Friday, January 20, 2006

Apple Pandowdy



1 1/4 C butter
2/3 C sugar
1 egg
1 C milk
2 1/2 C flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 C peeled, sliced apples
1/3 C brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

whipped cream or ice cream for garnish

preheat oven to 350


Combine flour, baking powder and salt, set aside.

Butter a 9" square baking dish. Place sliced apples in buttered baking dish and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Mix in egg. Add flour mixture, alternating with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture to make a stiff batter. Spread batter evenly over apples and bake for about 50 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for at least ten minutes before serving.

You can serve this dish right out of the pan, or invert it onto a serving plate like an upside-down cake, warm or at room temperature. Top with whipped cream or ice cream.

Shoo Fly Pie


1 unbaked 9" pie crust

Crumb Topping:
1 C flour
1/2 C light brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/3 C butter

Liquid Bottom
1 C boiling water
1/2 C light molasses
1/2 C dark corn syrup
1 tsp. baking soda
1 egg, beaten

whipped cream for topping


Note:
You can make this pie using a full cup of molasses instead of the molasses/corn syrup mixture, but I find the flavor to be a little stronger than my liking, which is why I recommend the mixture.

Serves 6-8

Preheat oven to 325° F. Mix the crumb topping ingredients together with a pastry blender until well mixed and mixture resemble fine crumbs. Set aside. Crumb topping is a bit of misnomer as the crumbs will be absorbed into the liquid bottom layer, but we'll get to this later.

Mix molasses and corn syrup, add boiling water and stir to mix. Add baking soda and beaten egg and mix well. Spoon into an unbaked piecrust. Spoon the crumb mixture over the top of the pie. Place the pie on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil ) trust me, if the pie shell overflows you don't want burning sugar syrup all over your oven) and bake for about 40 minutes or until pie is medium set and dark brown. Serve warm or chilled, top with whipped cream.


Thursday, January 19, 2006

Wednesday, January 18, 2006




Some people stay far away from the door
If there's a chance of it opening up
They hear a voice in the hall outside
And hope that it just passes by

Some people live with the fear of a touch
And the anger of having been a fool
They will not listen to anyone
So nobody tells them a lie

I know you're only protecting yourself
I know you're thinking of somebody else
Someone who hurt you
But I'm not above
Making up for the love
You've been denying you could ever feel
I'm not above doing anything
To restore your faith if I can
Some people see through the eyes of the old
Before they ever get a look at the young
I'm only willing to hear you cry
Because I am an innocent man
I am an innocent man
Oh yes I am

Some people say they will never believe
Another promise they hear in the dark
Because they only remember too well
They heard somebody tell them before

Some people sleep all alone every night
Instead of taking a lover to bed
Some people find that it's easier to hate
Than to wait anymore

I know you don't want to hear what I say
I know you're gonna keep turning away
But I've been there and if I can survive
I can keep you alive
I'm not above going through it again
I'm not above being cool for a while
If you're cruel to me I'll understand

Some people run from a possible fight
Some people figure they can never win
And although this is a fight I can lose
The accused is an innocent man
I am an innocent man
Oh yes I am
An innocent man

You know you only hurt yourself out of spite
I guess you'd rather be a martyr tonight
That's your decision
But I'm not below
Anybody I know
If there's a chance of resurrecting a love
I'm not above going back to the start
To find out where the heartache began

Some people hope for a miracle cure
Some people just accept the world as it is
But I'm not willing to lay down and die
Because I am an innocent man

I am an innocent man
Oh yes I am
An innocent man



The Weather's Not Cold Enough

Tourist lady: Excuse me, how do I get to Battery Park?
MTA guy #1: Uh, Battery Park?
Tourist lady: Yes, Battery Park.
MTA guy #1: Hmm, Battery Park. Battery Park. Yo, Battery Park? From here?
MTA guy #2: Battery Park?
Tourist lady: Is this a union joke?

--Times Square station


Overheard by: Brian W. Gottlock, Esq.

Monday, January 16, 2006


Bush job approval dips again to 39%


New Zogby Survey shows Iraq a Partisan War

In the face of rising gas prices, partisan sniping over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and a resumption of insurgent violence in Iraq, President Bush’s job approval rating has slipped into a post-holiday funk, again dipping below 40%, a new telephone poll by Zogby International shows.

His approval rating almost mirrors the percentage of respondents (40%) who said the nation overall is headed in the right direction.

The deterioration in the President’s numbers appears to be the result of eroding support among the investor class and others who supported him in his 2004 re-election bid, said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. And the problem is the Iraq war – just 34% of respondents said Mr. Bush was doing a good or excellent job managing the war, down from 38% approval in a Zogby poll taken in mid-October.

Bush’s overall job approval rating in that poll was at 46%.

Among investors, Bush’s support for managing the war dropped five points since October, from 45% to 40%, Zogby data shows. But Zogby said the glaring split between how Republicans, Democrats and independents think the President is handling Iraq is remarkable.

“The numbers in support for the war in Iraq are extremely low among Democrats and independents,” Zogby said. “This is a partisan war.”

While 61% of Republicans said he was doing a good job managing the war (down from 70% in October), just 11% of Democrats and 28% of independents gave him good marks in that area. Among Democrats, 71% said Bush was doing a “poor” job with the war, while 17% said he was doing only a “fair” job.

Among men, 36% said the President was handling the war well, while 31% of women agreed.


For the rest: clicky the title

Sunday, January 15, 2006

The Four Things Meme

Four jobs you've had in your life
  • writer
  • teacher
  • editor
  • dollmaker
Four movies you could watch over and over
  • Gone With The Wind
  • Black Orpheus
  • Last Year at Marienbad
  • In This House of Brede
Four places you've lived
  • Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Tianjin, China
  • Cazadero, California
  • Sugar Grove, West Virginia

Four TV shows you love to watch
This is going to have to be past tense: I haven't had a TV for eleven years. . . .
  • Designing Women
  • Kung Fu
  • I'll Fly Away
  • Maude

Four places you've been on vacation
  • Greece
  • Kunming
  • BeiDaiHe
  • San Louis Obispo

Four websites you visit daily

Four of your favorite foods
  • Peking Duck
  • Fish Smell Pork
  • Gu Lau Ro
  • Cherry Garcia
Four places you'd rather be
  • NYC
  • NYC
  • NYC
  • NYC
Four Vehicles I’ve Owned
  • 1964 Dodge Dart Station Wagon (1966 - 1978) (RIP you lovely bit o' metal)
  • 1985 Mercedes Benz Station Wagon (1989 - 1998)
  • 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee (2002 - 2004)
  • 1995 Ford Escort Station Wagon (2004 - present)
Four People To Be Tagged To Do This Meme Next



Tip o the hat to educe me by way of Alas, a blog

George Carlin's new rules for 2006...

New Rule: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for classmates.com ! There's a
reason you don't talk to people for 25 years. Because you don't
particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain of the
football team is doing these days: mowing my lawn.

New Rule: Don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless
you're a seagull. People are acting all shocked that a human finger was
found in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Hey, it cost less than a dollar.
What did you expect it to contain? Trout?

New Rule: Stop saying that teenage boys who have sex with their hot,
blonde teachers are permanently damaged. I have a better description
for these kids: lucky bastards.

New Rule: If you need to shave and you still collect baseball cards,
you're a dope. If you're a kid, the cards are keepsakes of your idols.
If you're a grown man , they're pictures of men.

New Rule: Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care
about your eyebrows: do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.

New Rule: There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole
aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored
water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.

New Rule: Stop f***ing with old people. Target is introducing a
redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now the bottom. And by the time grandpa figures out how to open it, his ass will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the Social Security crisis.

New Rule: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the ass
hole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande half-soy,
half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra
dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low and one NutraSweet," ooh, you're
a huge ass hole.

New Rule: I'm not the cashier! By the time I look up from sliding my
card, entering my PIN number, pressing "Enter," verifying the amount,
deciding, no, I don't want cash back, and pressing "Enter" again, the kid who is supposed to be ringing me up is standing there eating my Almond Joy.

New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't
make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass. And it
translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything
spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not
spiritual. You're just high.

New Rule: Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven
deadly sins. ESPN recently televised the US Open of Competitive Eating,
because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too damned
exciting. What's next, competitive farting? Oh wait. They're already doing that. It's called "The Howard Stern Show."

New Rule: I don't need a bigger mega M&M. If I'm extra hungry for M&Ms, I'll go nuts and eat two.

New Rule: If you're going to insist on making movies based on crappy,
old television shows, then you have to give everyone in the Cineplex a
remote so we can see what's playing on the other screens. Let's remember the reason something was a television show in the first place is that the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.

New Rule: No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just for
weddings. Now it's for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn't gift giving, it's the white people version of looting.

New Rule: And this one is long overdue: No more bathroom attendants.
After I zip up, some guy is offering me a towel and a mint like I just had
sex with George Michael. I can't even tell if he's supposed to be there,
or just some freak with a fetish. I don't want to be on your webcam,
dude. I just want to wash my hands.

New Rule: When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to know in
months. "27 Months." "He's two," will do just fine. He's not a cheese.
And I didn't really care in the first place..."



Thanks Denise ♥

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder



Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day.
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way,
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder,
It's the truth, it's "actch'll"
Everything is "satisfactch'll."

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day.
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way,
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder,
It's the truth, it's "actch'll"
Everything is "satisfactch'll."
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
Wonderful feeling, feeling this way!

Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder,
It's the truth, it's "actch'll"
Everything is "satisfactch'll."
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Which twin has the Toni?






Mrs. Strip Search Sammy sure had herself a Kodak moment today, didn't she? Goober Graham left off his corn-pone homilies and played the hick card just long enough to set her up by using the B word --– the word they're all terrified of, the word they wanted to use before the Democrats did -- BIGOT BIGOT BIGOT BIGOT BIGOT BIGOT -- that sent the low-rent Sarah Bernhardt shrieking for the cheap seats.

I've worked in the biz long enough to know a poorly executed little melodrama when I see it and that was the worst, the most shameless, most obvious. It's the role you give a really bad actress, one that can't even be counted upon to cry with conviction. The mad dash will obscure the crocodile tears and ensure that all the cameras follow, and any attempt at intelligent discussion of quite serious and weighty matters will undoubtedly get trumped by a moment of quick burlesque ripe for the evening news. A slavish press will need no coaching to play along.

Pure setup 101.

Somebody sat down last night and decided ol' Strip Search was coming off cold and vaguely sweaty and creepy. But how to soften him up, make him sympathetic, get the public on his side? Anyone with an IQ over 52 was doing an eye roll over that one, so it ought to have had some sort of GOP trademark stamp atop it.


The rest at firedoglake


Dollar Dollar Bill, Y'all
China’s Stranglehold on the Dollar

The Alternative Press Review reports " On Thursday, The People’s Republic of China fired off the first volley in what could turn out to be economic Armageddon. China announced that it would begin to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves away from US dollar.

Gulp!

The only thing keeping the dollar atop its fragile perch is the fact that other countries have been willing to lap up the $600 billion of American red ink every year via the trade deficit. That amounts to roughly $2 billion per day or nearly 7% GDP.

Currently, China is holding $769 billion, the vast majority of its foreign exchange reserves. This is a humongous sum by any measurement and represents approximately 30% of China’s gross domestic product. Regrettably, the Bush administration’s wasteful spending makes the dollar look like a bad long term investment, so China will either have to change its strategy or face a huge loss on its reserves. It’s a thorny predicament and one that China needs to handle delicately. If they move too aggressively it could trigger a sell-off and send the dollar plummeting.

More at Scrutiny Hooligans

Friday, January 13, 2006

ROFLMEO!!



Thanks Corinne ♥

also brooklyn

brooklyn, new york!




Thanks, france ♥

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

As I leave NYC for the Wilds of West Virginia



. . . . This flower is a Forget-Me-Not. . . .

Traveling in the Rain



Looks like I will be. Again. Becoming habit. Just remember ya'll, that in times of drought, I could be a real asset. . . .

The Question Is:



Will my new (young) Angelwing Begonia have survived my Christmas in the city? Didn't plan to be this long away. Did water her before leaving, but forgot to get a caretaker when the visit was extended. She's a replacement for an old (one I'd had for twenty-odd years, and lost the first winter in WV.) The first bloomed all summer, and then again in time for Christmas. This one is too young to have bloomed at all. . . .

Good vibes, please.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Witnessing

"I have been a witness, and these pictures are

my testimony. The events I have recorded should

not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

-James Nachtwey-





Thanks to Easy Bake Coven for the link.
( http://easybakecoven.net/ )

Fluffy


Coconut Macaroons

This is a tasty, fluffy cookie that makes a great hit with children.
2 3/4 cups macaroon coconut
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
Egg whites sufficient to make a smooth paste (about 3 lightly beaten)
1 Tbsp. corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla

Put the coconut, sugar, egg whites and corn syrup into a kettle and place over hot water. Stir briskly until a smooth paste is formed. Remove from the heat and, if necessary add just enough additional egg white to make a paste of the proper consistency. Add vanilla. Fill a large pastry bag, fitted with large star tube and pipe out macaroons on cookie sheets covered with baking parchment. Bake at 350 F. for 8-10 minutes. Yield 3 1/2 dozen.

Hints: Remove macaroons just before they have cooled completely. To get that wonderful, flowery look to your macaroons, use a star tube and start with your arm twisted to the left and in toward your body. As you extrude the dough, bring your hand around in a circle, tucking your elbow in, so that the dough will twist and then bring bag upwards to form a peak. When the cookie is baked, the ridges in the swirl design should become golden brown. Very pretty!


It is always best to bake macaroons on silicone-coated Kitchen Parchment as they will stick to a cookie sheet and most papers.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Friday, January 06, 2006

The Frozen Logger





As I sat down one evening within a small café,
A forty year old waitress, to me these words did say.
“I see that your a logger and not just a common bum.
Cause’ nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb.
My lover was a logger, there’s none like him today.
If you’d pour whisky on it, he would eat a bale of hay.
Well, he never shaved his whiskers from off of his horny hide,
He’s just drive them in with a hammer and bite them off inside.

“My lover came to see me upon a freezing day.
He held me in a fond embrace which broke three vertebrae.
Well, he kissed me when we parted, so hard he broke my jaw.
I could not speak to tell him he forgot his mackinaw.”

“I saw my logger leaving, saunt’ring through the snow.
Going bravely homeward at forty-eight below.
The weather it tried to freeze him; it tried its level best.
At a hundred degrees below zero he buttoned up his vest.”

“It froze clear through to China; it froze to the stars above.
At a thousand degrees below zero, it froze my logger love.
They tried in vain to thaw him and if you’ll believe me, sir,
They made him into ax blades to chop the Douglas fir.”

“And so I lost my lover, and to this café I come,
And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb.
And then I tell my story, of my love they could not thaw,
Who kissed me when we parted, so hard he broke my jaw.”


The Frozen Logger: Words and Music by James Stevens
TRO 1951 renewed 1979 Folkways Music Publishers Inc. New York, NY International copyright secured.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

A Small Thing (well, not so small, lol!)



If, as Kung Fu Tse said, each journey begins with the first step, this is step two. . . . I think of a couple of Great Aunts who hauled handcarts across the plains. Carts containing all they owned. In search of a new world. This purchase is not unrelated.

And I did good: suggested retail price is $74.95. Was selling on-line for $49.95, with a liner. I walked it home from the Shopping Bazaar for $17.95. This is truly the Mercedes of shopping/laundry carts (made, of course, in China. . . . ).

Sun Pillars. . . .



Thanks John ♥

Danziger

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

clicky



Thanks Renee, jc! ♥s!

Children In coal mines; and Now. . . .




The 1819 Factory Act : no children under 9 to work in factories. Children from 9 to 16 allowed to work a maximum of 72 hours per week with one and a half hours a day for meals.

1833 Althorp`s Factory Act : children from 9 to 13 to work a maximum of 42 hours per week; also children aged 13 to 16 to work a maximum of 69 hours a week. No night work for anybody under the age of 18.

1842 Mines and Colleries Act : banned all women and children under 10 from working underground. No-one under 15 years was to work winding gear in mines.

1844 Graham`s Factory Act : minimum age for working in factories reduced to 8 years old. 8 to 13 years old to work a maximum of six and a half hours a day. 13 to 18 year olds to work a maximum of 12 hours a day and the same applied to women. Safety guards had to be fitted to all machines.

1847 Fielder`s Factory Act : 10 hour day introduced for under 18's and for women.

There were factory inspectors to 'enforce' these laws but they were so poorly paid, they were easily bribed. Also many working parents were desperate for money and they lied about the ages of their children to get them work in factories and mines. So the laws may have been good in theory, they were very difficult to enforce.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/law.htm

Administration Neglected Coal Mining Safety
Bloomberg reveals:

Federal authorities issued 21 citations last year for a build-up of combustible materials at the West Virginia mine where 12 men died, according to U.S. Labor Department statistics.

The mining explosion should call attention to the Bush administration’s inadequate enforcement of federal mining safety regulations. Mining safety in the U.S. has improved dramatically since the Mining Safety and Health Act was signed in 1977. By the time that President Clinton signed the International Labor Organization’s Convention 176 concerning safety and health in mines, mining deaths dropped from 425 in 1970 to 85 in 2000.

Phil Smith, the communications director for the United Mine Workers of America, said that while citations have been issued, the fines assessed for safety violations are too small to force large corporations to make improvements. “The problem with the current laws is enforcement.” According to an AFL-CIO analysis, the Bush administration cut 170 positions from federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and has not proposed a single new mine-safety standard or rule during its tenure.

And there’s a reason for that. The Washington Post reported that West Virginia coal firms raised $275,000 for Bush.

Last September, Bush rewarded the coal industry by placing coal industry veteran Richard Stickler in charge of MSHA. Stickler spent about 30 years as a coal company manager with Beth Energy. Mines managed by Stickler were marked by worker injury rates that were double the national average, according to government data cited by the United Mine Workers union.

UPDATE:

Confined Space has this interesting analysis:

The fact is that President Bush has not requested budgets for OSHA or MSHA that even keep up with the rate of inflation and mandatory pay increases over the past several years while penalties for OSHA or MSHA violations remain laughably low. The highest penalty of the more than 200 citations received last year by the Sago mine was $878. But that was the exception. Most of the others were $250 or $60. At that rate, it’s hardly a good business decision to even bother fixing anything. And the administration has shut down any new worker protection standards in OSHA and MSHA.

Live links at the original: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/04/coal-mining/

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

A Coal Miner's Daughter




I was startled to discover in my middle age that my grandfather had owned a coal mine in Utah. It was a rather small coal mine, comprised of one wide vein of black diamonds, mined by my grandfather, father and uncles as young men. Evidently it was the family income for a number of years. Then they hit a fault, the vein disappeared, and they searched the face in a number of feet in all directions. Probably a wider search than was safe. They never found the vein, and that was the end of mining. Grandpa before and after did many other things including farming, innkeeping and shipbuilding.

When I first came to West Virginia, I "kept company" for a couple of years with a former coal miner (disabled). He gave me a poster very similar to the picture above, though it was darker, and the wall was to the right, not the left, and the wall face was much bigger. His eyes would like up when he looked at the poster. It really broke his heart that he was no longer able to be a miner. I'd always thought of coal mining as a necessary, but unloved profession. What Michael made clear to me is that there are men who love it, with a love totally unreasonable (to my mind) ~~ with a pure passion. It is their choice, not a "job."

Today I am sending light to those men and their families, just a couple of counties over from mine. They'll need it. Join me, please.

Just because she's lovely. . . .

Queen of Hearts

Monday, January 02, 2006

http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/

One woman put it this way: "Where is Monica Lewinsky when we need her?" Nobody laughed. The comment made the point: There are scandals and then there are scandals.

It's one kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for sexual satisfaction. What the moral theologians have traditionally called "the sins of the flesh" -- as in "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" -- most often carries an overtone of human weakness, a lack of personal discipline or emotional maturity or psychological control of sexual impulses.

It's another kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for power. Deceit, spuriousness, pride and calculated dishonesty fall into the category of "sins of the spirit." These are not confined to private or personal sexual behaviors. "Sins of the spirit" have to do with intellectual malice, with the cultivation of behavior and attitudes that attack the very ideals of the human community and pollute a whole way of being alive. This day's scandal yielded no ordinary political conversation. The group wrestled with the problem. Didn't the attack on the World Trade Center demand a more intense kind of intelligence gathering? Didn't the president have the responsibility to do this? Wasn't it imperative that it be done?

Yes, yes, and yes. The answers came easily, it seemed. Then what was the problem? A continuing discomfort hung in the air; something begged to be said yet. People put their eyes down and bit at the inside of their lips.

Then a woman dared the breach: "We may need to do this kind of thing -- but not like this. Not without legal permission, not without the approval of the Congress. Not in the United States of America. We elected a president. Not a king."

The idea may bear remembering.

~~ Sister Joan Chittister, OSB

There's more, click title.

Thanks, Alan ♥

Sunday, January 01, 2006