understand that.) Among the items extraneous to need was a bright red George Foreman grill – the model with a number of extra and interchangeable plates. We took it home, plates and accessories and all, carefully detailed the main unit, ran the washable items through the dishwasher, looked up and printed the owner’s manual, and gave it a test run … and yes, it works beautifully. It’s only lacking one of the grill plates, and they are available for a small sum.
It’s not quite what I had in mind – but if it works out very well, I might later get one of the later models which does open up all the way to offer two flat surfaces for grilling or griddling. But most importantly … the price was right.
… about the egregious Al Sharpton, whom I will not dignify with the title of reverend, first because there is no record of the fat, illiterate, race-baiting rabble-rouser ever having attended a seminary of any sort, and secondly because … oh, good lord, just look at those old pictures of him from the 1970s and 80s; jheri-curled, velour track suit and gold pendant the size of a man-hole cover. People, trust me when I tell you that I require a smidge more dignity from those who hold churchly office in any denomination, a standard from which Al Sharpton fell so far that he would need a bucket-truck with a three-story-tall extension even to get close.
Yes, in the interests of keeping abreast of news events in the pre-internet days, your Dear Author bought or subscribed to a great many print publications, to the point where on days when bulk mail came in to the military post office, I practically had to use a crow-bar to extract them all from my post-box. One of the regular reads – gotten from the Stars & Stripes bookstore, since I didn’t particularly feel the need for a subscription – was The Village Voice. So – yes, I had heard of the unsavory Mr. Sharpton some years before he burst upon the wider world of New York with the Tawana Brawley affair in the late 1980s.
Subsequently, I always wondered why the wretched little man seemed to be legally untouchable, even in spite of being ordered to pay out in the case of the Pagones defamation suit. The Crown Heights riots, the Freddy’s Fashion Mart fire – all of that had Al Sharpton’s smeary fingerprints all over them … and yet … he seemed to talk away always, unscathed by any meaningful payback. Falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and setting off a panic which kills people – that would be actionable, surely?
And yet, nothing ever happened to the so-called reverend; he appeared to thrive as a particularly scummy and public race-baiter – and indeed, even to recent times, ascending to a presumably well-paid position at a major broadcast television channel. Which again – this really gives one cause for wonder, seeing as that the egregious Sharpton, who appears to have lost some weight and refined his sartorial taste – has gone vaulting up into higher and higher levels of visibility and social authority. Still – why?
Part of the answer, according to this story, courtesy of the Daily Mail, is that Al Sharpton was an FBI snitch. (Why again, are so many stories of this kind appear on a publication like the Daily Mail, which seems to have semi-literate high school students write their headlines, cut-lines and badly re-write stories lifted from other places? Well, at least they do, which is more than what can be said of our very own dear national media.) And if you believe he volunteered to be a snitch with regard to the FBI investigating two prominent Mafia families out of the goodness of his heart and as a fine upstanding citizen with a deep concern for the welfare of his community … then bless your heart and I have some fine Nevada swampland that I’d like to sell you. I’ll throw in a small bridge in Brooklyn, just because I am a good upright citizen myself.
No, Al got leaned on by the Fibbies, and I hope I live long enough to read in the headlines exactly what they held over his head and threatened to charge him with to ensure his cooperation. I’ll break out a $20 bottle of champagne or maybe a fine Fredericksburg Winery Fredericksburg and Northern vintage red Zinfandel and drink a toast. Al was a valued informant, and therefore Teflon in his subsequent career. Interesting also that it is revealed now – and I also wonder if there is some FBI agent a couple of weeks from retiring with a good pension who decided to square things by slipping the word to The Smoking Gun. Discuss.
(Cross-posted at chicagoboyz.net.)
If World War One were a bar fight …
(found on Facehook and on PJ Media. Enjoy.)
And also just for fun – World War Two as if it were played out on a Facebook news feed.
How a European visualizes an American breakfast. Scroll down, the comments are hilarious.
(Found courtesy of Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom. Yeah, I slum, now that I am apparently not permitted to post comments at PJ Media. Which I find to be pretty ****ing insulting, since apparently any doofus whose cousin-friend-sister’s-mother-in-law can make $70 an hour from home on their computer can post comments.)
So, we have been having fun with a new kitchen gadget – nnnooo, not the kitchen gadget what is on the to-buy list at the Scratch and Dent Superstore (the awesome side-by-side refrigerator freezer which is on layaway and due to replace the 20-year old Whirlpool in the next month or so) – but the Food Saver vacuum device which came with half a roll of the plastic medium and the instruction manual. I spotted it at a neighborhood yard sale, barely used and for the unbelievably low, low price of $5 cash. The previous owner said that it worked – but not why she was letting it go, when it is so useful a gadget. This, when new went for a cool $170 or so. I had been considering purchasing a home vacuum-packing system now and again, but was always put off by the price. Yeah, I’m turning into my pinch-the-penny-until-a-booger-comes-out-Lincoln’s-nose grandmothers. Deal with it.
With the price of groceries going up and up, my daughter and I are running through all the means of saving here and there; to include copious use of coupons, buying on sale and freezing, and making a whole lot of different things from scratch. But the trouble with freezing is that even the sturdiest zip-lock freezer bags grow frost on the inside, and the stuff gets refrigerator-burn and generally unappetizing, and within a short time you forget what the heck it is and how long it has been in there anyway.
Insert the truism about the freezer being only interim storage for leftovers, before they are old enough to be thrown away.
But the Food-Saver eliminates the frost and freezer-burn, along with the air from the sealed package. We also discovered to our joy and surprise, that it makes the package of pre-made and pre-flavored hamburger patties or marinated chicken-leg quarters so much smaller that space-saving in the freezer is achieved almost instantly. Now we can buy the family-packs of chops or chicken-breasts or whatever, and package them in two-serving-sized bags which will not degrade the quality of the meat when frozen, or leave me trying to pry apart lumps of hard-frozen meat.
I’m already considering my options as far as purchasing a half or a quarter of a cow in one fell swoop … and we are racking our brains now, for the names of people we know who hunt. I’d like to have a bit of venison or wild boar in the freezer now and again, also.
When a writers’ organization forgets that its primary goal should be to assist and support writers and starts trying to look more politically correct and then to force that image on all members or else they be publicly shamed, it has outlived its time.
(From a comment by Amanda, at the discussion thread here.) For an explanation of glittery hoo-haa, go here – and remember, you have been warned.
Now, aren’t you all glad that I have taken to writing historical fiction? Those organizations which I am interested in joining, or semi-qualified to join based upon scribbling moderately competent, interesting, and OK-selling genre fiction (Women Writing the West, or the Historical Fiction Society) are not having these nuclear-melt-down-sink-through-to-the-core-of-the-earth perturbations. Or at least, none that I know of – mostly because I am interested in writing, not organizational politics, because – what was the reason for the writers’ organization again? Oh, yeah – the care and feeding of writers, and their economic interests, not some kind of neo-Stalinist clique imposing a kind of savage Mean Girls political correctness upon the membership and exiling all those who don’t or won’t go along with it.
More »
Ah, the New Year is upon us, now that we have successfully negotiated the month-long holiday hurdles – and no, I am doing my best not to ask myself what fresh hells await, since I am barely done with the rich banquet served up to us at year-end.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, and laugh, and laugh at the spectacle of a boat-full of global-warmenist tourists venturing on an Antarctic expedition to prove that the polar ice is melting faster than the Wicked Witch when Dorothy emptied a bucket of water onto her … being caught in the ice … and having to be rescued by ice-breaking ships. The topper is that this is actually the summer season at the bottom of the world, and the darned stuff is supposed to be melting seasonally anyway. But apparently not, and the gales of laughter at this bit of misfortune are not quite strong enough to dislodge the ship. Was Al Gore anywhere around? The unseasonably horrible weather hitting all of the United States but a tiny band along the west coast argues the presence of He Whose Chakras Need to be Raised, or at least smacked with a bucket of cold water.
Ah, the fortunes of the ruling dynasty in North Korea have taken a positively surreal turn into I, Claudius territory, with the long-time advisor and uncle (with a handful of Uncle’s top aides) of Pudgy-Boy Kim executed by being served up naked to a pack of starving dogs – and the ruling echelons made to watch the proceedings. To encourage the others, I guess. This was reported via Chinese news media, which makes me wonder how tired the Chinese are getting of the antics of Pudgy-Boy and all the other Kims. Given that dog-meat is a traditional Korean delicacy, and in North Korea eating it is likely a matter of survival, perhaps the dogs considered this arrangement a fair turn-about. No wonder Dennis Rodman appears to be getting fond of North Korea; height and color aside, he blends right in with the general freakishness.
And speaking of a parade of … well, not freaks exactly, more a case of being freakishly out of touch, I give you MSNBC, or as I have begun to call it, PMSNBC – now in a dead heat with Time Magazine as they race to the bottom. Well, both of these media entities were once respected, popular and purveyors of the news. Now I suppose it is commentary and opinion all the way, and very strident and in-your-face opinion, too. The insults are just the extra, although I am certain Melissa Harris-Perry got an earful over that notorious segment poking mean-girl fun at Mitt Romney’s adopted grandson. Being that she was a child of color – or anyway, half-color – born to a white Mormon mother, one would have thought Ms. Harris-Perry would have been a little more circumspect. I can hope that perhaps her own mother put her straight, about how painful it would be for mother and child alike to hear sniggering cracks about how one of these things is not like the other, and one of those things does not belong.
And finally, Obamacare, sweet Obamacare, the unAffordable Care Act, now in the act of a slo-mo clash and burn even more spectacular than that of the Hindenberg. Yes, thank you, I’ll have my serving of schadenfreude in chocolate flavor, with a spritz of whipped cream, toasted almonds and a cherry on top. Harsh? I’ll save my sympathies for those people now caught within the deadly toils of trying to work out some kind of healthcare coverage for themselves and their families who did not vote Dem in the last two elections. For those who did, and are now unpleasantly confronted with the results – sorry, we warned you, over and over, and all we got for that was abuse and ridicule. Sometimes enlightenment is only achieved through pain. I haven’t ventured into Open Salon lately to see how enlightenment is progressing these days – I’m not a sadist that way. I’ll just settle for my tasty cup of schadenfreude.
Hang tight – it’s gonna be an interesting ride through 2014.
One would have to possess a heart of stone, to read about the grand Antarctic expedition intended to prove that the Antarctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate… get stuck in the ice!
(Found at Samizdata)
Any questions? You know, there comes a time when you have to come out and say that not only does the emperor not have any clothes on, but he is jumping up and down waving his donger in your face…
Covered here, at length, I am certain that New Mexico, or at the very least, the Hidalgo County PD needs a new motto.
How about “New Mexico – Come for the enchantment, stay for the thorough cavity searches”?
Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – The Keyster Kops!”
Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – Let Us Take You Up the Khyber Pass”
Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – Illegal Anal Probs R Us!”
Seriously, if ever there was an occasion which calls for prolonged and vicious mockery, this would be it. Don’t these people have enough real and obvious criminals to deal with?
I swear, sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. It looks like ACA/Obamacare will tank worse than the Titanic, since the website/websites appear to be an exercise in frustration, and those who have succeeded in finding out what their new plan will cost are reeling and stunned with sticker shock. I am spared the worst ravages, since I am on Tricare, and the quarterly payment has only gone up by about 10$. But Blondie, bless her little cotton socks, very carefully sought out her own insurance coverage earlier this year, and as an unmarried and relatively healthy (although somewhat service-dented and dinged) young adult secured coverage through Humana for a little over 80$ a month. This week she received a long explanatory letter from Humana that her basic plan would now cost a dollar or two more – but that if she chose to go with the plan which would meet the standards for Obamacare as ordained by governmental powers which have wriggled and squirmed with sufficient agility as to exempt themselves from Obamacare’s clammy embrace – that would cost her a cool $233.
I have read here and there that is about par – the costs of coverage will double, and what they will get for it will be even less than at present. Big government – is there nothing it can’t do? A rhetorical question, obviously. There are those also who mutter darkly that Obamacare was deliberately designed to fail, in that it would wreck medical insurance entirely and throw us all onto the tender mercies of single-payer. From which I presume that those with ‘pull’ will get their treatment in the gold-plated clinics and wards set aside for the higher nomenklatura, those with money will go off-shore or to concierge-care, and the rest of us will take our chances in places which will make the public hospital wards of the 19th century look like the Mayo Clinic, or study up on home-remedies.
As my mother used to say – never attribute to malice that which can be accounted for by stupidity, but in this case I am hard put to make a distinction.
Pretty much the same with the semi-theatrical government shut down, which with obvious and malicious intent closed down national parks which were pretty much open anyway, were run by third parties at a profit, or merely had the ill-luck to be on park service property. I thought the veterans and their supporters protesting by peacefully storming the Barrycades around the WWII and Vietnam memorials in DC, hauling them to the White House, and leaving them piled up with sarcastic notes “return to sender†and “please recycle†was genius. I guess we’re the counter-culture now, even as the media tries to write it all off as a Tea Party thing. What-ever! (insert contemptuous teenage mock-sigh)
Hey, boys and girls – lets all join in and support President Obama’s great new project – what about it?
Well, if that wasn’t one for the record books – a selection of Egyptian relative moderates taking back their country from a Muslim Brotherhood hard-liner through a protest-coup-counterrevolutionary thingy. Not quite certain how stable the reactionary moderate coalition actually is – or even if they are very moderate at all, or only in comparison to the Muslim Brotherhood gang o’thugs, but still – interesting. It did seem as of Morsi and his Brotherhood, even though freely elected in the wake of General Mubarak’s forced departure – were about to run Egypt straight off a cliff at speed, and perhaps this new coalition can only slow down the acceleration a little. As little as I know, I am fairly certain that the current American administration knows even less; late will the lights be burning tonight at Foggy Bottom, as the denizens of the State Department try and come up with some kind of reason, rationale and talking points. Of course, as a former Secretary of State remarked, “At this point in time, what difference does it make anyway?â€
So, the good middle-of-the road and middle-class citizens of Egypt had a good bracing dose of what Islamic rule would mean and so spat it out of their mouths. The women, the Copts, the intellectuals, the middle class, the military, those who made their living through tourism, and I-don’t-know-how-many others, all rebelled at being ridden over rough-shod by increasingly stricter Islamists, just as the younger and more defiant Iranians have, although the Iranians are still simmering, while the Egyptians seem to have – at least for now – put their Islamic fundamentalists back into the bottle and jam in the cork tight. But Egypt, which once was the breadbasket for the Roman Empire – is reduced to importing food. The profitable tourist trade is wrecked beyond redemption, for who will want to come and look at the Pyramids, the temples of Luxor, and the museums full of antiquities, save the daring-to-the-point-of-suicidal Western backpacker types, who commonly don’t want to spend much money on expensive hotels, guides, transport and souvenirs.
And where are we – as Americans in all of this? Alas, nowhere – and thanks to our very dear President Kardashian, who has effortlessly managed to alienate and piss-off just about every party in Egypt, save Morsi and the Brotherhood who probably despised him anyway. It’s an interesting kind of gift, being able to alienate allies, while sucking up unsuccessfully to enemies. I’d deeply enjoy the taste of two scoops of schadenfreude, with a bit of chocolate syrup, whipped cream and a sprinkling of toasted almonds … but alas, we ordinary Americans will probably be cleaning up the damage from the Obama administration for decades after the principal architect of this Mid-east disaster has retired to a mansion in Hawaii and a series of well-paid speaking engagements.
The purely ironical part is that President Kardashian was so very, very popular with the usual Euro-lefty crowds, and in the Middle East – and now the bloom is so very much off the rose. I can hardly wait for the snippy Guardian-editorialists and readers, and all of their fellow-travelers to begin to whine about why did we stupid Yanks elect him to office in the first place.
(And for whatever NSA peon tasked with monitoring this blog, or perhaps me personally; we’re having turkey-burgers for supper, and I can make some extras. Let me know if you want a plate. Come by at 6ish or so – you know the address.)
The injudicious use of which has led to Paula Deen being booted from the Food Network, never mind that she was speaking under oath, and is a lady of a certain age and of a background where the n-word was … well, I honestly can’t say how current was the use of that word back in Paula Deen’s early days. It’s certainly scattered generously all over 19th century literary works like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn like chocolate sprinkles on a frosted Krispy Kreme donut, and piled on by the handful in the 20th century oeuvre of rap artists and edgy comedians of color.
It’s a word that I don’t use, myself. The very first time I brought it home – in the first grade, I think, having heard it on the playground, Mom landed on me like a ton of bricks. I don’t think I actually got my mouth washed out with soap – Mom wasn’t that old-school – but the lesson came through loud and clear. The n-word was not to be used, ever. The fact that I had gotten to the first grade, or thereabouts and had never heard it is likely a strong indication of how generally it was frowned upon in middle-class and mid-century So-Cal suburbs anyway. Matter of fact, I can’t even bring myself to use it in writing my own books, where it would certainly be appropriate and historically correct. I just can’t – I have to smooth it out and write it as it might very well have sounded phonetically. No, the use of racial epithets was frowned upon, as being low-class, tacky, and rude at home – and in the military it was even more strictly verboten. So there you are – very likely I could swear honestly and truthfully to never having used the n-word, ever.
I’ve never been particularly a fan of her show or her cooking; too much fried and way, way too rich for my taste, but I might be willing to extend some indulgence to Paula Deen, being of certain age myself. My daughter, though, is most definitely not inclined to indulgence, when it comes to the n-word, although I have repeatedly pointed out that the only people who seem to be able to wield it with impunity are the aforementioned rap artists and edgy comedians of non-pallor.
To judge from some of their output, if they couldn’t use it, there would go about a fifth of their vocabulary – but I digress. I only wish to point out the basic hypocrisy. If it is an ugly, demeaning and degrading term, then it ought to be across the board, without exception. One is reminded of how a certain kind of feminist wishes to reclaim the word ‘slut’ and proudly throws it about at slutwalks and such-like events, but comes totally unglued when the term is applied to say – Sandra Fluke, proud professional feminist.
So – circling back around to the original thought – Paula Deen dropped from the Food Channel for … essentially being honest, old-fashioned and perhaps consciously or unconsciously reflecting values of a different era and at somewhat at variance with the expected TV norms, and having the bad luck to be drawn into a legal imbroglio with a perhaps-vengeful former employee. One wonders … but I honestly don’t know enough about the case, or the people involved to venture any sort of opinion but this one; what if? (Firmly donning my tinfoil hat here…) What if the Food Network has established a preference for the young, urban, urbane and smoothly trendy metrosexual male chefs/restaurateurs or decorative young to young-ish and non-threatening of the female variety, and that would account for the rush to ditch Paula Deen, simply for the crime of being not-young, urban, urbane and smoothly trendy, etc.
If such is the case, I hope that Ree Drummond (rural, devout Christian, non-minority and home-schooling) has no skeletons in her metaphorical closet. Otherwise, she might very well be next on the chopping-block.
All academic to me, though – now that we have ditched cable and gone to a Roku box and a couple of paid subscriptions – but still food for thought, eh?
(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)
I’m in. Boycott of NBC is just the first shot. In another month or so, we’re cutting off cable, and going to a Roku box. This is just a nice coincidence.
Well, it was all that for a great many other people besides the Mighty-O, so no wonder that he has been looking pretty pissy lately, especially after a scorching defeat on an expanded gun-buyer background check program. Yes, just because people seem to agree with a statement on a poorly-worded poll, does not mean they necessarily want to see it enshrined in law … especially one hastily rushed through in the wake of a horrific event with the skids greased with hand-wringing over the deaths of small children … and the ostentatious display of their parent’s grief. Look, that’s the same exact thing that happened in the wake of the Dunblaine shootings. Popular revulsion and outrage was transformed into strict gun control legislation … and in the long run, how did that worked out for Britain, then? Is the ordinary run of people any safer in their homes, streets and places of business? For those of us paying attention, one really cannot be certain that they are.
One would have expected someone lauded as being over-the-top-intelligence and acute political smarts to have realized that most of the American public does not live with on-the-spot instant personal protection from hired body-guards or the Secret Service, and in fact, a great majority of us live where the forces of law’n’order are a fifteen to thirty-minute journey away. So the Mighty-O and his media buddies didn’t see it coming. Here’s a Kleenex and let me call the Wahhhmbulance for you.
And now we move on to Monday’s carnage at the Boston Marathon … in which the main comfort to be found is the fearless and efficient manner in which first responders and volunteers rushed to the scene. Ball bearings and scrap metal inside pressure cookers, left at a time and in a place calculated to maim as many bystanders as possible; so the intifada comes to America. It looks like those media talking heads who made no secret of hoping that the perpetrator(s) were white, Anglo-Saxon Tea Party types are to be bitterly disappointed. (To David Sirota and to NPR – Up yours. Very kindly, Sgt. Mom.) From today’s all-neighborhood man-hunt in Boston, it looks like the perpetrators were ‘white’… but radical young Islamics from Chechnya. Yes, that Chechnya … the very same who brought us the Beslan school massacre, the Nord-Ost theater hostage-taking, a series of bombings in the Moscow subways, the downing of two Russian airliners in 2004 … yeah, that Chechnya. No wonder the young lads’ uncle is pissed beyond being coherent. Here he is, living a peaceful, prosperous life far removed from what is usually described as ‘sectarian strife’ and his young nephews seemed poised to bring all that over the big pond in job lots and make Chechens in general about as welcome in the United States as ‘a truckload of dead rats in a tampon factory.’ That line is from the movie Top Secret! in case anyone was wondering. For the lot who keep insisting that Islam is a religion of peace, this week has proved to very, very, very disappointing … especially for an administration who seemed desperate to prove exactly that. Try telling that to residents of Boston and Watertown, where the manhunt is still going on.
Well, that’s likely a bit of a shocker for the panjandrums of the public school system in New York; that 80 percent of graduates have to have remedial education before considering college-level courses. It could have been worse; the first time the story floated past my awareness, I understood it as 80 percent of the public high school graduates were functional illiterates. Ten or fifteen years ago the concept that public high schools were releasing functional illiterates into the wilds of adult life would have been shocking, incredible … but these days? Meh – not so shocking, and not that much surprising, after hearing some of the stories of friends with school-aged children, the occasional stories of malpractice in education which bubble up in the media … and most of all, interaction with some of the products of the public education mill. Some of these were very junior airmen whom I encountered in the military, some were friends of my daughters’ … and many had been appallingly educated.
Honestly, it seemed like they had only gone to school because it was the law that they do and it was no longer legally to send them to work in a factory. What they got out of the modern educational experience seemed mostly to be a big steaming pile of nothing, with a lot of political correctness sprinkled across the top. The cleverest and most focused children manage to educate themselves, in a spotty fashion and in spite of their teachers. The ordinary get passed along until they are dumped out of the end of the educational alimentary canal, while the criminally-inclined gravitate toward that interest – at least until they run afoul of the law. This is all terribly frustrating to read about, especially for people like myself who remember better educational times, before educational heresies such as ‘whole word’ reading, the New Math, ‘relevance’, and sundry other horrors took over the classroom. A group of commenters are lamenting this at According to Hoyt. Truly, truly I say unto you, there is no way that when and if my daughter has children that they are going to public school. I’ll homeschool the little darlings myself, read to them aloud every afternoon or evening, and take them to every museum and educational outreach establishment that there is. And as many books as they want to read; I mean, my brother and I had the complete set of the Golden Book Encyclopedia, and read every volume from cover to cover for the fun of it.
Another aspect of this ongoing educational malpractice is that our taxes are paying through the nose for it. In some cases and in some localities, parents are paying Maserati prices for Yugo results – a situation for which the teachers’ unions don’t even have the grace to be ashamed. And finally, learning of so many incidents of bullying of vulnerable students during the school day, and through social media after it; well, who would want their child exposed a real-life and institutionalized Lord of the Flies, every day and all day? What parent, being moderately well-educated themselves and having access to some resources couldn’t do a better job of educating their children at that? I’m just surprised that there aren’t more stay-at-home parents home educating. Discuss.
Presented without comment.
Trissie the cat, resting in the Nesco Roaster Oven & Slow Cooker
A news story in an English tabloid rather amused me today, as it listed the top ten little used kitchen appliances which might (or might not) be in the average English kitchen. Being the owner of a house with a painfully small kitchen, but one who still enjoys cooking – from scratch, yet – I will plead guilty to owning some under-used gadgets. Of course, at one time or another, things like the slow-cooker got a great deal more use. And before we began experimenting with the paleo-style diet, we did get a lot more use out of the bread-making machine. But at lease we can plead that we did not waste money on purchasing most of the underused gadgets. In some cases, we bought them second-hand, or at rummage sales, and so paid mere pennies, compared to the original price.
Looking down at the list, though – I wonder how some of these gadgets aren’t used more. I mean – a blender? I use the blender all the time, and the food processor, too. From the top of the list – a toasted sandwich maker. That’s one I don’t have, although I think my daughter had one, living in the barracks. And my father was very fond of making sandwiches in the stove-top non-electric croque-monsieur iron. A George Foreman-type grill is another kitchen tool which apparently 17% of English purchasers never use again – which is sad as I would really like one, especially the model which has the interchangeable, dishwasher-safe grill plates, and which can either lay out flat or be used as a Panini press. I do have a rather nice little one, picked up on sale at Williams-Sonoma; nice to use, a bear to clean afterwards, though. Kitchen scales – unused by 16%? Say what, then? Sorry, I have a cheap little one which I use all the time, and would love to replace it with a nice Victorian-style antique one with the interchangeable weights. Juicers are unused at the same rate as kitchen scales, but it’s a good and healthy thing that this means 84% of English owners of juicers are using them regularly. Bread-maker (also going %16 unused in England); we plead guilty to several, all of them bought at yard or rummage sales.
They seem to have been the gadget of choice for wedding presents, about fifteen years ago; they’re everywhere at second-hand sales, and usually barely – if ever- used by the original recipient.
Hand-blenders are next on the little-list, at %15 unused. That is one I don’t have, or even thought about buying. Seems kind of pointless, when I have a selection of balloon whisks handy. And finally, rounding out the little-used list, at %14 percent – a coffee machine. I don’t have one … for the very good reason that I don’t drink coffee. Lately though, the very high-end cappuccino machines seem to have taken the place of bread-making machines as the go-to gadget for up-scale presents, so my daughter – who does drink coffee and is known as the Queen of All Garage Sales – looks forward to seeing them available at thrift shops and yard sales.
In the foundation-legend of the Swiss confederacy, Alberect Gessler was a cruel and tyrannical overlord installed by the Austrians, who installed his hat atop a pole in the public marketplace and decreed that all should bow to it … to his hat, not merely his person. Such a declaration was, I think, a way of rubbing in his authority over the common citizens – indeed, rubbing their noses in the fact that he could make them do so, and do so in front of everyone else.
Having read now and again of small businesses run by devout Christians, such event venues, a bakery doing wedding cakes, or a wedding photographer, even a bed and breakfast refusing to provide a good or a service to a gay couple, I am lead to wonder if this isn’t a kind of Gessler’s hat, metamorphosed to the 21st century. Of course, in this best of all possible worlds, anyone’s money ought to be as good as anyone elses’. And in the case of some of the complainants, loud comparisons are made, comparing the way in which small businesses dealt – or didn’t deal at all – with customers of the African-American variety, fifty years and more ago. Left unsaid, but still implied is a kind of smug satisfaction that devout Christians will be called to heel just as unrepentant racists were.
Somehow, I can’t be so certain of that outcome. Browbeating and bringing suit against the religiously observant into compliance with society’s dictates most usually has the opposite of effect intended, even if superficial compliance is eventually gained. Devout and observant Christians do make up a larger portion of the population than gays – who for all their prominence in media and entertainment, still only comprise less than 3% of the population overall – if that. African-Americans, give or take a couple of percentage points either way are at about %12, which is probably not a market segment which can be ignored by someone selling services or a product.
So, can you refuse service to a member of the public, and for what reason? Do you need a reason? Or will just a polite demurral do, such as “I am so sorry, we can’t fit that into our schedule†? Making the question a little more complicated – will any religion do? Suppose a Jewish photographer didn’t want to photograph a Catholic quinceanera celebration, or a Muslim-owned halal caterer refused to provide food for a specifically Jewish or Christian event? Seriously, even if such a thing happened in the real world, I can’t imagine the customer getting too bent out of shape by the refusal – unless the refusal was couched in less than tactful language.
So what are we to make of stories such as those that I linked, and others of the same sort? I am pretty sure that it’s not so much a question of civil rights for a very small, but socially influential minority at issue here. Rather, it’s a metaphorical Gesseler’s Hat, for which is not sufficient to merely tolerate – all must be seen to approve, and in loud voices in the public square. Discuss.
…and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings — and commoners too, for that matter. The great William Shakespeare wrote many such sad stories, some of them more protracted and dramatic than others, some of them mercifully taking place offstage, as it were. The other night we watched the current episode of Downton Abbey, and even though we knew it was coming, we did sniffle a little at the shocking death of Lady Sybil – in childbirth, too. Whereas this was a tragically common cause of death in women of high and low social stature alike up until the end of the 19th century, it probably took real effort on the part of the writers to have it happen convincingly in the 20th – even the first quarter thereof. I’ll give the writers all props for creative research and as extra round of appreciation for avoiding the old soap-opera standby of a long fall down a staircase (although in fairness, they have hit upon a good few classic soap opera memes).
This also brought me to think on how many times I had to go into books, or perform a routine googlectomy in looking for just that very means of afflicting or removing one of my own characters. Which did turn out to be a fairly substantial list of conditions, ailments and cause-of-death, although some of them happened off-stage, so to speak or were referred to only briefly, while others had more detailed treatment. Let’s see: To Truckee’s Trail – threatened and actual near-starvation, malaria (called the ague) and cholera, both offstage before and after the time of the story. The Gathering – gunshot to the head, typhus (called ship-fever), malaria again, aftereffects of frontline meatball surgery in wartime, cholera again, and hints of manic-depression. The Sowing – more manic-depression, post-traumatic stress, pre-eclampsia, diphtheria, chronic alcohol abuse, gunshot to the back, multiple gunshots to the torso, and multiple sclerosis. The Harvesting; full-blown manic-depression, agoraphobia, more post-traumatic stress, incipient senility, stroke, peritonitis following abdominal wound with a bladed weapon, gunshot to the abdomen, drowning, and sudden massive heart attack/heart failure. Daughter of Texas: immediately fatal arrow-wounds, unspecified chronic illness, extreme dysentery coupled with heart failure, meatball surgery, and tuberculosis … plus, a war going on. Deep in the Heart: multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic shock, uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery, massive stroke, again aftereffects of frontline meatball surgery, and malaria. Plus another war going on. So far in the latest book, Quivera Trail, I have only gotten up to a massive heart attack, but there is an operation for a depressed skull fracture in my plot outline, so I really should get back to work on that.
This listing actually makes it look as if it it is wall to wall General Hospital-type soap opera medical emergencies in the books, but actually it isn’t. It’s just that illness and death is a part of life – and in the 19th century, it happened with really dismaying frequency. Considering that Daughter of Texas/Deep in the Heart and the Trilogy cover more than fifty years of the lives of four different families, during three wars, and at a time when the best of doctors couldn’t do all that much … this list could have been much, much longer.
I’m still fighting the remnants of the Cold From Hell (possibly complicated by an allergy to blowing cedar pollen which hits a lot of people around here) but at least I am starting to feel a little more in the Christmas spirit. Not much more, but at least I am enjoying the Christmas music on the radio, and just last Monday I was inspired to go ahead and sort out the last of the Christmas presents that I wanted to give to some people I am fond of. So, all that is sorted. Our Christmas dinner is sorted also. Blondie will be out doing deliveries for Edible Arrangements until the last minute, so practically everything to do with Christmas was done in the last day or so.
Which leaves me looking out at next year, and considering what I will do, and what I can do, as the fiscal cliff approaches; no matter how you slice it, 2013 is going to be a bumpy ride. So, in no particular order of importance, I am resolved to – More »
It was a gradual process … the place grows on you, even back before it became clear that it was one of the states – out of these occasionally United States – which has a good chance of emerging comparatively unscathed from impending economic disaster. I don’t know why Texas should be so fortunate among states and nations, but perhaps it is because of a part-time Legislature. Yes, this might tend to discourage professional busy-bodies from taking up a full-time career dictating the teensiest minutia of every scrap of our lives, from the number of flushes our toilets need to the wattage of the light-bulb in our porch light and the knotty question of whether a puddle in the back forty qualifies as a seasonal body of water. The Texas Lege can only assemble every two years for a set period of time to consider these and other weighty matters, and so must find other and more remunerative means of earning a living and staying out of their constituents hair. There was an adage to the effect that work expands to fill the time you have available for it – very likely it works the same way for legislative bodies. Perhaps limiting the time available to them forces legislators to prioritize and focus their potential mischief on only the most necessary tasks. Still, what a thought, that Texas might be the last best place to survive the impending economic and political meltdown – who would have thought, eh?
So, Texas took us over, bit by bit – although it wasn’t without a struggle, especially when enduring the ghastly heat of summer, which occasionally felt as if it were lasting all year. Or when there was a highway alert because … er, there were stray cows on the roadway … Or when I could not get just-introduced men in a social setting to not straightaway start addressing me as ‘darlin’’. There were charms, insidious ones – the Hill Country, and sweeps of wildflowers in spring, breakfast tacos (the breakfast food of the gods, I swear), the many splendors of the HEB grocery chain, real Texas BBQ … oh, the list goes on and on. I suppose the first sign that assimilation had begun was when my father began to say that Blondie and I sounded a little more Southern in our speech – there was, he swore, a faint interrogatory lift in tone at the end of certain sentences, which had not been there previously. Blondie began to like country-western music, I began to giggle at Robert Earl Keen’s “Merry Christmas from the Family†… and upon finally retiring from the military I had to get a Texas driver’s license. And then I began to write historical fiction … and well, it was all over, then. Assimilation was complete, or nearly so.
I do like to dress up in a slightly western-fashion when I do a book event now; a long skirt, western-style shirt and vest – and I have let my hair grow long again, so that I can do it up in a roll with a curved Spanish comb in it – and I have been looking around for a pair of Western boots to complete the look. I’ve substituted a pair of high-laced old-fashioned ladies’ boots for now – but a pair of cowboy boots would really complete the look. But not just any boots – being thrifty but with high standards means that I’d like I. Magnin style at a Walmart price, so we’ve been checking out the various thrift and resale stores for a pair of good and broken-in (yet not broken down!) boots. We almost thought we’d found them at a little boutique in Boerne last week, but I couldn’t get one pair on, and the other was too big … for me, but not for Blondie. So, she has herself a pair of Tony Lama’s now, and for me, it is just a matter of time.
Assimilation complete. I got here to Texas as fast as I could.
It looks really weird to me, this last Veteran’s Day weekend … not even a week after the election results came in. A couple of days after General Petreus put in his resignation as head of the CIA – conveniently for the American news cycle – on a Friday before a three-day weekend. So, kind of astonished over that – a mere several days before he was to testify about whatever was going on with regard to our quasi-official establishment in Benghazi on the 11th of September last. Of course, the second most astonishing aspect to me is that the head of the CIA can’t keep an affair secret, and the third most astonishing is that someone so politically wily as to be able to pin on four stars would still be stupidly reckless enough to engage on such a very public affair. What, were they doing the horizontal mambo in the middle of the parade ground at reveille at whatever base they were at in Afghanistan? Ok, never undervalue the comfort of situational friendships between persons of the opposite sex in a far country, double if in a war zone. Been there and … err, backed off from doing that, in the physical sense. But the friendship was enormously satisfactory; a way of getting through a hard tour in a distant and unforgivingly difficult place, and a lot of people there with us and who noted that we were a quasi-official couple also probably assumed that our relationship included an ongoing sexual aspect. Which it did not; part of the friendship involved an understanding between us that carrying it that far would inflict unacceptable damage on each other, emotionally and professionally. I thought the world of him, and he loved his family, back in the World; that’s the way that responsible and caring adults manage that kind of situation. It’s in the field, and it ends in the field.
But the way that the Petreus mess is expanding is enough to cause me to raise an eyebrow – and now it turns out that the second woman involved – is she the South Beach Mata Hari or what? – also had a good friend of the multi-star adorned command-rank level, as well as the somewhat dogged interest of the investigating FBI agent, who sent her a pic of him shirtless… dear god, people – this is not high school. Or at least, I assumed it was not. As it is, I could swear I watched a story line like this on General Hospital in the late 1970s, only with doctors, nurses and consultants, instead of commanders, reporters and socialites.
It is curious though – the sudden retirements, resignations, and reassignments of high-ranking and notable officers lately. It’s almost like there is something going on: earlier there was that kerfuffle about General Carter Ham being relieved of duty, with dark hints that it was because of events in Benghazi. On the bright side, though – since General Petreus was deeply involved in the events of 9/11/2012 in Benghazi, it just might be that there might be a little more interest in what happened there than has been displayed so far by our mighty mainstream press.
Or not.
As I contemplate the coming election, I do wonder if a sort of cultural turning point hasn’t been reached, which was elucidated lo these many decades ago by Huey Lewis and the News – that it’s soon might be seen to be hip to be a square. Or to put it in standard English – if being sober, responsible, cheerfully working at a blue-collar and non-corporate job, engaged in a traditional man/woman marriage, and living out in flyover country somewhere, and being a traditionally patriotic, fiscally responsible, striving small business entrepreneur and home-schooling more than the requisite one or two designer-perfect offspring … might be the default option for the rebellious and non-conformist? I mean, really – look around at the current social and educational landscape in some of our larger and supposedly more urban and urbane environments. Take a good long look; I have a stack of barf-bags handy. What could be more logical than to rebel against such decay, despair, conformity and criminality than to stake out a suburban (or even rural) homestead in flyover country somewhere and wholly become what the putrid 1960’s retreads were rebelling against in the first place?
Look, the standard-bearers of 1968 have taken over the higher ground, roosted in the educational, media and political establishments like a flock of grackles – shrieking to high heaven and splattering the surface underneath with a Jackson-Pollocking layer of artistic but bad-smelling dung. Well, really – what could be more fun to the naturally rebellious youth than to tell the baby-boom cohort of elders (who basically trashed every American institution as they moved through it, save perhaps the military, technology, the culinary arts – and possibly retail) to take a hike, I’m going to live like my grandparents, or maybe my great-grandparents? Plant a garden, go off the grid and make your own clothes, and preserved food? I know that Martha Stewart was responsible for a lot of renewed popularity with regard to home-making, but she always seemed to me to be someone striving for Right-Coast upper-class respectability. What does one make of web and cable cooking-show personalities like Ree Drummond, the accidental country girl who wound up on a ranch in Oklahoma, living a comparatively laid-back life, cooking and gardening, and home-schooling four children?
Could this rebelling by going back to basics account for the retro appeal of Mitt Romney? Staid, conventional, traditional 1950s-Leave It To Beaver-style marriage, large and happy family, picket-fence suburban ideal home – everything that the brigades of 1968 revolted against, and subsequently established a new normal of something completely different from it – and now a new generation is rebelling against that? Amusing to contemplate, anyway.
I just hope the fashion for girdles and wearing high-heels and stockings to vacuum the floor is one thing that never revives. That stuff is uncomfortable.