Happy Birthday to my baby ~~

Who never had a birthday dinner uninterupted by trick-or-treaters, or a birthday cake without pumpkins on it. Live long and prosper. . . .

I just KNOW you need something else to worry about. . .

Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.

Consumer demand has driven some fish populations to their lowest levels ever. But you can be part of the solution. You can choose seafoods from healthy, thriving fisheries.

Which fish you buy at the market and off the menu will determine the future of our oceans. You have the power to protect our marine life.

Carry our card in your wallet or download it to your Palm or Pocket PC. Consult it when you go to restaurants or grocery stores with fish on your mind.

CLICKY!!

Even if you don't live in NY, this is a very useful site.

... here's George W. Bush during his college days, hitting a fellow sportsman in the face.

The above photo, credited to the Yale yearbook (the caption is in the original), appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, alongside a story on the appeal of "bad boys" in American politics. It's not in the Times' online version, and the rest of the country should see it, I think.

Incidentally, while rugby is a contact sport, every player knows that tackling above the shoulders is a foul. So is leaving your feet during a tackle. Either of these is serious enough that the other team is immediately awarded a penalty kick, often directly resulting in points for the other team.

So even without throwing a punch, Bush is already well outside fair play.

Grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face is beyond the pale -- I've watched rugby avidly for years, and I've never seen it during an open-field tackle like this, honest -- and will typically result in a player being immediately sent off.

The above is, of course, Tom Tomorrow, This Modern World

My Preznit? Nope.

Be sure and clicky on the pic for the BIG version, lol! Hard to believe that his staunchist supporters don't even believe in evolution. . . .

Dreaming of spring. . . . and gardens. . . .

trust him?

Nah. Me neither

Midnight In the Garden of My Heart

Click title of this post for more of this woman's work. Demetrius created the website for her. This is my favorite of all her quilts. So much that I use it as my wallpaper every now and again, just to be able to look at it.

LOL! I *love* being younger than my kids. . . . Well, acting younger. . . .

You Are 31 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

If this doesn't break your heart

Nothing can. It's stone.

For the whole story, check out Scrutiny Hooligans

Food 911

Lame Duck Long Island, NY
New neighbor Fabiola wants make waves with a locally inspired dish, but it always turns out soggy, never crispy. Tyler shows her how to whip up Crispy Roast Duck

1 (4 to 5-pound) Long Island duck
1 cup honey
2 cup soy sauce
1 cup cold black coffee
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh ginger
1/4 cup lite miso
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 orange, halved
1 lemon, halved
1 lime, halvedUsing a fork, pierce the duck skin all over to allow the flavor of the marinade to penetrate and the fat to drain. Combine honey, soy sauce, coffee, ginger, miso and brown sugar together in a bowl, stir well to dissolve the brown sugar and miso. Squeeze the citrus juice into the marinade then stuff the cavity of the duck with the citrus halves. Place the duck in a 2 gallon freezer bag, then pour in the marinade. Seal and refrigerate for 24 hours.

The next day, remove the duck from the marinade and pat it dry with paper towel. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Place the duck on a rack in a roasting pan. Fold the wing tips back and tie the legs together. First, roast the duck for 20 minutes, the high temperature will caramelize the sugars on the outside of the duck and set a rich mahogany color. After 20 minutes, drop the temperature down to 325 degrees F and roast for 1 hour. Duck heaven baby!

MY LITTLE ONE

My little one whose tongue is dumb,
whose fingers cannot hold to things,
who is so mercilessly young,
he leaps upon the instant things,

I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
He runs into the burning wood.
Follow, follow if you can!
He will come out grown to a man

and not remember whom he kissed,
who caught him by the slender wrist
and bound him by a tender yoke
which, understanding not, he broke.


Tennessee Williams

Okay. I don't understand it. The need for danger. Everything in my mother's soul says NO!! However, I do understand the necessity for danger, even though my mother's soul weeps at that necessity.

That said. My quietest son became both a rock climber and a scuba diver in his twenties. Whatever the need, he thrived on it. He doesn't do either anymore. He is a father, and a husband, and one of the two seems to have made him give up things he loved to do, in exchange. I don't ask.

ExxonMobil profits soar on higher energy prices

ExxonMobil profits soar on higher energy prices By Sheila McNulty Updated: 6:12 p.m. ET Oct. 27, 2005 ExxonMobil, the world's biggest publicly traded oil and gas company, on Thursday reported third quarter net profit up 75 per cent to almost $10bn on energy prices driven to record highs by demand constraints exacerbated by two hurricanes.

From one of my favorite blogs, Making Light

Making Light

Incorporating Electrolite

Language, fraud, folly, truth, knitting, and growing luminous by eating light.

* * * * * * *

(Background info: Clarion runs for six weeks, with different instructors coming in for one-week stints.)

So Michael Swanwick is teaching his week at Clarion, and one of the students hands in a long somber story full of angst and sodomy*. Swanwick considers it and says, “What this story needs is more dinosaurs.”

The next story the student turns in does have dinosaurs in it, but it’s a piece of fluff. Swanwick shakes his head. “It needed more sodomy,” he says.

The student is flummoxed, and protests that he’s just trying to put into practice what he’d been told. Swanwick explains, to him and to the rest of the students, that writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy.

Then he goes home. The next instructor is Gardner Dozois.

A week later, Gardner comes home and says, “Michael, what the hell did you tell those kids? All week long, they were handing me stories about dinosaurs and sodomy!”

Things your mother never told you about sexy. . . .


Lord! If I wasn't already madly in love. . . .

IT TAKES NINETY YEARS TO GROW A BOX OF KLEENEX

USE A HANKY FOR GODSSAKES!

CLICKY

(DIRECT FROM EASY BAKE COVEN)

the onset of the scientific era in the 19th and 20th century uncovered numerous correspondences between the structures of sacred geometry and the new discoveries of science. For instance, the I-Ching's 64 hexes correspond to the 64-codon structure of human DNA, in a more precise way than the earlier spirals aped the shape of its strands.

CAVE DRAWING

SACRED GEOMETRY

The Chambered Nautilus

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft steps its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

~~
Oliver Wendell Holmes

This is what my second son does with computers. . . .

Sisters

Mutuality nurtures giving and taking, desiring and claiming, being loved and loving,
which continually flow into one another
without one being primary or foundational and the other secondary.
As the mystic poet Rumi declared:
"...it is not only the thirsting who seek water; it is water that also seeks the thirsty."

listener "Paraphrasing Dorothee Soelle from her book THE SILENT CRY: Mysticism and Resistance, p. 129 ~"

A GEM! READ THE WHOLE THING.

The positive correlation between pro-theistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer (Figure 4). Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise (Figure 5), especially as a function of absolute belief. Denmark is the only exception.

Thanks to Liza

Maha's on a roll again! (click!)

October 26, 2005

Michelle Malkin, Moran

Filed under: conservatism — maha @ 8:12 pm

I’m sure Michelle Malkin would feel outraged if I said everyone of the pro-war Right was semi-literate, like the famous “morans” fellow. But Malkin assigns the following attributes to everyone on the antiwar Left:

These are people, remember, who liken Iraqi terrorists to America’s Minutemen during the Revolutionary War.

Who oppose not only the war in Iraq, but also the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Who believe the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and at Shanksville, Pa., were a Bush conspiracy with Israel and/or Saudi Arabia.

Who applaud when left-wing professor Ward Churchill gloats about “chickens coming home to roost” and suggests that the peace movement should support the fragging of American troops. …

…Who believe Saddam Hussein should be freed and Guantanamo Bay emptied.

Who carry around banners that proclaim “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS WHEN THEY SHOOT THEIR OFFICERS.”

I am sick to death of this crap. I consider myself to be firmly planted in the antiwar Left, and I do not endorse any of those allegedly “leftist” positions.

I haven’t met any leftie who advocates fragging American troops or who rejoices at their deaths. Last month I walked among the 100,000 + people who marched around the White House with Cindy Sheehan to protest the war, and I saw no such sentiment expressed. In fact, I suspect most of the marchers would have objected to the suggestion that troops be fragged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And I'd like to add that our favorite blogger on the BBB has Malkin's disease. And I, for one, am pretty tired of being painted with that paint brush dipped in venom (not to mention bad memory, mis-quokes, refusal to do links, or any other kind of back up of the views held).

Additionally, I see no particular reason why we are required to listen to them, since they make ZERO effort to actually listen to us.

My 2¢

This is what you shall do,
--Love the earth and sun and animals,
--despise riches,
--give alms to everyone that asks,
--stand up for the stupid and crazy,
--devote your income and labor to others,
--hate tyrants,
--argue not concerning God,
--have patience and indulgence towards the people,
--take off your hat to nothing known or unknown
or to any man or number of men,
--go freely with powerful uneducated persons and
with the young and with the mothers of families,
--read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
--re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
--dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

... and your very flesh shall be a great poem


~~ Walt Whitman.

“May the light always find you on a dreary day.
When you need to be home, may you find your way.
May you always have courage to take a chance.
And never find frogs in your underpants.”

~~ A middle-aged Scandinavian

No snow yet. They kept promising, but just a little while ago cancelled the Winter Storm Watch. But it's been cold today. Very cold.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.

~~ Angela Monet

Rosa Parks 1913 ~~ 2005

You changed all of our lives for the better.

Go with God.

Well, I don't know about Fitzmas, but according to my weather service, snow is on its way tonight. They seem to have forgotten to actually predict it, though they have been promising freezes for a week. The snow should actually keep it a bit warmer.

The picture isn't my place, but does look a great deal like what I see out my front window.

Cheers!!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure! It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us

~~ Marianne Williamson - from A Return To Love

You are missed

Just discovered that M. Scott Peck died September 25, while I was otherwise engaged. This is a great loss, to me, to us all, for here was a spirit of great understanding.

Found this on the 'nets ~~ seems to be the perfect comment on a life (fairly) well lived. . . .

Our Spirituality is not always dependant on what religion we follow, but in how generously we give of ourselves, and inspire the world.

On the first day of Fitzmas

My true love gave to me

A Rovetridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Fitzmas

My true love gave to me

Scooter Libby's pair

and a Rovetridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Fitzmas

My true love gave to me

Three nannies' asses

Scooter Libby's pair

And a Rovetridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Fitzmas

My true love gave to me

Four singing Whigs *

Three nannies' asses

Scooter Libby's pair

And a Rovetridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Fitzmas

My true love gave to me

Five reporters' hearts**

Four singing Whigs *

Three nannies' asses

Scooter Libby's pair

And a Rovetridge in a pear tree.

*Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, and Stephen J. Hadley.

** Starting with Miller's, but any four will do for the rest. . . .



(Since there are only five working days in a week, I'm letting this go at this. . . . )

'Gaudeamus Igitur,'* by John Stone

For this is the day of joy
which has been fourteen hundred and sixty days in coming
and fourteen hundred and fifty-nine nights
For today in the breathing name of Brahms
and the cat of Christopher Smart
through the unbroken line of language and all the nouns
stored in the angular gyrus
today is a commencing
For this is the day you know too little
against the day when you will know too much
For you will be invincible
and vulnerable in the same breath
which is the breath of your patients
For their breath is our breathing and our reason
For the patient will know the answer
and you will ask him
ask her
For the family may know the answer
For there may be no answer
and you will know too little again
or there will be an answer and you will know too much
forever
For you will look smart and feel ignorant
and the patient will not know which day it is for you
and you will pretend to be smart out of ignorance
For you must fear ignorance more than cyanosis
For whole days will move in the direction of rain
For you will cry and there will be no one to talk to
or no one but yourself
For you will be lonely
For you will be alone
For there is a difference
For there is no seriousness like joy
For there is no joy like seriousness
For the days will run together in gallops and the years
go by as fast as the speed of thought
which is faster than the speed of light
or Superman
or Superwoman
For you will not be Superman
For you will not be Superwoman
For you will not be Solomon
but you will be asked the question nevertheless **
For after you learn what to do, how and when to do it
the question will be whether
For there will be addictions: whiskey, tobacco, love
For they will be difficult to cure
For you yourself will pass the kidney stone of pain
and be joyful
For this is the end of examinations
For this is the beginning of testing
For Death will give the final examination
and everyone will pass
For the sun is always right on time
and even that may be reason for a kind of joy
For there are all kinds of
all degrees of joy
For love is the highest joy
For which reason the best hospital is a house of joy
even with rooms of pain and loss
exits of misunderstanding
For there is the mortar of faith
For it helps to believe
For Mozart can heal and no one knows where he is buried
For penicillin can heal
and the word
and the knife
For the placebo will work and you will think you know why
For the placebo will have side effects and you will know
you do not know why
For none of these may heal
For joy is nothing if not mysterious
For your patients will test you for spleen
and for the four humors
For they will know the answer
For they have the disease
For disease will peer up over the hedge
of health, with only its eyes showing
For the T waves will be peaked and you will not know why
For there will be computers
For there will be hard data and they will be hard
to understand
For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you
For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question
For there will be the arts
and some will call them
soft data
whereas in fact they are the hard data
by which our lives are lived
For everyone comes to the arts too late
For you can be trained to listen only for the oboe
out of the whole orchestra
For you may need to strain to hear the voice of the patient
in the thin reed of his crying
For you will learn to see most acutely out of
the corner of your eye
to hear best with your inner ear
For there are late signs and early signs
For the patient's story will come to you
like hunger, like thirst
For you will know the answer
like second nature, like first
For the patient will live
and you will try to understand
For you will be amazed
or the patient will not live
and you will try to understand
For you will be baffled
For you will try to explain both, either, to the family
For there will be laying on of hands
and the letting go
For love is what death would always intend if it had the choice
For the fever will drop, the bone remold along
its lines of force
the speech return
the mind remember itself
For there will be days of joy
For there will be elevators of elation
and you will walk triumphantly
in purest joy
along the halls of the hospital
and say Yes to all the dark corners
where no one is listening
For the heart will lead
For the head will explain
but the final common pathway is the heart
whatever kingdom may come
For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent
For this is the day of joy
For this is the morning to rejoice
For this is the beginning
Therefore, let us rejoice
Gaudeamus igitur.

* Therefore, let us rejoice
** 1 Kings 3:16-27



John Stone is a cardiologist and poet at Emory University School of Medicine. His work appears in five books of his own; he is also co-editor of On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays, an anthology of literature and medicine that has been given to all American medical students by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation since 1991. Music from Apartment 8: New and Selected Poems, will be published by LSU Press in 2004.

Fitzmas is coming
Bush's goose is getting fat
Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do.
If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

Problem: I'm afraid this goose, half baked as it were, will escape as so many others have. That the Fitzmas stocking I dream of will just come apart at the seams. . . .