Dog Daze

Au Fond du Temple Saint

2012-01-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

I first developed a love of opera in 9th grade, when I took my first Italian class at Vineland Senior High School. My 9th grade teacher of Italian was John Mazzotta, but the person who nurtured my love of opera was my teacher from 10th through 12th grades, Cesarina DeCesero. I adored my Italian classes. And I learned to love opera. Italian opera was my favorite, needless to say. And with the Italian Club, I saw my first opera, though my love of it, and the greatest operatic tenor ever - Luciano Pavarotti - continued long after I graduated high school. I saw Pavarotti in concert and in operas many, many times. We were so lucky that he chose Philadelphia as the base for his vocal competition and spent so much time there.

For a long time, I thought all the best operas were in Italian, and some of my absolute favorites still are. Seriously, who doesn't love "La Boheme"? "Che gelida manina, se la lasci riscaldar. Cercar che giova? Al buio non si trova." So many of these lyrics I remember to this day, having learned them singing along to Luciano on album, then cassette, and now CD. I don't listen to as much opera as I used to, and I haven't seen a live opera in many years. But I still love it.

But good opera, and operetta, isn't only in Italian. I have grown to appreciate the power of German, and romance of French. Even opera in English.

So, for the last hour or so I have spent time over at You Tube trying to find a performance of the aria "Au fond du temple saint" from Georges Bizet's opera "The Pearl Fishers" (Les pêcheurs de perles) that is better than the one that I already know to be the best: Placido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes. It is so beautiful. I recognize that these men sang together a lot, their amazing tenor and baritone voices perfectly suited for duets, so maybe it was too much to ask that there might be a better version out there. There isn't, at least not in my opinion. Here it is, for your enjoyment, the #1 Au fond du temple saint:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhG4dPN2Nhs

There are others worth your time. The very close second, for me, is the late, great Jerry Hadley and Thomas Hampson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-6aQ6mxvnM

And my third favorite is this enjoyable performance from Roberto Alagna and Bryn Terfel, which includes the recorded live video at You Tube. I am not a huge fan of Alagna ... he does okay here, but he is no Domingo, Hadley, and he's certainly no Pavarotti:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLrPVkfCIQ

For me, this is one of the most beautiful areas ever written - and it's not in Italian!

There is one more version that is really enjoyable, for two reasons: my first real exposure to Rolando Villazon, who is quite stunning, and Placido Domingo ... singing the baritone part:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orbh8MHEhgA

And to show you that German has some great stuff, there's this version of "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz" from the operetta "Das Land des Lächelns" (The Land of Smiles) by Franz Lehar, Fritz Lohner-Beda and Ludwig Herzer. This link below is the great Placido Domingo once again, from the first Three Tenors concert. This version just gives me goose bumps. I love it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gSqZRC2dTE

Did I ever mention that I was at the Three Tenors concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It was an experience of a lifetime.

Scones: Yum Scrum Double Bubble Gum

2012-01-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, I figured a friend from England's favorite saying seemed appropriate in today's discussion of scones. I just made a batch. Let me tell you about them.

The base of today's scones is this many-times-tested and wonderfully perfect recipe for scones with lemon and ginger. I have used this recipe many, many times. It's easy-peasy, just a little bit of elbow grease needed when blending the butter into the flour mixture - in other words, no need to pull out any kitchen appliances:

http://joyofbaking.com/printpages/SconesLemonGingerprint.html

I don't usually put the sugar on and broil them at the end, as per the recipe (I also don't use cream to brush on them before baking - fat free milk is fine). But today, I added a half a cup of fresh cranberries to the batter(I cut each cranberry in half in order for the heat to get to them and soften them up) and figured it wouldn't hurt to add a little bit of sugar. But you don't have to wait until after they've baked. I just sprinkled a very little bit of regular sugar after I brushed the milk on them and baked them for the recommended time. They are exquisitely scrumptious.

Also, this recipe calls for buttermilk. I don't keep fresh (hee!) buttermilk in the fridge because I just don't use enough of it before it goes bad. Of course, if I followed Dana's philosophy on scones and made a batch a week, this would not be a problem. But, since that has not happened and may never be my scone schedule, I have found a perfectly fine substitute: Saco Cultured Buttermilk Blend. It is a powder, made from sweet cream and churned buttermilk. I am convinced this is a major reason why these scones are as great as they are. Everybody loves these scones.

You should try to make them. It really is easy and so, so satisfying!

It's Still Decorated for Christmas Around Here

2012-01-08T06:28:00.001-08:00

Yeah, maybe I'll take the decorations down next weekend. But I'm glad that I still have them up. They are beautiful and they make me happy. And I get to snap a shot like this:

Homer just was mesmerized by Scooby Doo singing Christmas songs, but I think he was especially taken with how Scooby danced to the music. You can see Scooby in motion as everything else is in focus. Homer is a curious and very happy dog.

Santorum? Really?

2012-01-04T04:53:00.000-08:00

Really? Seriously, it is a sad, sad state of affairs when a man like this can be in competition for the presidential nomination. This man believes that women should no longer have access to birth control. And he said this:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality ... "

No need to hear the rest of the quote since the first part is so ripe with ridiculousness.

He later went on to clarify that he did not intend to equate homosexuality with incest (the child reference) or beastiality (man on dog reference), when, of course, that was exactly what he intended. What's more important is that he does not believe that the right to privacy as noted in the Supreme Court ruling Griwold vs. Connecticut prevents the government from regulating consensual acts among adults. He wants to make homosexuals head straight back to the closet and he wants women to have babies. We know where he stands on these social issues, and he will be a fervent advocate for getting legislation passed that would attempt to obliterate the gains women and homosexuals have gained over these many years.

I'm voting for Obama no matter what offering comes our way from the Republicans. But I just find it unbelievable that there is any significant portion of the populace that would be willing to push back advances for these groups.

Guns

2012-01-04T04:43:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/police-body-found-us-park-gunman-224005459.html

You see, this guy should never have been able to keep his guns. Apparently a whole lot of people knew he was unstable. But because so many stupid people in this country don't get that the 2nd amendment to the constitution - including the idiots on the Supreme Court - was intended to allow freedom to bear arms for a 'militia' (that's a group, not an individual...in other words, the police or mili...tary), and not this guy, he was able to shoot people earlier in the day, and kill this, by all reports, lovely person. I know the paranoid in this country think they have to own a gun to be safe, but this is a complete fallacy. This woman was armed, but she wasn't given a chance because this crazy man was running wild with high-powered weaponry. The citizens of this country, and that includes former members of the military, do not need nor should they have weapons that have only one intent: to kill people. You need a rifle to go hunting and, in a nominally sporting way, shoot a deer, fine. But you don't need fifteen varieties of that weapon...one will do. Or do what my dad did: use a bow and arrow, which is far more sporting. This country needs to start acting like a civilized country and pass laws that will prevent innocents from being victims.

Oh, and I really could give two shits that this guy is a veteran. He should never have been allowed near weapons, and I will eat my nice black cowboy hat if we don't hear right quick about all the failures in the system that allowed this nutjob to become a menace to society. It really is a shame that his delusions didn't just result in his suicide. I have nothing but compassion for the men and women who have suffered in battle and come back changed by what they saw. But the Veterans Administration has excellent resources to help these people, and there is little doubt that the vast majority of them who are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder manage to get enough help that they don't go off and start shooting people.

I refuse to show this asshole's picture. Rather, I leave you with a photo of Margaret Anderson, his victim. Someone who loved her husband and her children and the beauty of this country in her intense love of her job as a national park service employee. Such a shame.

A New Year's Eve Tale

2012-01-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

So Darryl, Deb's boyfriend, has a granddaughter. She is a lovely little girl. And he has a new photo of her in the house. It is a head shot ... and it is a life-size head shot. It's wonderful, and really brings out the essence of Winnie. It's beautiful, and it makes you feel like she's right there in the room.

Well, apparently it was just too life-like for Homer and Fred. Fred, Homer and Atticus joined Dana and me at Dutch (that's Darryl's nickname) and Deb's place for New Year's Eve. Good food, good drink, good fun all around. However, we were sitting in the living room having some appetizers and champagne when we noticed Homer was just standing behind the sofa. When we looked closer, it turned out he wasn't just standing behind the sofa for no good reason. His head was pointed up, his huge brown eyes locked on that photo of Winnie. He stared and stared and stared at that picture. Man, it was so cute. He seemed completely convinced that she was going to greet him, so he just stood there, waiting anxiously. Homer is very in tune with his behavior around little kids (translation: he is much calmer than he is when meeting adults, intuitively understanding that he must be accomodating to their smaller and sometimes delicate nature), so I believe he was just being a good little boy and waiting for her to come make the first move. It was just a wonderful moment.

Later, I think it was after dinner and once we'd gotten into the game playing part of the evening (Dutch was on quite a roll with Quiddler last night ... harumph), we stopped to enjoy a performance by Fred. He was standing on the back of the sofa. He'd finally gotten a look at that life-sized photo of Winnie ... and had a low grade growl going, heading into something a bit more menacing. Keep in mind that he would never have hurt Winnie if she were really there. I think he just didn't like that she was standing outside the window, staring back at him like that! So funny.

The final act of the evening belonged to Atticus, who didn't seem bothered by Winnie; I'm not sure he even noticed her. But he did step toward the sliding glass door after it had gotten dark. We don't have anything like that at home, nothing to allow him to see his reflection. But see his reflection he did. He started barking like a crazy man intent on protecting his brothers and his human peeps, too. He would probably be pleased to know that mommy thought him to be a very brave and impressive boy, even when it was obvious he was just being a silly git. Homer caught his own image in the 'mirror', but he just seemed happy to spot such a handsome man out the door!

Happy New Year!

One Word Sentences?

2011-12-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

Hello.
Ouch!
Really?
Beautiful.
Where?
Look.
Peace.
Fire!
Stop!
How?
No.
Yes.
Sweet!
Now?
Goodbye.

Sentences? Discuss.

Rudyard Kipling's "Mandalay"

2011-12-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

I have been spending time enjoying all of Andrew Sullivan's remembrances of his friend Christopher Hitchens these last couple of days. It's funny how you find something else to be curious about, say, Stephen Fry and his wondrous performance as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother, in the new Robert Downey, Jr.-Jude Law Sherlock Holmes movie. He was so wonderful and I knew I'd seen him before, but I just couldn't place him, so I came home and looked him up on the internet. He's best friends with Hugh Laurie, and a right Renaissance man. Author, playwright, actor, comedian, director, journalist, and well-known for a debate held in 2009 titled 'Intelligence Squared', where he and Christopher Hitchens paired off together against their opponents Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan in a discussion of the Catholic Church. Hichens the renowned atheist and Fry the humanist versus two well-known Catholics. That must have been something to see.

One of today's reminiscences is of Hitchens' love of poetry:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/a-poe.html

The key paragraph quoting Hitchens:

Yet very often, late at night, when I am not tired enough for sleep but too tired to carry on with absorbing or apprehending anything "serious" or new, I will walk over to the appropriate shelf and pull out the tried and the true: the ones that never fail me. And then I will always stay up even later than I had intended. And sometimes, in the morning, I really can "do" the whole of "Spain 1937" or "The Road to Mandalay," and can appreciate that writing is not just done by hand.

Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"

Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:

Bloomin' idol made o'mud --
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd --
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!"
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin' my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.

Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."

No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay . . .

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?

Beefy face an' grubby 'and --
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be --
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;

On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

I feel so fortunate to have been exposed to this poem. It's bittersweet that it is because of the loss of such an amazing man of letters that I got my chance. Obviously, I know Rudyard Kipling, but there was nothing before what I read today on Andrew Sullivan's blog that would have spurred me to read this. It's wonderful, lovely and sweet and to read it feels like singing a song, and even if you can't sing, or think that you have no voice, you will hear yourself singing when you try this one. I did.

Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan and Friendship

2011-12-16T09:16:00.001-08:00

Christopher Hitchens died today. Needless to say, for those of you who know Hitchens' writings - and know me - we did not have the same beliefs on a lot of things. His profoundly proud and passionately defended writings on atheism are what drew me to him. But I have learned more about him in the occasional mention at Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, where I am a devoted reader, and with whom I also have disagreements. That these two men, so different in so many ways, could nurture a friendship of truth and honor and admiration of one another is a beautiful thing. That our world as a whole, and certainly our politics here in the United States could learn so much from what these men forged, would be a wonder should it ever happen. It seems a miserable far away concept right now in this season of presidential campaign posturing.

We make note of a person's worth at their death. I wish we could all be more aware of the greatness of people and their value to each of us individually and to mankind as a whole during their lives. I am as guilty as anyone in doing this, though I feel so lucky to have had Andrew Sullivan guiding us through these last weeks of Christopher Hitchens life. He might not feel that he was doing this at all; his blog is nothing if not an at different times witty, deeply moving, oft times muddled, more times brilliant but always honest stream of consciousness. His sad, soulful postings lately, and especially today, about his friend have been such a wonderful testament to the man who was Christopher Hitchens.

Andrew posted this quote today about friendship:

"In a friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him."

"Your compassion should be a guess--to know first whether your friend wants compassion. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unbroken eye and the glance of eternity. Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell, and you should break a tooth on it. That way it will have delicacy and sweetness,"

-Friedrich Nietzsche.

I think this is so true. I think that if you cannot be honest and disagreeable with your friends, then you really do not understand what friendship means. Witnessing a beautiful friendship is an amazing thing. Having one is something nearly impossible to put into words, though I suspect Nietzsche and Sullivan have come right close to expressing it nearly perfectly in days past and today.

Rest in peace, Christopher Hitchens.

And go here to read an obituary. Fascinating to the end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62-obituary.html?_r=1

Merry Christmas

2011-12-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

SEASON'S GREETINGS!

I love the Christmas season. I love the decorations and the music and the philosophy of peace and good will to all. I am not religious, but I even like the 'reason for the season' stuff. I think that if people find comfort in their religion, that's perfectly fine with me ... so long as they don't scream it in my face!

As you all mostly know, my decorations for Christmas are decidedly themed. Here are a few photos from years past of what I mean:

Yes, that is an artificial tree. I like my Christmas season to last as long as possible, so I am okay with a fake tree. Up close it is obviously not real, but you really need to get up close to it to know that. It's a great looking tree and I have had it for years. And yes, all of the ornaments are dog-related. Hundreds of them. Oh, yes!

And it's not just on the tree that we have this theme. There are Christmas stuffed dogs, five small trees, two to three feet high, also adorned with doggie ornaments, a series of great pewter dog ornaments that hang from the bookcases, dog snow globes, etc., etc. And of course ... the caroling dogs:

Aren't they cute? I have over 30 of them. So adorable.

But my cutest decorations of all? My real dogs. My guys are always decked out for the holidays. This year it is a western-style scarf with pointsettias, festive red and green on a black background, and they really are darling:

Whatever your holiday, enjoy this season, and have a Happy 2012!

Tom Wicker 1926-2011

2011-11-25T18:28:00.000-08:00

I was only eleven years old during the time of the Attica prison riot in 1971. As an 11 year old, I was far more interested in Bobby Darin's singing and the TV series "Alias Smith and Jones" than I was in current events. But the events in Attica, New York somehow made it into my consciousness. The four days that constituted the duration of the uprising, including the negotiations of a team that included Tom Wicker, William Kunstler and Louis Farrakhan, were never anything more than a blip on my radar at that time. But Tom Wicker was not. I found in him a writer that as a young girl I was hard-pressed not to admire. Whenever possible I would try to find his stories or columns; this often meant getting my hands on a copy of the New York Times, which meant reading it in the library.

Anyway, Mr. Wicker retired from the newspaper business in 1991. He wrote many books, though I have to admit to only having read "A Time to Die". In reading his obituary, I realize that I missed out on a lot with regards to Tom Wicker. It seems his coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy was really quite something. You can read more about him at the obituary in The New York Times, the newspaper that was his home for so many years:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/tom-wicker-journalist-and-author-dies-at-85.html?_r=1

Tom Wicker was a great writer and a good man. He lived a good, long life. And he will be missed.

Sweet Cheeks

2011-11-17T19:16:00.000-08:00

So, Fred was ridiculously adorable today. Of course, he was adorable in the way that it was impossible to leave him to go fetch the camera. He isn't normally in your face about getting attention. Not like Homer! Okay, that might not be true, it's just that Fred is more subtle about it. Today we had two moments where I just melted in his cuteness.

First, he took a "frogger" turn on the sofa. Lately, we have had a fair number of doggie pillows and doggie fleece on the sofa. I tend to keep the house just warm enough, which is better for the environment and my pocketbook! Fred, Homer and Atticus have all learned to love their fleece. But they can, on occasion, be rambunctious boys, and their rough-housing around the house can cause the pillows and fleece to fall to the floor. This gave Fred the chance to do a full-on stretch: he stretched so that his back legs were flat on the cushion, stretched out behind him, like a frog. And he was really stretched out, almost enough to reach from arm to arm on a substantial sofa. If the sofa wasn't there he would have looked like he was flying (which he has done before):

So, I had to decide, should I go over there and kiss those little butt cheeks or fetch the camera? The cheeks won, hands down.

Later, as the pre-dinner (for dogs, around 3:30pm) walk approached, Fred came over and looked at me and started "dancing". This is when he just gets all excited, usually about going O-U-T-S-I-D-E. If, when he's doing this, you lightly rub his back, near his tail, he will "dance" even faster, tapping his paws on the floor. It's so cute. But this time, I encouraged him to jump up on my lap (hey, there were no other dogs around!) and once he was up, he was right in my face. Fred, as many of you know, has mesmerizing eyes. And he was SO happy, getting all of the attention. He petted my face and head several times. And then he started rolling around in my arms. He likes to be face-to-face, but he's also a bit of a hedonist and knows that when he rolls over he's going to get petting all-over his body. Fred likes to be touched everywhere. Everywhere, I say. He would have layed on his back like that, his head up against the crook of my neck, his neck in the middle of my chest, his butt on my stomach, getting a rub-down, for hours ... except it was so close to mealtime!

This is not a recent shot of Fred, just a favorite one. Just me and my boy on vacation at Manitou Cliff Dwellings near Colorado Springs, CO. Oh, and this was cute: we approached the entrance to the cliff dwelling, which is like a cave, and Fred did not want to go in. It did look dark, I'll admit. But once I shoved his butt into the entryway, he loved, loved, loved exploring in there. It's nice that they allow dogs there. I'm sure, when I finally get to Mesa Verde, that I will have to keep the dogs in the car. Harumph!

White Bean Chicken (or Turkey) Chili

2011-11-16T14:36:00.000-08:00

Yum.

I believe this is now my third pot of white bean chicken (or turkey) chili this fall/winter season. I love herbs and spices and different ones are favorites throughout the year. I love fresh basil in the summer, and eat caprese salads throughout the season, with tomatoes from the grocery store and then the farmers markets early in the summer and from my own garden later. I adore thyme and rosemary. I have some of Ina Garten's incredible Mustard Chicken Salad in the fridge right now, made with French tarragon from my garden; it's absolutely incredible. I will prepare a garlic, olive oil and mixed herb rub for meats when all the herbs are in season in the garden. A favorite side? Cannellini beans with fresh sage and really good olive oil. But right now I have a thing for a spice from my pantry: cumin. Cumin screams Mexican food, and I do love good Mexican, or Tex-Mex (I did live in Texas for a year). This chili is so easy to do and so delicious. And it's quite different from your typical chili: it has spinach (or swiss chard, if you can get it) and corn, and the recommended cheese to finish it with is parmigiano, which is unusual for chili. I like parmigiano, cheddar or even a mild cheese like monterey jack works. But it only needs a little - the chili tastes great all by itself; all you need is a bowl and a spoon. And maybe a nice glass of wine ... I like a dry riesling or rose, but I think it can stand up to a good but not overly bold red. But truly, it is the cumin that makes this so special. And I have been using cumin lately a lot when I make tacos (corn tortillas only - please! - which in our white-bread area of upstate NY are hard to find): fish tacos, shrimp tacos, chicken tacos, all well-seasoned with cumin and chili powder. Burritos, too. Yes, I believe my taste for the spicy will fit right in in New Mexico.

The recipe I use for this delicious chili (no, I did not come up with this all by myself ... I like to cook, but I am not Ina Garten or Giada DiLaurentiis!) is one from Giada, and you can find it here on the Food Network website:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/white-bean-and-chicken-chili-recipe/index.html

Enjoy. I know I will!

Buddy and Pedro

2011-11-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I can see why they would need to separate them, if they are trying to avoid the extinction of the species. And the separation is only temporary. But, based on how my guys react when they are separated - and even more telling, when they are together - I can totally imagine separation anxiety could prevent a successful coupling.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1085094--same-sex-penguins-must-separate-soon?bn=1

This morning, Homer came out of the bedroom, walked over to me, did a big stretch and yawn in greeting, and then trotted happily over to Atticus, who was still in his doggie bed on the chair. Homer reached his long neck up, Atticus bent down, and they snuffled each others' noses for the longest time. It was freaking adorable.

According to the stories that I have read, these two penguins are inseparable and have completely ignored the two female penguins that have been following them around. I wish them good luck, as I would hate to see this species fall into extinction, but I can imagine things not turning out as the zoo authorities hope.

Wind Chimes

2011-11-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

I have always been fond of wind chimes. I've purchased only quality ones for years now. I cannot tolerate the sound of a cheap set, that lame 'tinkle' sound. Ugh. Or those wooden ones that have more of a 'clunky' sound. I have a lovely wind chime made by a friend given to me by another friend, made of pieces of colored glass hanging from a piece of driftwood. It's beautiful and has a lovely sound when the glass clinks together. It's reminiscent of the sound of champagne glasses chiming after a toast, especially when there are different levels of champers in each glass.

I have a set of wind chimes I purchased years ago during a visit to Charleston, SC for Spoleto Festival. As those of you who know me well are fully aware, I love Charleston and I love Spoleto Festival. And we never visit this charming and sophisticated southern city without hitting the shops at the market. One of these shops had a huge, make that, HUGE wind chime for sale. The sound it made was incredible. And I just had to have it. Luckily, the shop agreed to ship it to my home.

It really does sound like beautiful church bells. Pretty ones, with a great sustained sound. They are hung out on the front porch, right outside the living room. These last days we have had some pretty stiff breezes; the weather forecast says that the winds are 10-20 miles per hour. Needless to say, we have had beautiful music going all weekend, and expect these gorgeous sounds to continue for another couple of days as these breezes of up to 20 mph are forecast to continue at least that long.

The sound is mesmerizing, relaxing. Just lovely.

Grammar Discussion #1 - Anyway versus Anyways

2011-11-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

Anyways is wrong. Don't use it.

Why, you ask, if it's wrong do so many people use it? I wish I knew. Actually, I believe I do know, but let's discuss first why it is wrong.

The word anyway is an adverb. It's meaning? Regardless or in any event, even anyhow (notice no use of the 's' in anyhow). In Merriam-Webster online, the definition is as follows:

1 : ANYWISE (Do any of you use anywise? Oy.)

2 : in any case : ANYHOW

A few appropriate uses of the word:

a. Anyway, though I may sound like a typical mommy, my dogs are the sweetest on the planet.

b. That girl can't hold a tune, but they allowed her to make that woeful vocal attempt anyway.

c. That candidate is clearly a pig, a mysogynist, but he's going to remain on the campaign trail anyway.

- or, as in one of my all-time favorite television shows -

d. Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Since the word is an adverb, adding an 's' makes it plural, which is simply not done with adverbs. That might be the best way to remember that you should not say or write 'anyways'. My favorite comment on the usage of anyways is found at this website:

http://grammartips.homestead.com/

It's "Grammar Tips and Usage for the Non-expert" by Tina Blue, who has a PhD in English and lots of experience teaching English writing, grammar and related subjects. To make it easier for you , though I do recommend her website for some humorous discussions on grammar and usage, here is what Tina says:

"This is going to be short and simple. Do not say or write 'anyways' - not ever. The word is 'anyway'. The word 'anyways' is found in some dialects in the United States, but it is not standard English, and it should never be used in any situation where you want to be considered reasonably well educated. That's all there is to it."

Another favorite comment about the use of 'anyways' can be found at www.dailywritingtips.com where the blogger calls 'anyways' a "colloquial corruption of anyway." I have to agree. Therefore, as a colloquial corruption or dialect, the ONLY appropriate time to use it would be when you are writing or speaking dialogue, primarily to emphasize the character's lack of finesse with the language. That's it.

Now, as to why so many people use 'anyways' rather than the correct 'anyway'? I believe much of this is laziness, I really do. However, I will concede that a person who uses the word incorrectly may have heard this used by a parent, though I find it hard to believe that at some point in all the years of schooling that people did not learn the correct usage. Yes, perfectly well-educated people use this word incorrectly. It drives me batty.

As a lesson, let's think about words like anyhow or everywhere. Would you add an 's' to use these words properly? No, you would not. "I know Kevin Spacey was a little too old to play Bobby Darin, but I loved his performance in the movie 'Beyond the Sea' anyhows." You see? It doesn't work. Or "I love Washington, DC ... we walked everywheres." Sounds wrong, right? Well, when someone uses 'anyways', it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. I love my language and it really, really bothers me when people use it incorrectly.

I have attempted this discussion with people in the past; we even had this discussion over the weekend, which is why there is a new blog post about it today. The excuse of a 'living language' and change being inevitable was brought up. I do not deny that the language is alive, and that is good. It's how we add words like 'blog' or get new definitions for words that have been around forever. But 'anyways' was never correct, and never should be.

Of course, the fact that it is used far too often by a top radio personality on National Public Radio or came out of the mouth so many times of the Canadian physicist on a popular sci-fi show who claimed to be the "smartest person in two galaxies" doesn't help me in my argument. Very annoying, that. The fact of its more regular use does not negate the fact that it is incorrect.

Pictures don't lie

2011-10-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

It was a generally crappy summer (and autumn, so far), weather-wise, and health-wise for that matter, yet I still managed to capture some really lovely photos that seem intent on discounting my opinion on the former. Enjoy.

Approaching sunset in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Fourth of July weekend:

Fred induling in a snack on the trail at Acadia National Park in Maine over the Fourth of July weekend:

By later in July, the new guy was learning to make himself at home. Atticus, who I nearly hit with my car in May, now comfortably ensconced in the canine crew in Willsboro:

Homer found a warm spot on a cool day early in the growing season:

Jewels for the garden. Thank you, Pat!

Ridiculously cute. On the bench are Choli and Mike, Deb and Darryl's dogs. On the ground, Fred, Atticus and Homer, in the garden:

Despite the wet summer, the tomato plants did pretty well:

A bee on one of many beautiful zinnias at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt historic site in Hyde Park, NY:

You've noticed some sunshine in these pictures, but usually with the sun - and all that wet - came mosquitos. The boys had to soak up the sun where they could:

The old homestead is right pretty in the summer. My yard is amazingly park-like:

In vino veritas. Fred got so sick of the mosquitos that he took to surfing the net and, ultimately, acquiring a taste for a good dry riesling:

These fellas sure know how to put a smile on mommy's face, despite all that crap weather:

Just a Quick Update

2011-09-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Survived hurricane Irene. Whew. And I have a new dog. And I hope to be posting again sometime soon. The new guy is Atticus. So, from left to right above, Homer, Fred and Atticus. AKA Homer Schomer, Freddie Schmeddie and Atticus Schmatticus (their Yiddish names). Also, Homeropteryx, Fredosaurus and Atticus Rex (their dinosaur names). And Makes Happy Noise, Soars With the Wind and Sly Fox (their Native American names). Otherwise known as the most well-loved Beagle mixes in the North Country!

Lake Champlain Flooding

2011-05-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

I realize that it's not of the same magnitude, the flooding that we're having up here along Lake Champlain or the many rivers in the Adirondacks. That is, it's not of the same magnitude...unless it's your house that is completely surrounded by water. I took a ride around Willsboro Point and Essex today. The small coves and bays of Lake Champlain that surround the peninsula of "The Point" have heaved up onto waterfront property and completely consumed some homes. Many of these houses used to be vacation homes, but many of them now are peoples' first and only homes. And yes, Willsboro Point does have some expensive homes, with pools and tennis courts and, of course, most of those homes have been spared damage as they sit high above their cove or bay. But a lot of these houses are just houses, like mine, only far too close to the lake, at least they were this year. Lake Champlain is at historic high levels, drowning houses on both the New York and Vermont sides. The lake is supposed to grow even higher tomorrow. But we have a forecast of some relief from the rains coming up, and most of the melt is complete. I hope this is so, because even for those of us who aren't in danger from the high levels of the beautiful rivers and lakes up here in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, we have had enough of the rain and the wet. Today was a lovely, sunny day...for most of the day.

Here are some shots of the damage along the lake.

This horse seems completely oblivious to the drama going on a few hundred yards away.

A house, er, estate that is seemingly untouched by the lake nipping at its feet, though if there's a basement, boat races could be underway down there...it's something to do, inside, out of the rain.

My "Ghost House". It makes me want to cry every time I pass this house and watch it fall further into ruin. Sigh.

The Essex Ferry, just a 7 minute drive from my house, had only recently re-opened after a late winter closure due to ice on the lake. As you can see, there is no getting to the ramp that would lead you onto a ferry.

At least Mister Robin seems happy with all this wet.

I Like My Blog

2011-05-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

I just haven't had a lot of time for it lately. I want that to change. Facebook is partly to blame. I can quickly go there, dump a short paragraph on what I think of something, attach a link or photo, and it's done. Somehow, I feel the blog deserves more time and thought. And I just don't have enough time for thoughtfulness. I am working far more than I had planned, but I am hopeful that this has changed and I will be back to having time for contemplation and time for writing, which I miss desperately. Of course, the gardening season is upon us, and being in the garden has many benefits, including that essential contemplation time.

And I have a new camera, so you will be seeing more photos here, like this:

My goodness these boys are scrumptious.

Goodbye, Sweet Miller

2011-01-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

It was the day that I hoped would never come. The realist in me knew that I would have to say goodbye to Miller one day; dogs cannot live forever. But for a while there, it seemed that Miller was intent on trying. He lived to be 17 3/4 years old, quite ancient for a dog.

Miller was a beautiful dog. I guess one of the reasons it seemed so hard to finally make the call to let him go was that he looked so damned good to the very end. He just had a light about him, from the minute I saw him at the shelter that very first time. Other dogs that I've adopted were often on a second or third look. I didn't even really realize that I'd seen Fred on the first walk-through at the shelter, he was so quiet, so meek. Miller stood out from the get-go.

I think it was those eyes.

Okay, maybe that's not the best shot of those eyes!

Miller's lived a pretty pampered life, as all Vanneman dogs tend to do. He loved being groomed, though he was never a fan of having his nails done. He slept on the bed, until he was unable to make it up, and then he had the very best dog beds at his disposal. My sisters and I laugh at how soft our dogs' elbows are; these are animals that have never had to lay on hard surfaces! One of Boo's nicknames, as it was, was "Pasha" Boo.

Miller and Boo were best buds. A lovely pair of dogs. And they, like all of my guys, had traveled a fair amount. Since Miller had been with me for so long, he got to travel the most. He has been lucky enough to stay in some of the nicest bed and breakfasts in the Catskills, the Adirondacks, Charlottesville, Virginia, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the eastern shore of Maryland. There were surely others. And he and his brothers enjoyed several visits to Moosehead Lake in the far north of Maine. Such a lucky boy.

That's Bailey laying there with his head on Fred's shoulder. Miller was very patient with Bailey. We all, dogs and people alike, learned to be patient with Bailey. But Miller being Miller seemed the most able to manage it...even an unfortunate diarrhea incident on a drive up here to look at houses didn't really phase Miller much. Didn't make me very happy...

That wasn't the first time Miller had something inadvertently slopped all over his lovely coat. One time, at the Fire and Ice Festival in Mount Holly, NJ, Miller and I, along with Deb's little Menolly, I think, were waiting outside for our "fire" part of the festival: a chili contest (the ice part was an ice sculpting contest). Deb and Dana crossed the street with some chili for me (dogs were not allowed in the fire hall where the chili contest was taking place). As they handed the cup of chili over to me, Miller jumped up to get some for himself. His nose hit the cup, which flew out of my hand, flying way above our heads. As you can imagine, this entire event seemed to be happening in slow motion, but not quite slow enough for any of us to stop the inevitable: the chili landed smack dab on Miller's back. Oy. Again...it's funny in hindsight only!

Miller was so welcoming to all of the dogs who came and went from my household during his long lifetime. Such a sweet boy. And the other dogs just loved Miller.

And even in his older years he was more than willing to welcome a young punk into the family. Homer adored Miller...he would often just walk over to Miller as he lazed in his bed and plop down on the floor right next him, happy to just spend time with his older brother, though, on his first day here, he was happy to take Miller's bed. And true to Miller's gentle nature, he let him, and took the smaller bed right nearby.

The fact is that I could go on for pages about Miller. He was a special boy. Though all of my dogs are nice, Miller (once he was out of his terrible twos! Boy did I lose a lot of wood at that Oak Road house!) was just the most perfect combination of sweet and kind. We called him The Empath, and he really was able to read our minds...he always knew when I needed a little extra lovin'.

Miller, like all well-loved dogs, earned many a nickname in our family. The Golden Bear, Blondie, Blond Bombshell, his Native American Indian name, Walks in Sunlight, his dinosaur name, Tri-Miller-Tops. To me, he will always be my golden boy.

Goodbye, Sweet Miller.

A Banner Day

2010-12-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

And it is done. Why it took so long, I'm not sure. And we all know what would have happened under a McCain administration.

The U.S. Senate did just exactly this today, and if it meant compromise on other legislation to get us to this point, I say...that's exactly what these men and women who were voted in to serve should be doing. I am proud of this vote.

Happy Holidays

2010-12-17T08:45:00.000-08:00

I just love the Christmas season. The lights and the snow and the Christmas trees, the candles and the dogs whirling around the backyard making a right mess of the formerly pristine snow. The trees are gorgeous right now, all snow covered.

And I really, really love that silly concept of "peace on earth, goodwill toward men". I just wish we could figure out a way to make it so.

I have a new camera and hope to get some new pictures over the course of this holiday season, but to go along with this fantasticly rockin' recording from Bobby Darin's great Christmas CD...

...I have the following photos to share from Christmases past. Enjoy.

I Stand With Aaron Sorkin...

2010-12-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

...on the question of Sarah Palin. Here is what he said about Palin's reality show...and other things:

In Her Defense, I'm Sure the Moose Had It Coming
by Aaron Sorkin

"Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation."

You're right, Sarah, we'll all just go fuck ourselves now.

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who've come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather, and PETA is not ever going to put me on the cover of their brochure and for these reasons Palin thinks it's hypocritical of me to find what she did heart-stoppingly disgusting. I don't think it is, and here's why.

Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don't relish the idea of torturing animals. I don't enjoy the fact that they're dead and I certainly don't want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn't do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I'm able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I've tried and tried and for the life of me, I can't make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I'm able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho shitheads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

So I don't think I will save my condemnation, you phony pioneer girl. (I'm in film and television, Cruella, and there was an insert close-up of your manicure while you were roughing it in God's country. I know exactly how many feet off camera your hair and make-up trailer was.)

And you didn't just do it for fun and you didn't just do it for money. That was the first moose ever murdered for political gain. You knew there'd be a protest from PETA and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you'd be -- bringing the right together with the far right.

(Let me be the first to say that I abused cocaine and was arrested for it in April 2001. I want to be the first to say it so that when Palin's Army of Arrogant Assholes, bereft of any reasonable rebuttal, write it all over the internet tomorrow they will at best be the second.)

I eat meat, there are leather chairs in my office, Sarah Palin is deranged and The Learning Channel should be ashamed of itself.

Wow.

2010-10-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

We Have Tomatoes!

2010-08-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have heard that there is an outbreak of late blight, but it has not hit my garden yet. Knock wood.

My garden has yielded quite a bounty so far this season: swiss chard, green beans (both of these, several times), leeks, fennel, more cucumbers than I can eat, thyme, rosemary, parsley, chives, tarragon, tons of basil. Nasturtium flowers, which we had on our appetizer plates last night.

And the tomatoes!

We had caprese salad last night, and I used the basil from the many basil plants I have, and five different types of tomatoes from my raised beds: New Girl, a basic red tomato, San Marzano, a plum tomato, Valencia, a yellow-orange heirloom, Green Zebra, another heirloom with green stripes, and a yellow cherry tomato. Fresh mozzarella from Vermont, Mediterranean sea salt and unfiltered extra virgin olive oil from California. Dana and I will be eating caprese salads for the rest of the summer.

And for lunch today: Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Glorious.

Oh, and I had a visitor this morning:

Back in the Saddle

2010-06-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

So, I'm back working a job in consulting. It's not what I wanted, but the job isn't half bad. I go to Connecticut a couple of days a week, will be there three days a week the last two weeks of July and probably for full weeks at go-live at the beginning of August. The payoff? Supporting the customer from home once they are live with SAP. I miss my dogs, but I know it's short-term pain for a sort of long-term good deal.

Not all that exciting except for the drive home from Manchester, CT on Thursday. I drove through much of that crazy, torrential rain. It was amazing how the rain went so fast from a few drops to an absolute pounding wall of water. Usually I rave about how beautiful the drive is, both going and coming home. The Berkshires of western Massachusetts are lovely, and just about the entire drive in New York is sweet: Hudson Valley, the capitol region of Albany and then Saratoga Springs through the lower Adirondacks all the way back to Willsboro. And once I reached the Adirondacks Thursday, I had the prettiest clear skies and mountain views. We're still having way too much rain in my neck of the woods, but it's better than that rain in Connecticut and Massachusetts yesterday!

Miscellany

2010-05-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Because it's easier right now, this will just be a topic-less hodge podge of happenings of late.

Firstly, I have had my keypad replaced on my Dell laptop. I love this computer, and I had gotten used to not having my left shift key and my B and H keys missing. The left shift key popped off one day when I was typing. The B and H keys flew off when Homer decided to use the laptop as a springboard to jump from my chair over to the sofa. Andrew the Computer Guy kindly spearheaded getting the replacement keyboard. He's a great guy, so anyone who needs computer help up here in the North Country should seek him out. He's based in Plattsburgh. And I LOVE having all of my keys back again.

It's gardening season, don't you know. I've planted some flowers and I've put together my first rough draft of my garden plan. Dana and I built a fifth raised bed, a 3 foot by 5 foot baby that nicely finishes off the gardening area. I've started hardening-off the plants in the basement and stopped at the garden center here in Willsboro to pick up a few more flowers and some other things: rosemary, because my seeds didn't see fit to germinate, and French tarragon, because it is a fantastic herb. They didn't have any thyme, and my thyme couldn't make the time to grow in the basement. I will be busy with the garden for the next few days. Dana will have to water while I am down in Charleston next weekend.

Yes, back down to Charleston, SC for Spoleto Festival 2010. I'm meeting Deb down there; it's a birthday trip for me to celebrate turning 50 this year. Charleston and Spoleto are just about my favorite place to visit on a regular basis. The schedule is packed, and we're staying right in town at the Meeting Street Inn, which is exciting as I've wanted to try this place for years. And we'll be dining once again at the Peninsula Grill (coconut cake!!!) and Il Cortile del Re, and we're finally heading to Fig. Very exciting. And I'm sure we'll manage to get to Paolo's Gelato. And lots and lots of concert-going from Friday through Memorial Day.

As some of you are aware, I am back consulting. Part-time, and traveling to Connecticut for two days a week through the summer, when support for this customer is to revert to remote work from home. So far, so good.

Miller, my lovely senior Golden Retriever-Yellow Lab mix turned 17 in April. He's doing well. He was especially adorable and spunky yesterday.

As I type, the two Beagle mixes Fred and Homer are laying up on the back of the loveseat in the sun. Homer's head is kind of resting on Fred's butt. They look ridiculously comfortable. And adorable. I love them so much. I really cannot get enough of the dogs. I stop almost anyone I can who has a dog with them just for the chance to pet the critters. I don't know what it is about dogs that touches me so. Mine look at me like I am the most important thing in their lives. Fred sometimes seems like he's trying to pet ME. They are wonderful.

I've lately been thinking that I might want to get myself a pair of donkeys (burros, as I like to call them), or maybe goats. I pass by a sweet little donkey on my drive out of town to head to Connecticut. And there is a small farm that I pass on my return home on Thursdays that has about a dozen donkeys. I'm sure they must sell them, and it's very tempting to stop and ask. But I won't. It's hard enough leaving my woofs right now. And I don't even know if I'm allowed to have those kinds of animals in my neighborhood here in Willsboro. I also want chickens, but only because of the fresh eggs. But there are far too many downsides to having chickens.

Since I'm back in a hotel one or two days a week with the consulting thing, I've started re-reading my library of Dick Francis mysteries. He's an English writer and was a former jockey who became a prolific and successful novelist. He died earlier this year, and it's been really nice reaquainting myself with his writing and the heroes of his novels. Though I'm sure some would say that he's a little formulaic, his topics are all very interesting and well-researched, and that he manages to weave in the horse racing world into these stories is quite impressive. I love how he writes, the heroes of his books are all very appealing, even when they are damaged either physically or emotionally. I highly recommend his books. I would suggest a great starting point would be "Odds Against", where he introduces the former steeplechase jockey turned investigator Sid Halley. It is a wonderful book, and Sid Halley is a terrific, imperfect hero. He appears in three other Francis novels. Worth your time.

The Beagle boys have now switched positions: Homer is where Fred was laying, and Fred has moved to the seat cushion of the loveseat: more sun, dontcha know.

Deb's boyfriend Darryl left for Europe yesterday. He'll stay there a few weeks, then come home for about a month, and then head back over with Deb for a bit more Europe time. I think he's spending most of the first part of his trip in Germany, and then he and Deb will be mostly in France. Nice.

What else to say? Not much, so I think that will suffice for an update.

Adios, and all that.

Hello There

2010-05-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

Yowza! It's been a while since I've posted to my blog. Shame on me. Busy, that's my only excuse. Other writing, reading, playing, dogs. Work. Life is that way sometimes. I hope to do better in the near future. For now, I leave you with this, one of my many distractions of late. I'm sure you understand.

"Like" Oprah

2010-03-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

My sister came home from work today with an interesting story. She overheard a conversation between two of her co-workers about Oprah Winfrey and the books that she recommends in her book club. They were noting that Oprah tended to recommend books written by people like her. Like Oprah. Like there really is anyone else on Earth like Oprah. I asked what did they mean by that. She said they definitely were referring to her race. I told her she should have interrupted and asked, "What do you mean, like her? Do you mean famous billionaire businesswomen?" What jackasses. So, I found the list of the last 36 books that Oprah has offered in her book club. 6 of the 36 books were written by black people, and that's from a list of international writers.

Such small-minded people who would think that Oprah Winfrey would be like this. Where did this idea come from? More small-minded people who clearly are not watching Oprah. They haven't a clue what goes on within Oprah's book club. Why would they bother to carry on such a conversation? Where did they hear this drivel from? Or did they just make it up? I have no time for people like this, and I can guarantee that I would have challenged them on their premise, even before finding the truth of the matter on the internet.

Today's Republicans Make Me Ill

2010-02-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

They really are a messed up bunch. Lying sacks of shit, the entire lot. No matter how much I might say that there is an occasional one who might be worth something, the way the Republicans in Congress are acting is despicable and absolutely against what is best for this country. And beyond that, you have the lying liars not even trying to hide that they are liars. You have that vile John Boner, er, I mean Boehner, with his unadulterated two-facedness talking about the deficit build-up under Obama when he never made a peep about it under Bush. And then there's John McCain, who we know has gone to the Land of the Lost ever since he selected that loony tune from Alaska as his running mate, talking about how unit cohesion will be lost if Don't Ask Don't Tell is repealed, the very day that the head of the military - both heads, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - testified before Congress that it was a wrong-headed policy and beneath the military to continue with it. And there are so many more examples in the Republican political establishment: Sarah Palin (what kind of a mother would dangle that poor child around like that?), Eric Cantor...well, there's too many of them to count. And then there is the Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol crowd, who will coo the party line when the truth, which is nearly always opposite of what they spout, is self-evident. It is bad enough that the politicians and the pundits on the right are nuts. There is a new survey that shows that the voters on the right are just as insane. It's referenced by a short post by Bruce Bartlett at Capital Gains and Games here:

http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1467/why-i-am-not-republican

Here are the questions and the responses. Remember, these poll questions were asked of 2,003 self-identified Republicans nationwide:

Now don't forget, this is the party that is against repealing DADT. Sure, there are some of the other party who also oppose repeal and there are some in the Republican party that want repeal. I couldn't name any of these people off the top of my head. But keep in mind that the people who do not want gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces of this country are standing with the following countries who also disallow homosexuals from serving in their armed forces:

Cuba
China
Egypt
Greece
Iran
Jamaica
North Korea
Pakistan
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
South Korea
Syria
Turkey
Venezuela
Yemen
United States – Don't ask, don't tell

An interesting list, yes? As a whole, I'm thinking most of us as Americans do not want to be thought of in the same breath as a lot of these countries. This is likely an incomplete list, too. Just as the list of countries that do allow gays and lesbians to serve openly is likely incomplete. That list would be:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bermuda
Brazil
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Lithuania
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Philippines
Romania
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Uruguay

This is just a rant, but I think the comparison is obvious: do we as a nation really want to follow the path of these wing-nuts? Do we really want to side with countries like Cuba, China, Iran and Yemen? We know from a previous post of mine that we're right up there - or, rather, down there, actually - with countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Mexico life expectancy versus the total dollars per person spent on healthcare in this country. How proud the right must be pushing back and fighting a change that is so sorely needed. It's a first step people; nobody said that the first attempt at bringing needed reform would be the end of it all.

I think there is absolutely no likelihood of any consensus with this Party of No. How could there be when their sensibilities on questions like those above are so wrong?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

Well, another year has come and gone. I've been hearing people say that they hope 2010 is a better year than 2009. I have to admit that except for losing Bailey, I don't really have any major complaints about 2009. It was a major transition year for me, where my income was reduced by a serious amount. This lowering of my household income was purposeful, as I from here on out will always be, at minimum, semi-retired. It is a challenge, especially when your roommate doesn't come through with the expected monetary contribution!

Another major change: my status as a Master Gardener volunteer. This has been something that has brought lots of positives into my life. Good people who are excited about spreading the gospel of good gardening practices. My favorite part of this was the success of my own vegetable garden. What a wonderful thing, to walk out into your yard and pick fresh vegetables and herbs to take directly to the kitchen. It was a learning experience, for sure. And of course, the late blight with tomatoes this year was such a disappointment. I will make changes in the garden - no oregano, more beans, eggplant rather than squash - and hope for a better year for tomatoes.

My sisters and I all met up in Charleston, SC for Spoleto Festival in May. I love this festival of music, dance, theater, art and artisans. It's a wonderful atmosphere: sophisticated but casual. My sister Deb is treating me this year to another visit for my 50th birthday. I love Charleston and all of my friends there.

It was a mixed up emotional year on the dog front. I lost my dear Bailey. He was a big guy who lived eight years, six of them with Dana and me and Miller, Boo and Fred. He was a pain in the butt but also a sweet, sweet boy. And he also spent time with my new arrival, Homer, who I adopted from the Elmore SPCA once we returned from Spoleto Festival. He's a joyful boy. He and Fred are well on their way to becoming the best buds that Bailey and Fred were, or that Miller and Boo were.

Miller is getting up there in age: he will be 16 years and 8 months old on January 20th. I recognize that my time is short with him, so all conscious efforts are to make sure he's happy and getting the attention he deserves. He's been the best dog, a wonderful companion. He's been mine since he was 9 months old. As everyone who knows me is aware, all of my dogs are adopted from shelters or the local SPCA. Miller has been around for every home that I've ever owned, and has been brother to Boo, Goofy, Bailey, Fred and Homer, and cousin to Bernie, Menolly, Piccola, Gigi, Puccini, Boomer, Murphy, Lira, Merlin and probably a couple of dogs I've forgotten.

Snow up here in the north country has been something to get used to. It's not hard, really, because I do love the snow. I love watching the dogs romp in the snow. I love the way it sits on the boughs and catches in the bark of the trees. I even like shoveling it. And the vistas up here after a good snowfall are absolutely stunning.

So, I have mostly fond memories of 2009. But it's true, there is nothing wrong with hoping that the next year will be better than the last. And for all of those people who have had a hard time of it with the economy, or have had to deal with the loss of a family member, like I did with Bailey, or who miss loved ones who are away in the military, I truly do hope that 2010 brings better things.

FROM MY HOUSE TO YOURS, HAVE A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Kurt Elling - Awesome

2009-12-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

If I had to choose for my desert island, I would absolutely choose Kurt Elling.

Oh. Did I forget something in that question? I meant, a recording to have on my desert island, along with my wine and cheese and sunglasses, it would be just about anything from Kurt Elling. However, this particular performance is just fantastic. My Foolish Heart, and so much more. He is such an amazing singer. He is just incredible to see live, in concert. I would settle for the recording on my island, but I would kidnap Kurt to have him all to myself.

His band is pretty kick-ass, too.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he will be at Spoleto Festival this year. He wasn't there last year, and he had been attending every other year for a while. I know he's bigger now - and nominated for another Grammy Award - but I will be pleased like all get out if he shows up.

If not, maybe this year's Montreal Jazz Festival. I now live just 90 minutes away from this great city to the north.

Warning: the very end of this You Tube video cuts off, but every second of your time is well-spent watching and listening to what's there. Enjoy.

Can Dogs Be Too Cute and Too Funny?

2009-12-07T19:20:00.000-08:00

I wonder. I recognize that I come across as a crazy dog lady sometimes, but the moments of sheer joy I get from my dogs are so breathtaking to me. I am overwhelmed with happiness when I watch them interact. Frankly, they don't even have to do that. They can just be like Miller, sixteen and a half years old and still willingly and adorably wanting to run and play with the two year old and the five year old. He's not really interacting with Fred and Homer much, because they kind of leave him in the dust, which he doesn't seem to mind in the least. He seems perfectly happy to still be enjoying the party. So cute.

Today was a great day of dog time for me during my lunch break. I drive 35 minutes home to walk the dogs, feed Miller some lunch, and then spend a little time with them before heading back to the office )35 more minutes on the road, today with wet snow all the way) for our afternoon session. Fred and Homer ended up sitting together on the loveseat in front of the Christmas tree. They were adorable, so I quickly grabbed the camera, and of course, the moment I point it towards them, Homer jumps down. I put the camera down, encouraged Homer back up, and then grabbed the camera again. As I approached the sofa, Homer decided to join me and leaped from the loveseat, right across in front of Fred, and onto the sofa. Oy. I urged him back next to Fred. He seemed content to stay there for the moment, but this is when the Puppy ADD really kicked in: first he looked left, then he grabbed his little green rubber froggy toy, then while he was down that way, he licked his privates, and then scratched his head. He looked out the window. And finally he gazed in the same direction as Fred - sort of - which was the look I was going for. It was at this point that I finally really looked at Fred for the first time in a few minutes. His eyes were becoming slits, and he was leaning against his brother Homer, starting to fall asleep:

I mean, seriously, how freaking cute is that? I think it's SO cute.

The other photos from today's Too Cute to be Believed Photo Shoot:

And this, the close-up that was worth all the trouble:

Am I wrong about the cute?

I Love the Christmas Season

2009-12-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

I am not religious and therefore I do not celebrate the season in the way Christians might like. I like the feeling of the season, the thought that we could possibly all get along, even love one another, as the good people that we should all want to be, and try to be. I like the lights and the Christmas music and the holiday concerts. And the holiday parties. I like dressing the boys up in their red and green scarves. And I am loving catching pictures of the boys in front of the tree. I haven't been able to get a good shot of Miller yet in front of the tree, but the little boys make it easy, since they like the back of the loveseat and it sits just in front of the tree.

Merry Christmas, or Happy whatever other holiday you celebrate this time of year.

Doing Our Homework

2009-11-25T08:58:00.000-08:00

I found this link to a fascinating discussion of the Senate Health Care Bill. It was posted to the Atlantic Magazine website the day of the vote last weekend to allow debate to continue. If nothing else this article is a great justification for the debate to move forward. Considering that it has some solid support from some pretty well-respected experts in the field, why on earth would we not want to know more and talk and at least try to come to some sort of compromise?

Here is a link to the article. It's well-written and gives a lot more detail than we're used to seeing. Take some time over this holiday weekend to read it.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/a_milestone_in_the_health_care_journey.php

A Dinner Menu

2009-11-17T15:07:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving is coming up next week. My sisters Dana and Deb, and Deb's fella Darryl and I are heading over to the wonderful Turtle Island Cafe here in Willsboro for their Thanksgiving Buffet. Many of the people who read this blog have heard me speak of The Turtle before. We are SO lucky to have such an amazing restaurant here in my little Adirondack town. Here is a link to their current winter menu:

http://www.turtleislandcafe.com/daily.htm

They have regular daily specials, too. And their expanded summer menu is fantastic and full of local fresh produce and cheeses.

Since I'm not cooking for Thanksgiving I am planning a special dinner for Saturday night while Deb's still here. Here is the menu (I can't wait!):

Starter: Portobello mushroom parmesan over roasted broccolini

Entree: Ribollita with crusty bread

Cheese course

Dessert: Limoncello fruit salad

I have made this ribollita soup before and discussed it here on this blog. It is the most amazing, hearty soup. One of the many wonders to be found in Florence, Italy. I highly recommend trying this. It's not hard to make and the payoff is incredible.

The limoncello fruit salad will be a first for me. It's an Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa) recipe that you can get on the Food Network website. Yummy. Looking forward to a great week of culinary delights!

Oh, and what's for dinner tonight, you ask? Nothing quite so special as all of the above, but a classic comfort food meal from my childhood: hot dogs, baked beans and mashed potatoes!

Allez cuisine! as they say on Iron Chef America!!!

Loved Real Good

2009-10-24T05:28:00.000-07:00

That's what Bailey would have said about his time with us. The big guy passed away on Thursday after a brief illness. He had a long series of troubles with his health over the years, so I think that he did pretty well for a big dog. He lived to be about 8 1/2 years old, and he lived in grand style for a guy who was adopted out twice from the shelter - and then brought back both times. His time before that could not have been great, either, or he would not have landed in the shelter in the first place.

Bailey was a handful, as anyone who knows me and has heard me speak of him can attest. Of course, when he met new people he came across as the perfect gentleman:

Note: I had to mask the identity of the person in this photo as she is massively paranoid about her picture getting splashed all over the Web. It makes me laugh that I actually did this for her, because, honestly, how many people are really reading my blog? Snort.

Seriously, he really was the greatest dog with visitors and on outings (except in the car - ugh). Calm, great on a leash when we would hit the farmers markets or take a walk on a trail. He was amazingly better behaved out and about or with guests.

Huh...

Bailey was a lucky boy. He got to go on vacation...this is the Big B lazing on Deb and Darryl's bed at the house we rented in the Shenandoah Valley (we had 6 dogs in that house and left it spotless...with no damage, Miller! - but that's a story for another time):

He also vacationed in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Maine, the Catskills, and finally lived the vacation life in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. He also went on lots of local excursions, like this trip to Cape May, New Jersey, and a ride on the ferry:

Everyone who knows me recognizes the little guy sitting there next to Bailey. That's Fred, or as Bailey used to call him, "My Thanksgiving Present." I adopted Fred because my sister and I were looking for a dog to befriend Bailey - and to keep Bailey out of Boo's sights. Bailey wasn't Boo's favorite brother - Boo never forgot about all those times that Bailey stepped on him when he first came to live with us. But getting Fred was just the ticket: Bailey and Fred were best buds from the get-go. They played great together, despite Bailey's substantial size advantage:

And he was know as "My Thanksgiving Present" because we brought him home on November 22nd, four years ago, and the day before Thanksgiving. Bailey was never happier, I don't think, than he was those first few months with his new pal.

My 16 1/2 year old Lab/Golden mix Miller is the most patient of fellows. He was always so great with Bailey, despite the fact that Bailey really could be such a nudge. This is Miller and Bailey, hangin' in the backyard in Glassboro:

I am pretty sure that not a day went by in the nearly 6 1/2 years that I called Bailey mine that I didn't yell at him. He wasn't the smartest dog in the world. My vet back in New Jersey, who was when I lived down there and remains to this day one of the great veterinarians that I have had the pleasure to take my dogs to, used to say that Bailey was a lot like a GQ model: "Beautiful on the outside," he said, and then with just the most perfect hesitation he added, pointing up to his own head, "but not a whole lot up here."

He was such a pretty guy, everybody said so. The disease that he suffered from, it was known as masticatory myositis, or basically a deterioration of the muscles, manifested itself almost exclusively in the loss of muscle around his skull. This is why the bump on the top of his head was more and more noticable. We're pretty sure that muscles elsewhere had started to be affected. And there were other things that were going to be trouble for him. I am not a religious person and do not believe in prayer or "blessings", but I do think that it was fortuitous, maybe, that he had such a short illness because he was going to have a hard time of it with the other difficulties we found from testing.

I had adopted a new dog not all that long ago, Homer, another Beagle mix. It might have been a sign that Bailey wasn't himself when he didn't greet Homer with open paws. He seemed a little peeved sometimes with the new kid on the block, when he wasn't being his usual sweet self, like this:

So, as with all of the dogs that I have loved and lost, I will get over this. I will cry suddenly at the least mention of Bailey's name, as I am right now as I type this. But I have three wonderful dogs that make me laugh and feel so good and return all of the love that I give them, and more. There will be other dogs in my life, eventually. Bailey was special, and he required a special family to be with. I feel lucky to have been able to give him a good life. I wish I could do it for more dogs.

As I mentioned, I am not religious, but I do believe that if there is a heaven then these two boys, Bailey and Boo, are up there playing - together for a change - with all of their other dog buddies and cousins that have left us. I'm sure there is a great party going on up there, with Bailey barking long and loud, which he was wont to do for no good reason at all.

Rest in peace, my sweet boy.

Barack Obama, Writer

2009-10-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a fascinating GQ article about Barack Obama as a writer. The article talks about him being the first president since Teddy Roosevelt to write large percentages of the speeches that he gives. You know I like a good writer. And based on the major speeches he has given so far, he's damned good at it.

Barack Obama's Work in Progress
Over the past few years, we’ve gotten to know our president as a lot of different things: campaigner, lawyer, father, basketballer. But what if Obama’s first and truest calling—his desire to write—explains more about him than anything else? Robert Draper recounts the untold story of the first man since Teddy Roosevelt to serve as author in chief.

Read the entire story here:

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/200911/barack-obama-writing-books-writer-robert-draper

The Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

I think Shimon Peres said it best about Barack Obama winning this year's Nobel Prize for Peace:

“Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such a profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.”

The National Parks - America's Best Idea

2009-10-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

Oh my, what a wonderful series this was. Ken Burns can do no wrong, I do believe. Even when he is only acting as a producer, as he did with the brilliant documentary series "The West" about the great stories of the settling, and dislocating, of the American West, his presence is felt - passionately - throughout. His heart was evident in this series, as producer and director, and as one of the people working the camera in capturingvistas of America. I read some brief comments that Ken Burns made about making this particular series, about how special it was to be on this adventure with his own children, showing them the wonders of the great landscape of this country. I find it amazing how he is able to find just the right people to present the stories, how they are so eloquent and impassioned and plain interesting in the telling of the his chosen topic. One of the interviewees who was most interesting is also the writer for the series, Dayton Duncan. He also wrote the series "The West". So interesting, as were all of the people who spoke, and all of the heroes of America who worked so hard, and endured so much to protect these important places across our country.

I pulled a list of the national parks, all 58 of them (this does not include national monuments, seashores, waterways, battlefields and other sites that are also included under the umbrella of the National Park Service). I have only been to 8 of the national parks. As it turns out, that's a big number compared to other people I've spoken to this week. I really do need to work on increasing that number. I've been to a lot of the monuments and other entities of the Park Service, but I'd still like to see more of these, too.

One day.

Two of the national parks that were featured are Arches and Canyonlands in southeastern Utah. This area of the country is just full of incredible sights. Here are just a few:

My day at Arches started out in bright sunshine with brilliant blue skies:

As you can see from the picture of this gnarly tree, the skies grew ominous. This change occurred over the course of one short hour.

These last three shots above were from Canyonlands National Park. It's a pretty spectacular place. I have not yet been to the Grand Canyon, but there is so much beauty in these smaller canyons, I'm not convinced I need to go to the Grand Canyon.

But I still want to!

But there is so much more to see.

I also got this shot of a coyote who was hanging around waiting for someone to throw something from a car on the way our of Canyonlands.

There is so much to see. I can't wait to head out west again, but watching The National Parks makes me want to head to any of the great national parks, not just the ones out west.

I Prefer The Pretty...

2009-09-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

I don't like to mar the look of my blog with too many photos of myself, but here is one that is tempered by the sweet Fred and Homer as we sat at the park at Schroon Lake, New York. The boys were fascinated with the finish line of a bike race, and even treats would likely not have drawn their attention back to the camera. They are cute boys, however, and here are a few photos to show you, all from our Schroon Lake outing on Saturday:

On Vacation

2009-09-30T12:59:00.001-07:00

A shot of President Obama playing with his niece Savita while vacationing at Martha's Vineyard. Sweet.

I LOVE This Story

2009-09-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the link, but I've copied it in here to read. I love this woman.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_working_at100

NJ woman celebrates 100th birthday — at work
By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer Samantha Henry, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 24, 6:22 pm ET

PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Astrid Thoenig got dressed, went to work and sat at her desk smiling Thursday as she slid her finger gently under the envelope flap of yet another identical birthday card. They don't make that many that say "Happy 100th."

Thoenig was interrupted by a steady stream of deliverymen bringing bouquets, chocolate-dipped strawberries and stacks of cards to the Thornton Insurance Co. in Parsippany where she's been answering phones, keeping financial records, handling payroll and typing up documents for more than 30 years.

"It's another day — it's hard to explain," Thoenig said of turning 100. "I don't feel old, and I don't think old."

Born Sept. 24, 1909, in Bloomfield, N.J., Thoenig's earliest memories start in 1918, when she witnessed something so traumatic, "it erased all memories of my childhood before that."

"I remember coming down the stairs from my bedroom and saw these two coffins in the living room: one white, for my sister, and the other for the grown person," she said, recalling how the flu pandemic of 1918 killed her father and her 10-year-old sister within hours of one another. "To see my father and sister — of all the things I can't remember — that's very vivid in my mind."

Thoenig, her remaining sister, and her mother also were infected but survived. Her mother lived until 101 and her sister, who suffered permanent hearing loss from the illness, was 95 when she died. A few years ago, scientists tracked Thoenig down and took blood samples from her as one of the few remaining survivors of the pandemic of 1918-1919 that killed an estimated 30 million to 50 million people worldwide, including thousands in New Jersey.

As Thoenig turns 100, her grandson, 43-year-old Peter Thornton, said she couldn't have picked a better era.

"If you had to pick a dramatic century to live, it has to be Astrid's," he said. "The invention of the automobile and the airplane, television and computers, the moon landing and two world wars. 1780 to 1880 would have seen changes from a musket to a rifle."

Thoenig says "thinking young" has helped her take a century's worth of technological changes in stride. The daughter of Swedish immigrants, she credits her strong constitution, a wonderful family and getting up every day to get dressed and go to work with keeping her mind sharp.

Thoenig once sewed all her own clothes and still dresses elegantly, accenting with gold jewelry, colorful glasses and a full head of blond hair that makes her look decades younger. Her strong, agile hands come from a lifetime of typing, knitting and embroidering.

Married twice — her first husband died from injuries that earned him a Purple Heart in World War II — Thoenig started working shortly after high school, and has held positions at banks, lawyer's offices and for the borough of Caldwell.

Her current job is her favorite — working alongside her son, John Thornton, and grandson Peter at the family-owned insurance company.

"I'm 67, and one of our jokes is: 'How can I retire before my mother does?'" John Thornton said. He says his mother is a meticulous worker, reviewing contracts, preparing the payroll, making sure bills are paid, and is always pleasant company.

Thoenig credits her son for giving her the job, taking her to work — although she still drove until age 98 when a botched hip operation made it difficult to get around — and always being patient.

The growing stack of birthday cards may have identical motifs, but the messages inside them each touched her in their own way. Some, sent by people she's never met, were from seniors who continue to work and are inspired by her example: "I'm at my job 37 years and still love it," someone wrote.

She took special delight in a bouquet from her dentist with the message: "This is only the beginning!"

New Poll From NY Times/CBS News

2009-09-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

I think the article in the New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/politics/25poll.html ) regarding the results of this poll seems to be negative on the numbers as it relates to Obama, even though all of his numbers as compared to Democrats, and especially, Republicans in Congress are quite better.

An excerpt:

There is evidence of public distaste with Washington that washes across both parties. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believed that Republicans in Congress were opposing Mr. Obama’s bill only for political gain; just over half said Democrats in Congress backed the bill for political reasons.

Just 30 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans in Congress. By contrast, 47 percent said they had a favorable view of Congressional Democrats.

I understand that Obama has lost some of the sheen from his early, crazy-high numbers from just after his election. When you get pummeled they way he has been you are bound to lose some percentage points. People believe all kinds of shit, thus the popularity of the Limbaughs and the Becks, though it seems that the conservatives haven't gained much from their machinations on TV and radio, based on the popularity of their party in this poll.

My favorite part of these numbers is Obama's popularity at this point in his presidency versus previous presidents:

At 56 percent, Mr. Obama’s job approval rating is similar to what President Ronald Reagan’s was at this point in his first term (53 percent); President Bill Clinton’s was at 43 percent. Still, Mr. Obama’s approval is down from 68 percent in the spring.

The article failed to note, however, where Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush was during a similar timeframe. Bush started at about 57% and hovered there and in the low 60s at or about his inauguration. He fell to the low 50s during the first months of his presidency, all the way through to 9/11. So when Obama was in the high 60s Bush was in the low 50s.

Lest we read too much into these approval ratings, Bush's approvals went through the roof in the days following 9/11, as this chart shows:

He was unable to sustain these high numbers because he was an idiot, as we all now know. And what this chart does not show is his rating at the end of his presidency, which ranged from an average 22% to one low of 19%.

When it comes to numbers, I think I'll stick to watching Numb3rs on CBS rather than dwelling on this NYT/CBS poll!

What A Surprise...

2009-09-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

...Those people in D.C. last week don't know what they're talking about. These people in this video are as scary as it gets.

Thank you, Andrew Sullivan, for the link.

Shelburne Museum

2009-09-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

I have been to some great museums in my time. I was lucky enough to live for most of my life across the river from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The steps made famous in the movie "Rocky" make up the approach to this wonderful museum at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway. It's in Fairmount Park, a beautiful tree-laden, statue filled park along the Schuylkill River in the City of Brotherly Love. It will always be one of my favorite museums. And Philadelphia is home to other world-class museums as well, like the Franklin Institute and the Rodin Museum.

As I said, I have been to a lot of great ones: the Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, the Pompidou and others in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and all of the other great museums of Washington, DC, MoMA and the Metropolitan in NYC, the Gibbes in Charleston, SC, the Uffizi and Accademia in Florence, Italy, Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey, the Vatican museums in Rome, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Huntington Library and the Getty Museum in California, the Tower of London. And so many others. Unlike my great friend Sharon, I LOVE museums.

But much like the Grounds for Sculpture museum near Trenton, NJ, I believe that Sharon would love the Shelburne. It is unique and one of the great museums that I have visited, and as you can see from the incomplete list above, I have been to a lot of the great ones.

Here is the link to visit the Shelburne online: http://www.shelburnemuseum.org/

But you should go there yourself. Here are some snapshots of my visit there last week with my sister Dana.

A nearly perfect rose in one of the Shelburne's many gardens.

Outside and inside the Ticonderoga, a side-wheel passenger steamboat built in 1906.

The Round Barn, built in 1901 and made famous by American folk artist Warren Kimble, in the distance while on the 1920's vintage carousel.

A lighthouse built in 1871 which now houses works by Warren Kimble. This American flag is my favorite.

This is just a taste of all there is to see at the Shelburne. Dana and I could not get into everything on our one day there. We purchased an annual membership as we need to go back to experience the rest of this great American museum. It is truly a Vermont treasure.

Bill and Barack's Excellent Lunch Date

2009-09-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite men heading out of Il Mulino Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. They got together for lunch today following Obama's speech on Wall Street. Love both of them so much.

Once Again...I Stand With Andrew

2009-09-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

I cannot say it better, so I will let Andrew Sullivan speak for me:

Tea For Two
A reader writes:

I attended my 1st tea party in Worcester, Massachusetts 4 months ago. I am a conservative independent and went because I see this country going in the wrong direction FAST. Bailing out car companies. Bailing out Wall Street. The so called "stimulus" debacle. Tripling our deficit in 3 years.

Do you think I was a big George Bush fan? No. I was not. He was a big spender too and he never vetoed anything. But Andrew....comparing the spending of Bush compared to Obama is like saying eating a jelly bean is just as fattening as eating a whole cheesecake. TRIPLING the deficit in 8 months??? Earth to Mars.....do you even get this??

Andrew responds:

Look: the only reason the deficit has tripled in eight months is the recession, which Obama inherited. And I know of no serious person who really believes the federal government should have sat back and let the US economy spiral into the abyss rather than try to stabilize it with a bank bailout and stimulus. To blame Obama for what amounts to inheriting an emergency bequeathed him by his predecessor is plain loopy. And to blame him for future deficits which were a function of all those who came before him, is equally misleading and disingenuous. Yes, blame him for deficit spending once the economy recovers. Yes, perpare a plan for real government downsizing when and if we emerge from the Bush fiscal wreckage. But give the president a fricking break.

The circumstances of this past year have been extraordinary. If the position of the right is going to be: no bailouts at all, no stimulus at all, and spending cuts now to balance the budget, then they should say so. Instead we get this adolescent hysteria, combined with no serious alternative set of proposals.

Really, my fellow small government independents: Grow up.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/tea-for-two.html#more

Signs of the Lunatic Fringe

2009-09-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

I do not consider myself a progressive; I think of myself as simply hardcore liberal. But I do appreciate the column by self-described progressive columnist Paul Begala over at The Huffington Post. I will copy it in here, and provide a link. He says exactly how I feel these days about these extreme views from the right. I will say it here as I said throughout George Bush's terms as president: I hated his politics and I hated his policies and I will always believe that the President of the United States should be smarter than me, and he most certainly was not. Our current president is a lot smarter than me, and I just have to hope that he can weather all the insanity going on with this minority of people out there who look crazy and have the potential to act crazy.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES
Paul Begala, CNN Political Commentator

The sign said it all. It was not some last-minute message some meth addict scrawled in crayon on a scrap of cardboard. No, this sign was professionally printed. White block letters on a blue background, the four-word message was in all caps. Someone had to have thought this through. Someone wrote it, edited it, planned it, designed it, ordered it, paid for it. Someone approved it, printed it, distributed it. And then someone thought this was a message he or she wanted to convey to the world. Thank goodness someone had the courage to take a photo of it, and then Huffington Post had the guts to post it on its home page.

The sign made me nauseous, made me embarrassed, made me wonder if at long last there is no decency on the far right. The sign said:

"BURY OBAMACARE WITH KENNEDY"

Oh, I get it. Sen. Kennedy is dead, and these slugs want health care reform to be dead too. That is so clever.

Fourteen days after Edward Kennedy was laid to rest in the company of his fellow American heroes in Arlington, right-wing hate-mongers decided to use his burial to make a cheap point about their opposition to health care reform.

What would they have done if liberals had printed signs that equated Ronald Reagan's burial with the hoped-for death of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security? Or Bill Buckley's painful passing with the GOP's loss of the White House in 2008? Or the demise of my right-wing former colleague Bob Novak with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? You can't imagine that, can you? Because, while we progressives have our moments of frustration and our occasional lack of couth, there is nothing I can think of that compares to the sick, savage sign that the teabaggers were waving in Washington.

The inmates have taken over the asylum. The ever-sunny Reagan is dead. The congenial Buckley is dead. The old-school conservative Novak is dead as well. In their place is the party of Joe the Shouter and Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Death Panel Screecher.

They hate Pres. Obama - even though he has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. They hate tax increases - even though the Democrats have cut taxes for 95% of Americans. They hate health care reform - even though Ted Kennedy fought his whole life to get them the same health care millionaires like him already had.

There was not, to my knowledge, a sign that said, "Let's Bury Medicare," even though Medicare is precisely the sort of single-payer, government-run, socialized health insurance the whack-jobs say they hate. Nor did I hear about a sign that said, "Let's Bury Tricare," although the military health system is as socialized as Britain's, its beneficiaries (including, according to Newsweek, Congressclown Joe Wilson of South Carolina) are very happy with their socialized health care. Nary a sign, so far as I know, decried the Bush prescription drug entitlement, even though it ballooned the deficit, enriched the pharmaceutical companies and furthered the supposed slide toward socialism. Nor, I'm told, were there any signs criticizing the $2 trillion Mr. Bush's unjust, unwarranted, unwise war in Iraq will cost our children and grandchildren. Nor ever a single sign about the Bush tax cuts, which helped squander the Clinton surplus. If this were about fiscal policy, the protests would have happened long ago.

These tea parties are, at least for some, more about hate than high-minded debate. Anyone who needed proof need look no further than the sign captured in the photo on the front page of the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/a-sign-of-the-times_b_284779.html

A collection of the signs at Saturday's DC gathering:

This child, as you can see, is the one who was holding the sign just above. A parent allowed a child to carry that sign, and to wear that t-shirt. This is a perfect sign that the right has gone off the deep end.

<-- I will never understand a parent allowing a child to carry something like this. An absolutely disgusting threat.

And my favorite sign, the one circled below, shows just how delusional these people are. They don't remember all of the spending during the Bush years? The enormous deficit that Bush and his party built up? That they squandered a surplus left by the Clinton administration? I'm sorry to have to say it, but they are delusional or stupid. Neither one is good for this country.

What a Bunch of Wimps...That Would Be Those on the Right Who Were Afraid of Obama's Address to Schoolchildren

2009-09-07T17:57:00.001-07:00

Here's the text of the speech. I think the hysteria emanating from the right wingers in this country is sad, pathetic and chicken shit. Get a grip. Think, just a little bit, for a change before you act on the crap you hear from the Becks and the Limbaughs and the other idiots whose only, ONLY reason for existence is to vilify absolutely anything that has Obama's name on it. It's a disgusting way to act. The criticism of this speech is just the most recent example of over-the-top, completely out of touch reactions we keep seeing from the right. You are looking more and more like the lunatic fringe. That is certainly how I see you.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S BACK TO SCHOOL ADDRESS, PREPARED REMARKS FOR SEPT. 08, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Rest in Peace, Senator Kennedy

2009-08-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

I admired Ted Kennedy so much. I need not add more to the beautiful and heartfelt tributes from this weekend. They stand quite well on their own as a testament to how special he was. I will simply suggest watching this, perfection in performance, a wonderful tribute to the man. Listen to the words, or read them below. It is no wonder that Teddy loved this song, it had so many parallels to his own life story.

Unfortunately, the beginning of the performance is not recorded here. Brian talked about how he and Teddy would greet each other, always singing Broadway show tunes. It somehow does not surprise me that one of my favorite Broadway performers and one of my favorite politicians knew and liked one another.

There are other recordings of Brian Stokes Mitchell singing this song on You Tube, but I don't think any of them can compare with the time and the place and the emotion of this one.

The song, as many people already know, was written by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion for the musical Man of La Mancha.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

Oligarh? Oligarhy?

2009-08-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

This guy is an idiot. A fool. Take a look:

Who else are idiots? Fools? The "network" that gives him a platform for this idiocy, Fox News. Who else, do you ask, are idiots and fools? Sheep? The clearly intelligence-deprived people who watch him, listen to this bullshit, and believe it.

How did the right become so riddled with fools?

Oh, and the word is O-L-I-G-A-R-C-H. Or O-L-I-G-A-R-C-H-Y.

An idiot who can't spell and can't perform simple arithmetic...yeah, that's someone I want to listen to.

Jerk.

A Beautiful Summer Day

2009-08-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

On this sad day when I mourn the loss of Senator Ted Kennedy I find myself enjoying one of the nicest days this summer. We had a little rain, but in between that rain I mowed the front yard, did a little weed whacking, took a break when it got too wet, then finished the back yard. I let Homer stay out of his crate while I mowed the back, and he was a good boy and didn't chew anything he wasn't supposed to. The boys then enjoyed a really pretty, bug free afternoon outside. Fred and Homer played chase and tennis ball. Bailey rolled around in the freshly mown grass. Miller did an unexpected perimeter walk along the fence, and then trotted down the hill. He really seems to get a kick out of doing that. He looks all 6 of his 16+ years when he does it. Adorable.

The garden looked really pretty today. Yes, my stakes for tomatoes are bare, but other things in the garden look terrific, and I have been harvesting vegetables and herbs from it for some time now. I just made a zucchini and asparagus salad from zucchini from my garden. I should consider asparagus for the garden...I certainly eat enough of it.

I present to you, the glories of the garden:

Yes, that is Fred, that white and orange blotch in the middle of the picture. He wouldn't come in when the rest of the lot came in. I took this shot through the screen on the porch. Fred likes the garden...he and Homer use the paths as their own Le Mans course. But what Fred really likes, as you've heard before, is the sun. He stayed out about fifteen minutes longer than his brothers, resting, undisturbed by his little brother Homer, who can be a pest because he wants to play almost all of the time they are outside.

It was a nice day for all. I spent some of it crying about Ted Kennedy, but a lot more of it contemplating what a good man and public servant he was. And hearing about him all day, and reading about him on the internet, it made me wonder what exactly it is that is so wrong with wanting to give every American access to good and affordable health insurance.

The Guns of August

2009-08-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

I really couldn't have said this better myself, so I am just going to copy Frank Rich's column from The New York Times here. He says so eloquently how I feel about these crazies on the right just now. Wherever has reason gone to? It certainly can't be seen based on what these nuts are doing and saying. I hope Obama holds firm.

You can link directly to the column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html?_r=1

August 23, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Guns of August By FRANK RICH

“It is time to water the tree of liberty” said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama’s town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That’s the beauty of a gun — you don’t have to spell out the “blood.”

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what’s Tom Coburn’s excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” if he was troubled by current threats of “violence against the government,” Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

“Well, I’m troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government,” the senator said, “but we’ve earned it.”

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America’s self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that “terrorism obviously poses a serious threat,” but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: “There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government.” As his remarks on “Meet the Press” last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

I have been writing about the simmering undertone of violence in our politics since October, when Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party, said nothing to condemn Obama haters shrieking “Treason!,” “Terrorist!” and “Off with his head!” at her rallies. As vacation beckons, I’d like to drop the subject, but the atmosphere keeps getting darker.

Coburn’s implicit rationalization for far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events — the government makes them do it! — cannot stand. He’s not a radio or Fox News bloviator paid a fortune to be outrageous; he’s a card-carrying member of the United States Senate. On Monday — the day after he gave a pass to those threatening violence — a dozen provocateurs with guns, at least two of them bearing assault weapons, showed up for Obama’s V.F.W. speech in Phoenix. Within hours, another member of Congress — Phil Gingrey of Georgia — was telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that as long as brandishing guns is legal, he, too, saw no reason to discourage Americans from showing up armed at public meetings.

In April the Department of Homeland Security issued a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, on the rising threat of violent right-wing extremism. It was ridiculed by conservatives, including the Republican chairman, Michael Steele, who called it “the height of insult.” Since then, a neo-Nazi who subscribed to the anti-Obama “birther” movement has murdered a guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, and an anti-abortion zealot has gunned down a doctor in a church in Wichita, Kan.

This month the Southern Poverty Law Center, the same organization that warned of the alarming rise in extremist groups before the Oklahoma City bombing, issued its own report. A federal law enforcement agent told the center that he hadn’t seen growth this steep among such groups in 10 to 12 years. “All it’s lacking is a spark,” he said.

This uptick in the radical right predates the health care debate that is supposedly inspiring all the gun waving. Nor can this movement be attributed to a stepped-up attack by Democrats on this crowd’s holy Second Amendment. Since taking office, Obama has disappointed gun-control advocates by relegating his campaign pledge to reinstate the ban on assault weapons to the down-low.

No, the biggest contributor to this resurgence of radicalism remains panic in some precincts about a new era of cultural and demographic change. As the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

Bell’s analysis appeared in his essay “The Dispossessed,” published in 1962, between John Kennedy’s election and assassination. J.F.K., no more a leftist than Obama, was the first Roman Catholic in the White House and the tribune of a new liberal order. Bell could have also written his diagnosis in 1992, between Bill Clinton’s election and the Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton, like Kennedy and Obama, brought liberals back into power after a conservative reign and represented a generational turnover that stoked the fears of the dispossessed.

While Bell’s essay remains relevant in 2009, he could not have imagined in 1962 that major politicians, from a vice-presidential candidate down, would either enable or endorse a radical and armed fringe. Nor could he have imagined that so many conservative intellectuals would remain silent. William F. Buckley did make an effort to distance National Review from the John Birch Society. The only major conservative writer to repeatedly and forthrightly take on the radical right this year is David Frum. He ended a recent column for The Week, titled “The Reckless Right Courts Violence,” with a plea that the president “be met and bested on the field of reason,” not with guns.

Those on the right who defend the reckless radicals inevitably argue “The left does it too!” It’s certainly true that both the left and the right traffic in bogus, Holocaust-trivializing Hitler analogies, and, yes, the protesters of the antiwar group Code Pink have disrupted Congressional hearings. But this is a false equivalence. Code Pink doesn’t show up on Capitol Hill with firearms. And, as the 1960s historian Rick Perlstein pointed out on the Washington Post Web site last week, not a single Democratic politician endorsed the Weathermen in the Vietnam era.

This week the journalist Ronald Kessler’s new behind-the-scenes account of presidential security, “In the President’s Secret Service,” rose to No. 3 on The Times nonfiction best-seller list. No wonder there’s a lot of interest in the subject. We have no reason to believe that these hugely dedicated agents will fail us this time, even as threats against Obama, according to Kessler, are up 400 percent from those against his White House predecessor.

But as we learned in Oklahoma City 14 years ago — or at the well-protected Holocaust museum just over two months ago — this kind of irrational radicalism has a myriad of targets. And it is impervious to reason. Much as Coburn fought an antiterrorism bill after the carnage of Oklahoma City, so three men from Bagdad, Ariz., drove 2,500 miles in 1964 to testify against a bill tightening federal controls on firearms after the Kennedy assassination. As the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in his own famous Kennedy-era essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” these Arizona gun enthusiasts were convinced that the American government was being taken over by a “subversive power.” Sound familiar?

Even now the radicals are taking a nonviolent toll on the Obama presidency. Obama complains, not without reason, that the news media, led by cable television, exaggerate the ruckus at health care events. But why does he exaggerate the legitimacy and clout of opposition members of Congress who, whether through silence or outright endorsement, are surrendering to the nuts? Even Charles Grassley, the supposedly adult Iowa Republican who is the Senate point man for his party on health care, has now capitulated to the armed fringe by publicly parroting their “pull the plug on grandma” fear-mongering.

For all the talk of Obama’s declining poll numbers this summer, he towers over his opponents. In last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only 21 percent approve of how Republicans in Congress are handling health care reform (as opposed to the president’s 41 percent). Should Obama fail to deliver serious reform because his administration treats the pharmaceutical and insurance industries as deferentially as it has the banks, that would be shameful. Should he fail because he in any way catered to a decimated opposition party that has sunk and shrunk to its craziest common denominator, that would be ludicrous.

The G.O.P., whose ranks have now dwindled largely to whites in Dixie and the less-populated West, is not even a paper tiger — it’s a paper muskrat. James Carville is correct when he says that if Republicans actually carried out their filibuster threats on health care, it would be a political bonanza for the Democrats.

In last year’s campaign debates, Obama liked to cite his unlikely Senate friendship with Tom Coburn, of all people, as proof that he could work with his adversaries. If the president insists that enemies like this are his friends — and that the nuts they represent can be placated by reason — he will waste his opportunity to effect real change and have no one to blame but himself.

Advertising Perfection

2009-08-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

A lot of these commercials with cute dogs aren't effective because I don't remember who the advertiser is. This one is great. Kudos to Travelers for one of the best commercials on the air today.

Homerville

2009-08-15T14:54:00.001-07:00

Life is good in Homerville.

Homer was known as Gomer at the shelter. Changing his name was the right thing to do; everybody loves the name and it absolutely suits him. He was actually becoming quite famous up here as the nice dog that wasn't getting adopted. When Dana and I returned from our Charleston trip, we found a sweet little female Beagle mix at North Country SPCA, but then we stopped at Elmore SPCA and met Homer in person.

What a charmer he was. He is about one to one and a half years old and was housebroken within a day or two, which means that he had been previously housebroken. It was my good fortune to find another great dog at a shelter, but it could be your good fortune the next time you are looking for a pet. I have never purchased a dog and I never will. The fees at the shelters, SPCAs and rescues can get high, but there is a high cost to caring for the unwanted pets that people give up. And they are giving up more and more of them in these tough economic times. The amount that I get back in companionship, enjoyment of my dogs' funny and crazy antics, and the unconditional love will make me sacrifice whatever I have to in order to keep dogs in my life.

The thing that you get from a rescued dog is the sense that they know how lucky they are. I know it might not look like it when they are sitting there howling like a Beagle, or barking like the PIT that Bailey is (PIT is our code for Pain in the Tookus... no, Bailey is not a Pit Bull, but more on that in a second). But when Homer plays with so much gusto with his toys, or zooms around the back yard with his brother Fred, or tries to coax Bailey into playing with him (no success there just yet), or walks up to Miller and convinces the 16+ year old dog to play with him - for a short period of time because Mommy decides that Homer is playing too rough for the old boy - it's during these times when you really can see how lucky he knows that he is. Or when he dives ahead of his brothers to get the choice spot on the bed at bedtime.

Dana and I tried to adopt a Pit Bull once. The Animal Welfare Shelter in Voorhees, New Jersey is a place from which I have adopted a number of my guys over the years. What we found was that if the Pit Bull was over a certain age, and that age wasn't much beyond six months or so, that the damage that had already been done to these poor dogs from the bad situations they had been rescued from made them unfit dogs for having in a household with more than one dog. We found some wonderful, sweet animals; the shelter was doing a great job spending time with and acclimating them to being with people. But they all had that aggression thing that just broke my heart. I knew I could not adopt these dogs since I will always have several dogs at any given time. The thought of what these incredibly strong dogs could do to Fred, or Boo back then...

I couldn't do it. These Bull and Staffordshire Terriers are wonderful dogs. If I were to ever buy a dog I could see buying one of these. I have kissed these dogs, and they have returned the affection. It is so sad the image that they have in society because of the training, and sometimes miserably bad breeding, that has gone on.

So, I have Homer now, comfortably ensconced in my canine brood, and comfortably ensconced on what used to be just Fred's bed. But Fred and Homer are sharing nicely these days. It's just one more satisfying accomplishment in my world of dogs.

And don't anyone try to tell me that this dog doesn't look grateful for where he's landed:

Dog Fighting

2009-08-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

You see, I feel so passionately that Michael Vick doesn't deserve a second chance in the NFL that I have lost what very teeny tiny feeling I had left that there was anything at all redeeming about the sport of football. I guess some of the reason that Vick's welcome by some Eagles fans has been met by indifference at best, and that he'll probably be good for the team at worst, has to do with the violence of the game. I see violence in the game; I recognize that not everybody does. But it seems a seemless line between football violence and how these men could do what they did with these dogs without blinking. You have to assume that the Eagles care not one iota about being role models when they can want to have someone like this on their roster.

And please, spare me all that drivel about the man having paid his debt. He didn't because his sentence was not enough for the crimes that he committed. And it's obvious from his statements that he really is only remorseful to the extent that he got caught. Have we seen Michael Vick out there speaking fervently about the horrors of dog fighting? Have we heard him passionately explain why he got involved in such a despicable business (remember, he was the major funding in this disgusting venture) and how going to prison has made him a changed man? He should have been all over the news in his run-up to try to get a spot on a team, speaking all over the country every day about how horrible the dog fighting business is, how kids should treat animals properly, how he got into it and about what can be done to stop this horrible practice. He could have been the spokesperson for really seeing the light. He could have proven to us all with his words and actions how amazingly changed he is.

How, indeed, Michael Vick, are you a changed man? You've got far more explaining to do before I'll ever believe that you are rehabilitated.

No. I'm not there on the bring Vick to Philly bandwagon. I will happily be on the sidelines, rooting for all my heart that the Eagles opponents are victorious for every week they play that Michael Vick is on their roster. For me, this is what I will always see when I think of the Eagles:

If I Can Dream

2009-08-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best performances ever captured on tape, in my opinion, and definitely my favorite song that Elvis ever recorded. I liked Elvis Presley so much as a singer. I think a lot of singers today just don't get the emotions of a song. Elvis really felt the music.

Here are the lyrics, not that you need them with this performance. But they are wonderful in their own right. The song was written by Walter Earl Brown. It was purported that after Elvis Presley heard the song for the first time he said, "I'm never going to sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another picture I don't believe in."

IF I CAN DREAM

There must be lights burning brighter somewhere
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue
If I can dream of a better land
Where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true

There must be peace and understanding sometime
Strong winds of promise that will blow away
All the doubt and fear
If I can dream of a warmer sun
Where hope keeps shining on everyone
Tell me why, oh why, oh why won't that sun appear

We're lost in a cloud
With too much rain
We're trapped in a world
That's troubled with pain
But as long as a man
Has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly

Deep in my heart there's a trembling question
Still I am sure that the answer's gonna come somehow
Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle
And while I can think, while I can talk
While I can stand, while I can walk
While I can dream, please let my dream
Come true, right now
Let it come true right now
Oh yeah

Oh, Sounds Like Birther Talk To Me

2009-08-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

"This is a scary time in Washington," he said. "It's a very frightening time. I see Barack Obama is creating an enemies list of people who oppose this miserable health care plan. I think that's frightening. That's from a guy that can't even show a long-form birth certificate. I think we all ought to be prepared to fight that."

This is from Congressman John Sullivan, R-Oklahoma. Now, maybe this report says more about the idiots in Oklahoma than anything else, except for that pesky poll a while back that showed that 53% of Republicans either do not believe or are not sure that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. 28% answered a firm no, that they did not believe that Obama was born here. Of course, considering how stupid the right looks over this and so many other issues these days, it wouldn't be surprising if they didn't realize that Hawaii was a state.

And what exactly is so "scary" about having a difference of opinion? Jerks.

My Kenyan Birth Certificate

2009-08-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

These "Birthers" are all assholes.

Yay Melissa

2009-08-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Melissa D'Arabian won The Next Food Network Star. I loved her from the beginning, even if she wasn't the most polished and didn't have the chef credentials. Her cooking was smart and always sounded flavorful and I believed that she knew what she was doing. She thought on her feet, and especially in the challenge when she had to prepare the three course meal for all of those culinary stars, she absolutely showed her metal, switching out the orzo for the potato, fixing the orzo when one batch was too salty. Making two pastries when one of the great and reknowned bakers of french pastry was right there in the room. She is definitely no wallflower. Going down to the wire she finally overcame her nerves and never freaked out when she found herself in a dilemma. And despite what the judges said, I think her story was the most compelling. I think she's very smart, and I do like smart.

Congratulations Melissa

Lazy, Rainy Day

2009-08-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've spent much of today in "my" chair. I mowed the lawn this morning, just before the rains came. It's been raining ever since. I've watched a little golf: The Women's British Open, where the first person ever from Scotland, Catriona Matthew, won, just ten weeks after giving birth to her second child. That's very impressive, don't you think? And now I'm watching the U.S. Senior Open. I've also been surfing the net. And I've also been watching the dogs play and sleep, time I really do enjoy. It's getting later in the afternoon, and Miller, the 16+ year old, is staring at me because he knows it's time for me to get up off my butt and take him and his brothers out so that he doesn't end up eating dinner late. He is pretty funny, and has an amazing appetite for an old guy.

I made dinner last night for four: my sister Dana, my sister Deb, her boyfriend Darryl and me. I made thyme roasted chicken, skin on, bone in, and I'll probably never do chicken in the oven any other way again, except for changing out the herbs. Maybe. I made sage mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables sauteed in garlic and olive oil: broccoli, a red and yellow bell pepper and a zucchini from the garden. The thyme and sage were also both from the garden. We enjoyed a delicious New York State wine with dinner. We also had a lemon/coconut cake for Dana's birthday and a sort of cheese course: a lovely cranberry-walnut bread, toasted, with mascarpone cheese. Yum.

Tonight I'm cooking a pork roast with green beans from the garden and jasmine rice.

Okay. I've got to go. Miller is still...hovering.

Dave Chapelle/Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

2009-07-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

I saw this on The Daily Dish. This is pretty funny, even in light of how funny it must not have been for Professor Gates the night of his arrest:

A Hilarious Dog Story

2009-07-27T20:55:00.001-07:00

At least it is to me. I have had dogs all of my life. I love them an awful lot, and I consider myself somewhat of an expert in dog behavior. I mean that from the perspective of an expert observer of dog behavior. No, I still have to scream at Bailey to stop barking at mealtime, and I sometimes have to go out and fetch a Beagle-ish dog doing a nose-down perimeter walk of the back yard when it's time for bed. I can watch my dogs for hours. HOURS, I say. I even like watching them when they sleep.

As anyone who has a dog knows, dogs dream. Sometimes you notice a barely there twitch of a foot. Then two feet start moving. Sometimes you see all four legs going, as though they were on the scent of some critter - it would likely be a rabbit in my house, since my guys acted very gang-like once and trapped one...and killed it. We know it was Boo who done the deed, it's what Poodle-Terrier, uh, I mean Poodle-Terror mixes do. Occasionally the dog will whimper, and even the whimpers have level of intensity: a quiet, very quiet single yelp, or a series, that quick "woo-woo-woo" that Miller does. Fred sometimes has a little growly sound. Bailey is a mover-and-shaker, quite a silent dreamer.

But Homer did something altogether new in my experience of being a dog lover. He was sleeping soundly on the sofa next to Dana. We were watching The Next Food Network Star (which Melissa should win, by the way), and all of a sudden we hear this: Aaaooooooooooh. And then another: Aaaooooooooooh. Followed finally by: aaoooh.

Unbelievably adorable, it was. We didn't laugh howlingly, which is what we wanted to do, because we didn't want all of the boys to wake up. Everyone was sleeping. Dana did give Homer a comforting hug and pet, and he did stop the dream howling. And it was a happy, happy howling, nothing like the howling I get when I come home at lunchtime on Mondays, walk the boys, and then put Homer back in the crate and head back to the office. Yes, he's still being "crate" trained. He's fully housebroken, he's just still in that "everything-in-the-house-belongs-in-my-mouth phase". Unfortunately, that includes dog beds, which are too expensive to risk and very important in giving the impression that we have a modicum of control over all that dog hair.

Homer, he's a keeper.

100 Best Movie Lines...

2009-07-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

...in 200 seconds.

Yes, I know, I am forever stealing good links from Andrew Sullivan. But the movie buff that I am simply could not resist this one.

Race in America

2009-07-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

Here are my thoughts on this whole brouhaha...

Yes, Professor Gates overreacted. Yes, the police officer did, too. Obama reacted badly as well. But if anyone deigns to suggest that this country isn't still big-time fucked up about race, then that would make them big-time...jack-asses.

And that is the entirety of my thoughts on the subject. For today.

Matrix Ping Pong

2009-07-23T18:41:00.000-07:00

I saw this over at The Daily Dish. This is very clever, and very funny.

My Favorite Blogger Gets a Big Shout-out

2009-07-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

As most of you are aware, I just love Andrew Sullivan. His blog, The Daily Dish, is being covered by colleagues while Andrew is on special assignment last week and this week, but the fellas at The Dish linked to this great commentary on Andrew and his coverage of the Iranian elections and the continuing revolution. Here is the beginning of the commentary, followed by the url for the rest. And remember, you can always go check out Andrew from my link here, just over on the right.

THE WEEK.COM
The future belongs to Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan's coverage of the unrest in Iran was the blogosphere's moonshot, a feat of grit and daring heralding a new era in cyberspace. It was also a preview of journalism's future. Or seemed to be.
I couldn't help but notice that Andrew Sullivan wasn't blogging this past week. I noticed it in the same way one might notice a large sinkhole in the front of the house - something big and important was missing, and in its place was a void. Having been neither a particular fan nor detractor of Sullivan's long-ago tenure as editor of The New Republic, I'm a little surprised by how deeply I admire and rely upon his blog, the success of which seems at once a harbinger of a bright future for journalism and a sign of just how tenuous that future could be.

Read the rest of this commentary here: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/98673/The_future_belongs_to_Andrew_Sullivan

In Memorium: Walter Cronkite

2009-07-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Journalism has been on a downward spiral for a while, and I think there would be a lot of agreement out there that the plummet into "yes master" news reporting happened when we lost the likes of Walter Cronkite from the nightly airwaves. Integrity, honesty, selflessness, a work ethic in a world of egos where he left his ego at the door, if he ever really had one. If he did, he was smart enough and proper enough never to show it. He wore his heart on his sleeve more than once while in the anchor chair. We all remember his announcement of John F. Kennedy's death. Well, everyone who was aware enough at that time certainly remembers it. I was three years old then, but the image of Cronkite announcing the terrible news to the country is burned in my memory. It is one of those television moments that people never forget, or that you learn as an amazing part of the history of that moment on November 22, 1963.

Walter Cronkite was a huge fan of the space program. His giddy announcement of the landing of the lunar module was wonderful, and infectious. I have loved the space program and the idea of what it could mean to our world - certainly Star Trek and other great representations of how the world could be in the future in science fiction storytelling have also had a hand in this - since watching those brave and amazing astronauts land, and subsequently walk, on the moon. I think that a man in Walter Cronkite's position could react in such an emotional way on national television is pretty wonderful. We won't see his likes again. And that is so very sad.

For a great commentary on just what the world has lost with Walter Cronkite's passing, though one could say we lost all this long ago when Cronkite stepped down from the anchor desk, please read this appreciation and discussion of journalism today by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/

A Good Cry

2009-07-13T19:32:00.001-07:00

Nothing can get me crying better than a great movie moment, or a great movie. I have been a certified (certifiable?) movie buff since I was nine years old and saw my first movie at a movie theater: "True Grit" at the Drive-in in Vineland, New Jersey. "True Grit" starred John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn. I had yet to develop my admiration for John Wayne as an actor - that would come years later during my high school and college years. In 1969 at the drive-in, I only had eyes for Glen Campbell, who had a small but important role in the movie. And no,
True Grit is not one of the movies that makes me cry.

Not every great movie on my greatest movies list has made me cry. And I'm sure that not-so-great movies had moments that have made me cry. I can't think of one right now, but the not-so-great movies rarely stick in my mind for very long. I absolutely love "Citizen Kane", but it isn't a movie that made my cry. It has other qualities to admire, not the least of which is a pretty amazing performance from the genius that was Orson Welles.

Yesterday I caught the last hour of "The Miracle Worker" on television. WARNING: There be spoilers ahead! I think it was on TCM, Turner Classic Movies. What a great channel! I have seen "The Miracle Worker" many, many, many times. You wouldn't think it could move me to tears still, but it does.

For those of you too young to know, for there is no good reason not to know this story unless you are too young, "The Miracle Worker" is a movie which was adapted from the original stage play by the playwright William Gibson, based on the early life of Helen Keller. Who, you ask, is Helen Keller? She was an American author, activist and lecturer who lost her hearing and her sight at the age of nineteen months. "The Miracle Worker" tells the story of how her family sought help for young Helen to give her a chance in life, to teach her a way to communicate and take her beyond the near total isolation that her blind/deaf situation left her.

Is "The Miracle Worker" a great movie? I believe that it is. Is it manipulative of its audience? Absolutely. But it's a manipulation that we as an audience welcome because the writer is so earnest and passionate in the telling of the story, and the performers are so perfect in bringing two extraordinary women to life. Anne Bancroft recreated her stage role as Annie Sullivan, the teacher whose own troubled eyesight and early life informed her hard line with Helen, an approach that nearly caused her to be fired before she'd even got started working with a then seven-year-old Helen.

Patty Duke recreated the role she played on the stage of Helen Keller. Patty Duke was amazing in this role. She was 16 years old, but there was no need to suspend disbelief in watching her performance; she was perfect, and held her own with the far more accomplished and experinced Bancroft.

The end of the movie is so moving, though it does hold its own share of controversy. You can check out the Wikipedia posting to see what I mean, but suffice it to say that the moment where Helen finally makes that connection between all those symbols that Annie has been repeating in the palm of her hand and the item that those letters from American Sign Language mean, the thrill of that moment of discovery, and joy and overwhelming understanding of what that moment would mean to young Helen...it is so emotional. I was nearly bawling yesterday as I watched, for the umpteenth time, this scene playing out. It is beautiful. I think it is made more amazing by the scene preceding it, to see Annie's frustrations at the Keller family and the possibility that all that she'd worked so hard for might be broken by a family that has too often fallen back on indulging the wild child that Helen had become, before Annie Sullivan came into her life.

So, what other movies, or scenes from movies, make me cry? There are certainly a number of movies that do, but these come immediately to mind. I think they are all worth your time to seek them out if you have not already seen them:

Out of Africa (the musical score is unbearably perfect and certainly contributes to my inability to watch this movie without crying)

The Natural(ditto the music, and should you read into anything that Robert Redford is in two of these movies? Maybe.)

To Kill a Mockingbird (true perfection in movie story-telling)

Brian's Song (yes, a TV movie, beautiful performances from James Caan and Billy Dee Williams)

Titanic (no, not one of my favorite movies, but seriously, who doesn't cry when Leonardo DiCaprio slips into the water...Gah!)

So, are there movies that have made you cry?

Remembrance

2009-07-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

I wish that these people who are mourning the death of Michael Jackson, and by these people I mean the public and the family and friends who continue their mourning in public, could learn to mourn better for celebrities or others who have derived some fame for what they have done. I think the best way to mourn someone who has passed is in private, in your own thoughts and memories of that person and how he or she made you feel when they were alive. There are famous people who died long ago who I still mourn, but I rarely if ever talk about it. It's really for me to know and feel, and only for you to know if I feel like talking about it. Frankly, there has been too much said about Michael Jackson this week for my taste, and I am inclined to talk more about other people who have died and who I still miss decades later.

Or just two short years later.

Two years ago today, the opera singer Jerry Hadley shot himself in the head with an air rifle. He lingered on for eight days before finally passing away. He was a great singer, a great musician, and well-loved by those who knew and worked with him. He recorded one of my favorite albums ever, "Standing Room Only", a cross-over for the great American opera singer into Broadway.

His interpretations on this album are fantastic, his voice crystal clear, his diction superb and his sustained notes thrilling. Every song is wonderful on this CD, but my favorites are the opening one on this album, from Brigadoon, "Almost Like Being in Love", the great "What Kind of Fool Am I?" from "Stop the World - I Want to Get Off", with its dramatic, powerful last note, followed immediately by the beginnings, so quiet and emotional, of "Anthem" from the musical "Chess". He also recorded the complete version of "Show Boat" as well as Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" and "Mass" and was the autobiographical hero of Paul McCartney's "Liverpool Oratorio".

This is not to say that he wasn't a wonderful opera performer, as he was that, too. And he performed some of the more interesting and complicated of the repertoire, including "The Tales of Hoffman", "The Rake's Progress", created the title role in "The Great Gatsby" and a recorded for DVD performance at the Salzburg Festival in 1998 of Kurt weill's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny". It pains me when performers of this caliber end their own lives. It happens far too often. You could even say that Michael Jackson did it years ago.

I miss Bobby Darin. He was only 37 when he died of complications from heart surgery. He had heart problems since he was a child, brought on by a number of bouts of rheumatic fever. He knew that he only had a short time in this world to make an impact, and boy did he ever.

"Splish Splash", "Dream Lover", one of the greatest recordings ever made, "Mack the Knife", "Beyond the Sea", "Lazy River" and one of my personal favorites from his "folk period", "Simple Song of Freedom". He was a great singer and songwriter, and very smart. He was also a fine actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in "Pressure Point" and received an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor for his performance as a shell-shocked soldier opposite Gregory Peck in "Captain Newman, M.D." It was a terrific performance in an underrated film.

I listen to Bobby Darin and Jerry Hadley quite a lot. One has been gone over 30 years, the other just two.

Another performer that I loved was Pete Duel. He, like Jerry Hadley, shot himself. I was quite young when Pete Duel killed himself, and I was pretty inconsolable about it, but I remember, even back then, that I kept those feelings pretty much to myself. I think it is somewhat undignified for people to mourn so in public. I was 11 years old, and then, two years after Pete died, Bobby Darin died. It was a painful time. Pete didn't leave the mark in his few 30-some years that Bobby Darin did in his, but I loved him anyway. "Alias Smith and Jones" remains one of my all-time favorite shows; I think it was the perfect casting, with Ben Murphy as Kid Curry and Pete as Hannibal Heyes, two outlaws who were popular with "everyone but the railroads and the banks" because they never shot anyone. It was a sweet premise for a show, handled with great charm and humor. And chemistry is everything in these "buddy" shows and films, as Paul Newman and Robert Redford showed in the movie many say the series was based upon. I think Alias Smith and Jones was the very beginning of what, for me, grew to be a deep and abiding love of the American West. I cannot wait to get out West again. My one trip, with my Beagle Fred, was the great trip of my lifetime. Pete was also always picking up stray dogs and adopting others from shelters to add to his brood, and you know how I feel about that.

I adored Luciano Pavarotti, and I was lucky enough to live outside of Philadelphia when he was spending so much time there with his international vocal competition. I saw him in concert many times, I saw him perform "Tosca" and "La Boheme", one at the Mann Music Center and one at the Academy of Music. And Dana and I saw him and Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo at the "Three Tenors" concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. I became a fan of opera in ninth grade when I took Italian as my foreign language elective. I had a handsome teacher, Mr. Mazzotta, and the Italian Club leader and my Italian teacher for the next three years, Cesarina DeCesero, afforded us many, many opportunities to see opera and listen to it in class. To my ear, Pavarotti was unique amongst tenors. The clarity of the Italian, for he certainly was unsurpassed in singing Italian opera and popular song, and the lyricism of his vocals was just beautiful. He made me cry so many times. Even though he was 72 when he died and hadn't really been singing much anymore, I still feel that he left too soon. But he had a brilliant, long career, and was considered the great tenor of his generation, and possibly of all time. He was my favorite tenor, and will be forever.

Dogs in the Garden

2009-06-30T19:43:00.001-07:00

While spending some time outside with the boys this weekend, I got these fun shots of them. They are just the most fun dogs to spend time with. I just had to share. Enjoy!

Such Sweet Dogs

2009-06-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here in front of the fan, trying to stay cool in this silly heat and Homer walks over to where Bailey's resting in one of the big dog beds. He steps up on the bed, walks in a circle, and lays down right next to Bailey. How sweet. It's so adorable how Homer wants to be everybody's friend. Fred has finally warmed to him and is playing regularly with the new boy. Homer's still clumsy and learning how far he can go with each of the guys, but things are settling in nicely. Homer has since left the bed and is laying in a ball on the ottoman in front of me while I type. I can see Miller on the floor in front of one of the fans, Fred is napping on one of the smaller dog beds, and Bailey hasn't moved from his spot where Homer was napping with him before. These guys bring such joy to my life, even in moments like this when all they're doing is sleeping. They are nice dogs. I can't get over how good I've gotten at picking them from the shelter. Or maybe it's just luck. I'll take that kind of luck any day. And no, Bailey hasn't miraculously become a good boy, but he is awfully sweet, which makes up for his many faults.

Hail Charleston!

2009-06-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

There's a line in the song "Molasses to Rum" in the musical 1776 that I just love. Edward Rutledge from South Carolina has finished his explanation of why Northerners are hypocrites on the question of slavery. Thomas Jefferson had included a clause in his earlier version of the Declaration of Independence that slavery must be abolished. Rutledge and the entire contingent from the South threatened to walk out unless the clause was removed. He describes the Triangle Trade, in my favorite song from this wonderful musical. The line at the end goes, "Hail Boston, Hail Charleston...who stinketh the most."

Well, nothing stinketh about Charleston, South Carolina these days. Okay, on occasion you might get a whiff of fish from the wharves, but more often - in fact, most often - you will find tantalizing aromas wafting onto the sidewalks from one of the many glorious eating establishments. Charleston must have more great places to eat than any city its size. And more great places to eat than many large cities. Charleston's charm can be found in so many different directions: the food, the history, the architecture, the locale, the climate. The people, from the natives, many of whom I have been lucky enough to call friends now for many years, but especially from the transplants, those many folks who fell in love with the city enough to make it their own. It's easy to see why they would. But all of these combined with the wonder that is Spoleto Festival USA makes for a magical, unbelievable experience. I have been many times now to enjoy Spoleto Festival and its sister event, Piccolo Spoleto. I can never imagine a time when I will tire of going. And I encourage you to make plans to go, too. Go next year!

My sisters and I met there for four and a half days of festivities this year, beginning the Friday before Memorial Day. We started our day with lunch at Basil, a terrific Thai restaurant on King Street. We got a look at the location of one of our future eating destinations on this trip, Paolo's Gelato, on the way there. Lunch was great, and then we headed to the Craft Fair.

There's Diane (with her Vera Bradley bag!) behind the, um, ostrich, in the first booth at the craft show:

Next are Deb and Dana shopping in one of the many booths with custom-designed clothing. Deb and I each bought a blouse.

Another shopper at the craft fair.

More pretties at the craft fair.

Our first Spoleto performance event was "Trombones!" It was a concert of 30-some trombone players, accompanied on a few numbers by some other instrumentalists. They were fantastic. They played on the steps of the U.S. Customs House, and they did some familiar works, and some wonderful unexpected fare. It was a great setting:

It was great staying with Cindi and Kevin, too, on Daniel Island, and having dinner with them and Paul our first night. I would say, however, that the best way to enjoy Spoleto Festival is to stay in town. You will pay for the luxury, but the convenience of bopping into your hotel room whenever you need to is worth the jacked up hotel prices. Also, Charleston is a nice, compact town...generally speaking, you should not need to rent a car, unless there is a venue you need to visit that is beyond Charleston proper. There are lots of other things to see and do in the Charleston area, but insofar as Spoleto Festival is concerned, if you're staying in town, I wouldn't waste the money on a rental car.

We went to Cindi's favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner that first night, and had a blast. It was a great way to spend our first night - we had a lot of laughs. Paul is a crazy funny guy, and Kevin and Cindi are an adorable couple:

Our first full day started at the Farmers Market and the Juried Art Show at Marion Square. We had breakfast there from the assortment of stands. Diane and Dana started slow - their food wasn't edible - but we all, ultimately, ended up happy with our crepes. It's a festive atmosphere on Saturdays during Spoleto:

An art installation (the cover laying on the ground is part of the piece):

One of the artists in competition.

A beautiful blossom from
a magnolia tree in the square:

I'm sure you're getting the idea here. Spoleto is just moment after moment of wonderful cultural opportunities. My sisters and I are big fans of choral music, and the Piccolo Spoleto festival is the schedule to see for these wonderful concerts. Our first choral concert was the the First (Scots) Presbyterian Church Kirk Choir. This concert consisted mostly of settings of psalms from Rennaisance and contemporary composers. This was an amazing choir, and this church's members are very lucky to have this group sing for them every Sunday.

Our next concert was not our favorite, and Deb and I need to remember this as we had seen them at a previous Piccolo Spoleto concert but neither one of us remembered that. They were missing four singers this time, too, and it showed.
Here are Deb, Diane and Dana in the entryway of one of the many historic homes that you can tour while in Charleston. We didn't tour any this time, though we have seen some on previous visits. You can tour one of the houses that was used as George Hazard's Lehigh Station (Pennsylvania) home in the miniseries "North and South"!

Most of the venues for the choral concerts are in the many Charleston churches. These churches have beautiful, old graveyards and equally old trees:

This particular graveyard is at one of our favorite buildings in Charleston, the Circular Congregational Church. It's a gorgeous brick building, and yes, it is circular:

Saturday evening was dinner on Deb at the magnificent Peninsula Grill. This restaurant is reknowned for its many-layered coconut cake, but it is a great restaurant in every possible way. The service was just fantastic, ourt waiter was fun and attentive. The servers seem to come from nowhere with the offerings. Quite amazing to experience. And the food was wonderful. We will go there again. Deb treated all of us to dinner here for our birthdays. Ain't she the best?

Sunday started with the church service at Saint Matthew's Lutheran Church. Their Gallery Choir performed Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata #172, "Erchallet, ihr Lieder" with full orchestra and soloists. One of the soloists was the Pastor! As church services go, it was pretty great.

We had lunch at Saint Matthew's Afternoon Tea. It was great, nice atmosphere, very nice tea, perfect for lunch.

One of the things I love about Charleston is that you never know what you'll come across. It's a very sophisticated city. We found this guy on a balcony on Church Street on the way to one of the concerts:

The two best concerts of our visit, in my opinion, came later on Sunday. The William Baker Festival Singers from Atlanta were terrific. They performed at the Circular Congregational Church, which is just a great venue for concerts. I enjoyed this concert, though a couple of the selections seemed odd and weren't my favorites. They had a really nice sound.

In between concerts we would stroll the streets of Charleston. This town is so beautiful. Lots of wrought iron...

...window boxes, each one more beautiful than the next, all of them making making us ooh and aah...

...hidden cobblestone treasures...

Our favorite concert by far was the College of Charleston Concert Choir. Wow. A truly amazing choir. College undergrads and graduate students who clearly are passionate about singing. Not all of these singers are majoring in music. It's hard to believe. Robert Taylor is their director and my how he gets the sound from these singers. The most perfect enunciation, the crystal clear tone, the unison; that moment when someone holds a note too long...does not happen with this choir. They were beautiful. The program was challenging and interesting from start to finish. Some of the repertoire:

Zadok the Priest by George Frederic Handel
Hear My Prayer, O Lord by Henry Purcell
Valiant-for-truth by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Suite de Lorca by Einojuhani Rautavaara
St. Louis Blues by W.C. Handy

We had more concerts to see, and a mix-up in the schedule. When the concert we wanted to see turned out not to be happening, the sisters did split up for a while. Diane and Dana took a carriage ride - here's Diane getting up close and personal with one of the horses:

They went to a restaurant, the name escapes me, where they enjoyed ribs and chicken for lunch. Deb and I headed to the ballet, which, save for one especially awkward coupling of a mature young woman with an obviously far-too-young man in a romantic pairing, was quite good. For lunch, we split a Caprese salad and then had hearth-baked pizzas at Blossom.

Dinner Sunday night was not our best moment. We ate at Il Cortile del Re, a restaurant that Deb and I had eaten at a couple of times on our last trip to Spoleto Festival. We loved it then. She and I both loved our meals this time, too. But Dana was indifferent about hers, and Diane hated hers. I thought Diane's tasted good, but, to each his own, eh? The problem with the restaurant this time was the dreadful service and the price for the house wine - $30 for a small pitcher. Ridiculous. I'm not sure I'll be going back.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Joseph's. It's my favorite place for breakfast in Charleston. They have interesting fare, everything is wonderfully fresh, including the fresh squeezed orange juice, and great coffee. Not to be missed.

We went back and forth from Daniel Island to Charleston each day. They have a wonderful new bridge, and we experienced some great waterfront and marsh viewing:

I spent a goodly amount of time watching this little girl keep her daddy busy at this fountain. It was a wonderful way to spend my time while waiting for Deb to finish up her shopping.

Cindi made us dinner on our last night in South Carolina. She is a wonderful girl, and her husband Kevin is just a great guy and great raconteur. They are a fun couple and gracious hosts. I had a chance to get over to see Paul and Nancy and their kids, Alex, Andie, and Molly the Beagle. That was so great, too. I have great memories of working in Charleston with these people who I am so lucky to call my friends, and with other fine people from my time with Mikasa.

One thing, though. Deb and I did find it, how shall I say...interesting, that Cindi and Kevin didn't mention this guy until our second or third day pulling in to their place - in the dark. Curious, no?

I recognize that on my blog you might not be able to make this out. I encourage you to download the photo so that you can zoom in on it. That's right, your eyes do not deceive you. That is an alligator. Somehow I think it might have been nice to know about it before we landed at the Hux homestead. Two days later just seems somehow, oh, I guess the word is reckless. See, I told you Cindi and Kevin were a fun couple! I suspect that I was more likely to get bit by Cindi's Dachshund Taz than I was by that alligator.

I miss Charleston. :(

I also think that anyone reading this post should schedule a visit down there, and I encourage you to schedule it during Spoleto Festival. Maybe I'll see you at a concert sometime!

Make Our Garden Grow

2009-06-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

Certainly one of the greatest finales in musical theater is the song "Make Our Garden Grow" that thrillingly and beautifully closes Leonard Bernstein's "Candide". This operetta of Voltaire's novella is far more popular and appreciated now than when it first premiered in 1956. It's smart and funny and has an amazing score by Bernstein. He was such a genius.

I think of this song now every day when I go out to my garden. I started modestly this year with the vegetables, and have not gone crazy with the flowers because I want to do justice to the vegetables. I started many of the plants in my four raised beds from seed down in the basement, so I feel intimately invested in this effort. Also, Dana and Darryl and I built the beds, and I put in a lot of back-breaking work filling them up with a rich soil mix. And I am the queen of weeding, at least so far this growing season. We'll see how long that lasts.

So, following are some photos from the garden. I'll post more as the growing season continues.

Yes, my garden ornaments tend to be dog-related. ;-)

As we looked at the four finished beds, Darryl commented about how nice it would be to have benches linking the beds together. A grand idea, come to fruition:

With Fred and Homer zooming through the garden, and under those benches, I'm going to need to put another inch or two of mulch down!

I couldn't resist...a new photo of the new boy, Homer:

You might have noticed about 12 inches of plastic chicken wire around the tops of the beds. I made them 16 inches high to keep the big Bailey dog from peeing all over my vegetables. The chicken wire is to keep the dogs from eating my rich, and apparently delicious, soil. Fred was perfectly happy eating the dirt on the ground before. Now, he likes to take a mouthful from the garden. And he has taught Bailey about the glories of eating fine soil. Grrrr.

Happy gardening!

A New Man in My Life

2009-06-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

He's soooooo cute. And cuddly. And funny and just a real nice fella. A real charmer, he is. His name is Homer. Here's a shot of him enjoying the beautiful Willsboro weather today in the back yard:

Homer had spent the last almost six months in the Elmore shelter in the nearby town of Peru. We think he's a Beagle-Bassett Hound mix. He's absolutely adorable, but most of that is his personality, though he is a real good looker. It's actually been kind of hard getting a good shot of him; he's always on the move.

Homer's brothers are all adjusting to having a new member of the family. I had hoped that Fred would be ultra excited about having a brother his size to play with, but he seems to be warming the slowest to the new boy. Bailey's cool, he's an equal opportunity lover to one and all. And Miller, the 16+ year old, is the one who is playing the most with Homer. What a sweet boy he is.

Fred is...disinterested, at best.

Bailey has been kind and patient with Homer.

Ever the Lab, Miller has been the most welcoming.

Homer has certainly made himself at home. He's quite fond of the the dog beds. His first night home he was back and forth between two dog beds, carting a toy with him, or just trying them out, seeing how far he could stretch in one, and how tiny of a ball he could fold himself into in another. He is definitely a fan of the beds:

Welcome home, Homer!

Ah, The Things You'll Find...

2009-05-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

...on a spring perimeter walk of the property. When I bought my house, the previous owners told me about the raspberries all around the woods' edge. For a 3-4 week period last year, I had fresh picked raspberries every day. Raspberries in my cereal, my oatmeal, my ice cream. It was wonderful. Over this past weekend, I spotted this:

Doesn't look like much, does it? There will be raspberries in this location in the early summer. But look a little closer, at those little pops of red. On closer inspection, this is what I saw:

How beautiful. This could be a type of Columbine, though my research also calls this wildflower a Larkspur. It's definitely reminiscent in look to the columbines found out west, though this plant is fairly small. But look at it up close:

This is a beautiful flower and was such a lovely surprise to come across as I walked around. Now, I don't want to give the lilacs short shrift; they are truly coming into their own right now. I have your basic lilac-colored lilac, a white one that has tiny flower petals, and a deep purple that is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the two deep purple lilacs are near the road and quite overgrown. I may have to cut them back and risk losing them. They are very old growth and very tall - they are just short of touching the wires on the poles at the street. What to do. Here's a photo of some lilacs. I know we've seen them all before, but they are such a pretty flower. It's a shame they are so short-lived:

Ah, Hubble

2009-05-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

Reasons why fixing it is the right thing to do and why it's exciting that there is a next gen version in the works:

Carina Nebula:

Exploding star:

Supernova:

Eagle Nebula:

Silly Christiantists

2009-05-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

I can always count on Andrew Sullivan to have interesting discussions on religion - he is a practicing Catholic, and gay - but oftentimes it's what he links to that turns out to be the most thought provoking. There is an article about a new book by University of Manchester (England) professor and Yale University lecturer Terry Eagleton called "Reason, Faith and Revolution". The article is written by Stanley Fish on his New York Times blog. You can get to that article here:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/?em

But the rebuttal that Sully points to is what's really worth reading. It's written by Matt Taibbi, and it gives an agnostic's response to Fish's over-the-top, sanctimonious lovefest of a review of Eagleton's book, which apparently is an attempt on Eagleton's part to counter the wildly successful arguments from the atheist/agnostic books and commentaries by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. I won't read this book - I have absorbed enough of the gist of it from Fish's googly-eyed ravings. However, if you have time, I think reading Fish's views, and some of the comments he has received, followed by Matt's response, is a stimulating way to spend some time. Here is what Matt has to say:

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/05/07/god-talk-stanley-fish-blog-nytimescom/

I like a lot of what he has to say, and he certainly has style as a writer, too, but I will highlight the same part that Sully highlighted in his blog post:

As for the actual argument, it’s the same old stuff religious apologists have been croaking out since the days of Bertrand Russell — namely that because science is inadequate to explain the mysteries of existence, faith must be necessary. Life would be meaningless without religion, therefore we must have religion.

But this sort of thinking is exactly what most agnostics find ridiculous about religion and religious people, who seem incapable of looking at the world unless it’s through the prism of some kind of belief system. They seem to think that if one doesn’t believe in God, one must believe in something else, because to live without answers would be intolerable. And maybe that’s true of the humorless Richard Dawkins, who does seem actually to have tried to turn atheism into a kind of religion unto itself. But there are plenty of other people who are simply comfortable not knowing the answers. It always seemed weird to me that this quality of not needing an explanation and just being cool with what few answers we have inspires such verbose indignation in people like Eagleton and Fish. They seem determined to prove that the quality of not believing in heaven and hell and burning bushes and saints is a rigid dogma all unto itself, as though it required a concerted intellectual effort to disbelieve in a God who thinks gays (Leviticus 20:13) or people who work on Sunday (Exodus 35:2) should be put to death. They’ll tie themselves into knots arguing this, and they’ll probably never stop.

Needless to say, I have added Matt as a blog that I follow. You can find the link to Matt Taibbi on the right under My Blog List.

Education Department's Paris Attaché

2009-05-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

A true story, copied from the New York Times:

May 7, 2009, 4:49 pm

Attaché No. 9
By Brian Knowlton
As Obama administration budget-cutters pored over thousands of pages of documents in search of meaningful reductions, it appears that only one job – as opposed to a full-fledged program – caught their attention: that of a Paris-based education attaché coordinating with UNESCO.

The position apparently fell well short, in administration eyes, of justifying its rather hefty price tag: nearly $632,000 a year. So much so that President Obama saw fit to mention it, along with only a few other tax-cutting targets, during brief remarks at the White House on Thursday.

It is no surprise that the costs of keeping executive-level employees in a city like Paris are hardly negligible. But as it turns out, the $632,000 represents not just the costs incurred by the last holder of the job, one Sally Lovejoy, but also a projection of what it would have cost to replace her.

As a senior civil servant, Ms. Lovejoy’s base salary and benefits were $154,819, according to the Education Department. On top of that, she received “post-differential pay” — because of the high cost of living in Paris – of $29,653. She also received $77,650 for apartment rental, and was reimbursed $21,259 for travel costs.

Her share of the U.S. mission’s “administrative support costs” was $137,776. Then throw in $3,397 for parking, and add $1,529 for storage of household goods.

If those numbers – totaling $429,054 – come a long way from the $632,000 that Mr. Obama mentioned, it is because the administration was also including the costs of moving a new attaché to Paris, bringing him or her up to speed in French (assuming this was necessary), and subsidizing the schooling of two (presumed) children.

The position has been vacant since year-end, when Ms. Lovejoy, who previously worked on education issues for years in Congress, left Paris. She was the second person to hold the position since the United States decided in 2002 to re-enter UNESCO (after an 18-year absence that began under President Reagan).

Thus, on top of the $429,054 spent to keep Ms. Lovejoy in Paris, the Education Department estimated moving expenses for a replacement at $60,000, plus an airline ticket at $2,500. Education costs were put at $30,000 for each of the two (presumed) children, and language studies at $5,000.

Administrative support costs were expected to rise by $40,000 in the 2009 fiscal year.

And additional support staff was estimated to cost $35,000 — for a grand total of $631,554.

The web site of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO indicates that it now includes five positions, including a science attaché – but no education attaché – though education is the largest component of UNESCO’s work.

John McGrath, an Education Department spokesman, said that the attache’s responsibility included working on education policy issues at UNESCO and “representing the United States in education functions.”

Asked how common it was for a big industrialized country like the United States to go without an education attaché to UNESCO, Sue Williams, a spokeswoman for the international organization in Paris, said that “not all industrialized nations have education attaches in the delegations.” Each delegation, she noted, organizes itself as it desires.

And each government, of course, makes the cuts that it deems necessary.

There have got to be dozens of these kinds of positions in government that could be cut. This is ridiculous. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be good reasons to liaise with UNESCO on global education issues. But this couldn't be done by someone on the staff of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations? Come on.

Stupid Republicans

2009-05-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a fantastic commentary on the stupidity of the Republicans' animus to housing the Gitmo detainees here in the good ole U.S. of A. It does sometimes seem like they have all taken a very special kind of Kool-Aid.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/05/dueling-videos.html

Take some time to read the comments as well. Informative, funny, collegial, wonderfully entertaining.

I hate the Bush administration. Have I mentioned that lately? Probably not. Too pleased with my self that I had a hand in getting Barack Obama elected. I'm also busy with the garden.

;-)

Oh yeah, and welcome back Arlen Specter!

My Nieces and Nephew

2009-04-27T12:40:00.000-07:00

A number of years ago, when I was still working as a consultant, I was assigned to a project in Secaucus, New Jersey. At this project - the Mikasa SAP project - I met and have remained friends with some absolutely amazing people. It was without doubt the most fruitful time in my career, from a personal perspective. And despite the fact that I don't see many of these folks anymore on any kind of a regular basis, they remain, in my mind and in my heart, some of the great people that I have met in my life. We'll deal with just first names for now, but let me say that Allan and Patti, Brian and Randi, Tom and Dolores, Cindi and Pat, Helene and Sylvio (yes, in the same breath) - will always have a special place in my heart...and an open invitation to come visit me in the Adirondacks!

My friend Paul and I developed a very special relationship. It's almost like we were meant to be brother and sister, we have so much in common. Though we may not see eye-to-eye on everything - religion, sometimes politics - those instances are very rare. We love movies (we both used to review movies for our respective high school/college newspapers), we both have an affinity for writing (Paul was an English major, I was a Communications major, we both wrote obituaries for our local newspapers), we both love popular culture references (we are, after all, children of the television age).

So, it was not much of a surprise when Paul sent me some recent photos, and labeled them "photos of your nieces and nephew". So adorable. Paul and his lovely wife Nancy have three children: Alex, the only boy, little Andie (Anderson), no longer a baby at 4 years of age, and their first born, Molly the Beagle. Being the proud aunt that I am, I've decided to share some of these photos with all of you.

From left to right: Molly, Andie and Alex

Andie and Alex

Andie - I know what you're thinking, those of you who know Paul. "How did such a goofball produce something so beautiful?" ;-)

Funny Stuff Those Stupid Pet Tricks

2009-04-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

I think the funniest thing about this is Dave's reaction. He is really, really tickled by this dog. And this is a really funny stupid pet trick:

Of course, the fact that the dog has a bit of a Fred look about her just makes it all the funnier to me.

Awesome

2009-04-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

There really is nothing else that need be said, except thank you, Andrew Sullivan, for pointing me to this:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/cassinis_continued_mission.html

Spoleto Festival USA

2009-04-16T13:39:00.001-07:00

I first heard about Spoleto Festival from my sister Deb. She's a director of choirs at a high school in southern New Jersey and is often in tune to interesting cultural destinations. Well, Spoleto Festival is certainly that.

I've been attending Spoleto since about 1992. I also had the great fortune of working for a customer - I ultimately went to work for the company directly for a few years - that had a warehouse outside of the city. I made some great friends and now have many great reasons to visit Charleston, SC.

There are two websites that are needed to determine your schedule when you decide to attend Spoleto Festival. The first is the main website: http://www.spoletousa.org/2009.php. This is where my sisters and I have found out that Kurt Elling was appearing (I have seen him in concert at Spoleto three times) at previous festivals. What a thrill.

The sister festival's website this year is: http://www.piccolospoleto.com/home/default.aspx. Since my sister is a choir director, and one of my other sisters has sung in choirs, we all like choral music. And we have seen the Westminster College Choir at a main Spoleto Festival concert. But Piccolo Spoleto has the Choral Artists Series, where we have come across some of the most stunning performances by regional choirs. There is also The Festival of churches, which also includes a fair amount of choral concerts. Piccolo Spoleto also has the L'Organo Recital Series, which is a series of organ concerts held at various churches across the city.

What I love about Spoleto is the opportunity to see big-time, big-name performers - The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is performing this year - as well as lesser well known performers in small, intimate venues. Mix it all in with the juried art exhibits, the wonderful crafters at the Craft Fair at Wragg square, plays, opera, musicals, revues, comedy and the brilliant restaurants of Charleston, and you end up with exhausting days. Exhilerating days, for sure. But we always sleep well having gotten ourselves well-sated in every possible way.

I cannot recommend enough a visit to Charleston. Of course, I haven't even mentioned what an amazing history Charleston has, or that you can tour some great naval ships across the harbor at the site of the old Navy base. And there are plantations to visit, and golfing is pretty big in South Carolina, too.

Lots to do. You should go!

Spoleto Festival USA is Fast Approaching

2009-04-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

More on Spoleto Festival later this week. The big news is that the Vanneman sisters are doing a "Sisters Weekend" at Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC over Memorial Day weekend. Suffice it to say that we are excited. Deb, Dana and I have been to Spoleto several times in the past, but this will be Diane's first time visiting and her first chance to enjoy the cultural overload of Spoleto Festival and its sister event, Piccolo Spoleto. And I have good friends down there and can't wait to see them (I miss you guys!) and enjoy some true Southern hospitality.

Though I am an avid photographer, I have taken very few pictures over the many years that I have been visiting Charleston. It's a beautiful city, with churches and their lovely steeples rising above the city's historic architecture. It's known as "The Holy City" because of the preponderance of churches and for its long-held tradition of religious tolerance. I love walking the historic district, I love the Battery, the farmer's market at Marion Square, the great, great eating establishments (Il Cortile del Re is one of my favorites). But being in Charleston during Spoleto Festival is something altogether special.

This is my sister Dana:

This photo was taken during a Spoleto Festival trip a few years ago. We saw 8 concerts in 3 days. We stayed in a lovely carriage house rental just across from the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist on Legare Street, where we saw a candlelight concert at midnight. It's important to catch a rest during Spoleto Festival, because you do tend to run around a bit trying to catch everything that you want to catch. And it can be hot in Charleston, in case you haven't heard.

As promised, more on Spoleto Festival later.

Pinecones. Oy!

2009-04-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last two hours using my leaf blower to push mostly pinecones and pine needles off of the front lawn. There were some leaves, but they mostly got blown about by the wind. I'm not really all that concerned with the leaves, but the pinecones can cause some real damage to the lawn. I'm actually quite fond of the look of pine needles, but I'd like a nice portion of the front lawn to remain lawn. I have a stand of trees in the front yard, so I blew the needles and pinecones there. When I bought the house, there wasn't a sign of pinecones or needles anywhere. I think the previous owners must have had someone come and remove all of it. I'm not planning to do that. I'm pretty happy with the way the yard looks, considering it's so early in the spring.

We reviewed pruning of shrubs today at my monthly Master Gardeners meeting. I have two lilacs at the beginning of the driveway. I may try thinning them some, though one of them doesn't look very full at all. Both of these lilacs are pretty old. You know how lilacs can get when they aren't pruned and all of the pretty blooms are way high up, so high that you can't reach them to trim some to bring inside and put in a vase.

If the weather holds, I think I'll start bringing some of the soil that was piled along the property from the post holes (for the fence) back and use it to fill the bottoms of the raised beds. I have ordered a delivery of peat moss, vermiculite and compost for the soil mixture for the beds. It should be delivered sometime next week. And then I can start to put some of the cooler season crops in, like lettuces!

Fred and Hank Are Wonderful

2009-04-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

And so are Jim and Joan. Today's post at Fred and Hank Mark America is terrific behind the scenes stuff about photographing the Beagles. Anyone with dogs can relate to this. The blog is written with great humor; I'm particularly fond today of Jim noting the reason why he thinks Joan might be suffering from Munchhausen by Proxy syndrome. Yes, joking about a terrible, debilitating disease is funny (and so was Obama's little Special Olympics 'faux pas' on Leno).

Enjoy:
http://fredandhank.typepad.com/fhma/2009/04/behind-the-scenes-model-beagles.html#comments

We Have Liftoff

2009-04-03T18:15:00.000-07:00

Er...rather, we have germination! See?

This is a Valencia tomato, one of four, or is it five, different heirloom tomatoes that I am growing from seed in the basement. I am also starting a plain round red tomato (Celebrity), San Marzano (red plum) and also a yellow plum-like tomato. I also currently have peppers, leeks, rosemary, sage and thyme started downstairs. Also, some violas (edible) and bee balm. I will start marigolds later, too. Just about everything else I am planting this year can be started from seed outside. This includes spring onions, zucchini and squash, basil, arugula, other greens.

Darryl, Dana and I finished the four raised beds. The wood I used is from a local sawmill. It's rough-cut, and pieces of it still have the bark. I think it adds a lot of character to the garden area:

I am so excited (and hopeful) about the growing season. I recognize that there could be trouble with pests and disease and the weather, but I am still very excited.

How Unexpected

2009-03-30T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the opening of a fascinating column by Glenn Greenwald regarding Virginia Senator Jim Webb's bill to create a National Criminal Justice Commission, a bill whose ultimate goal is to reform the criminal justice system in this country. It's a long dissertation, but so, so worth your time. As you can tell from the title of the article, it's really about more than just the obvious need for reform.

Jim Webb's courage v. the "pragmatism" excuse for politicians - Glenn Greenwald

There are few things rarer than a major politician doing something that is genuinely courageous and principled, but Jim Webb's impassioned commitment to fundamental prison reform is exactly that. Webb's interest in the issue was prompted by his work as a journalist in 1984, when he wrote about an American citizen who was locked away in a Japanese prison for two years under extremely harsh conditions for nothing more than marijuana possession. After decades of mindless "tough-on-crime" hysteria, an increasingly irrational "drug war," and a sprawling, privatized prison state as brutal as it is counter-productive, America has easily surpassed Japan -- and virtually every other country in the world -- to become what Brown University Professor Glenn Loury recently described as a "a nation of jailers" whose "prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history."

You can read the rest here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/28/webb/index.html

Howdy Neighbors

2009-03-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

My neigbhors were walking through the woods, heading home after taking a walk with the kids and the dog. I was in the yard with the boys, and Bailey and Fred went bonkers barking at them. Shocking, I know. Miller was like, "What up?" They came to the fence, thinking that maybe if the dogs met them, saw them, that those crazy woofs would calm down. Snort. Well, they only had eyes for Nitro, my neighbors' wonderfully gorgeous Great Dane. They gave me the terrible news that they had to put their other Great Dane, Sapphire, down last week. She had bone cancer and she had deteriorated rapidly. It's so sad. Nitro and Sapphire were quite the pair. But my neighbors said that Nitro had been feeling out of sorts with Sapphire now gone. I invited everyone into the back yard to see how the dogs would get on, and to just have a visit.

What a great time we all had. My three guys got on famously with Nitro. Fred and Nitro played. Bailey and Nitro played. Nitro sniffed all of my dogs, and they all sniffed back in return. Fred zoomed around, showing off his toys (and his athletic skills). The kids had fun, Fred got lots of petting (he's very soft!) and we had a really nice chat. My neighbors were so happy to see Nitro playing with the other dogs; he'd really been down since losing his best pal. We broke up the party when it started to drizzle, but we made plans to have another play date real soon.

I just love the dogs.

There Are No Words, Really

2009-03-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

A Great Gardening Weekend

2009-03-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, in spite of today's little hail storm in Willsboro, it was still a great gardening weekend.

On Friday, Darryl and I went to Beebe's Sawmill in Moriah to pick up my rough cut wood for the raised beds. My raised beds are 16" high so that I can keep tall dogs from peeing on my vegetables. We picked up this beautiful hemlock, pre-cut to 4 foot lengths. That's 32 4 foot lengths of 2 X 8 wood, rough cut so some of the bark still shows, which is cool, and 16 2 X 4 posts, for $136! That is an amazing price, plus, the wood is really 2 inches because it's not finished or planed down like you get with store-bought lumber. It was great going there, the people are very friendly, and the resident dog Sarah was a sweetheart.

Then on Saturday, Darryl came over and he, Dana and I started building the beds. We finished two of the 4 foot by 4 foot beds. Darryl and I are hoping for nice weather on Wednesday so that we can get the other two done.

After our labors, Darryl cooked up some bratwurst on the grill, and I made some potatoes and we had some sauerkraut for a nice German dinner. With beer, of course!

And today, I spent most of the day in the basement. Dana helped me get the lights positioned properly from the ceiling over the table that will hold my seedlings. Today I got a whole bunch of different tomatoes, yellow and red bell peppers and rosemary seeds into pots. I am doing this for the first time, so I am sort of keeping my fingers crossed. My basement stays at a consistent 60 degrees, so I fear it might be too cool. I'm back and forth about buying the heat mats, but I think I should, at least for the peppers and tomatoes.

So, even though we had snow and hail today, it was still all about gardening for me! And as the season progresses, I'll be putting a few more things in the basement to get a head start on the garden. How exciting!

Making Every Moment Count

2009-03-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

Natasha Richardson's death, the unexpected and random nature of her passing, is just one more lesson for all of us. As trite as it might sound, it is important that you do the things that are important, spend the precious time with the people who mean something to you, reach out and stay in touch with all of the ones that you cannot spend one-on-one time with. Of course, since I'm the one writing this, I include the precious pets that mean so much to us. I never take for granted that I am the lucky one to have Miller, Bailey and Fred in my life. I love my family, and would like to see some of them more. But I try as much as I can to stay in touch with the people that I have met and cared for over the years. I think we all need to be diligent about doing this, especially in light of what happened with this family. A family is now without its mother, a good man is without his beloved wife. A famous family has lost a cherished daughter, sister...and the world has lost a beacon of goodness in Natasha Richardson. I only recall ever seeing her in "Nell", but from what I have read, this was a very special person, someone who, along with her husband Liam Neeson, knew how to live life, knew what was important in life, and managed the balance living in New York and a small town upstate, raising their sons and keeping the hype and stupidity of the entertainment world in their dust. Such a horrible shame that this has happened.

I think that what I take away most from this tragedy is that the change I made in my life last year, choosing to downsize it, choosing to leave the rat race of consulting, moving to the mountains and my nice little town, and living a smaller life, a resultant richer life, was the right call. I have made a point of staying in touch with the important people in my life, though I know in some ways I could do better. I don't stay in touch with my brother the way I should, though that's not new. I need to be a little more pro-active with Sharon, as I know that her attention is taken up by her upcoming marriage to the dear Simon. I do keep in touch with a whole lot of people that I've met over my life and who have been important to me: to say that the internet, my blog, Facebook are modern-day wonders is an understatement.

But I still need to do better. I think that we all could do better. And I hope that everyone who has felt badly over the last few days over what has happened to Natasha Richardson, and understands how her family and close friends must be so shocked at what has transpired, should make that extra effort to contact folks in the days ahead and remind them how important they are. I truly hope that everyone who I stay in touch with understands that I do it because they have brought something special to my life. I feel lucky to have known such good people. Distance and time are no reason not to remember to tell people how special they are to you.

Finally, my last word on making every moment count. Work is not everything. I know that may seem easy for me to say as I live my downsized life, working my part-time job, and prepare for getting the vegetable garden going here in Willsboro. But Natasha and Liam definitely understood this. I understand that she was quite the gourmet cook and they worked hard to arrange their lives so that they could have dinner at their home, together as a family, as often as possible. I suspect that we saw less of Natasha in film because there were things that were far more important to her. I get the sense that though Liam Neeson and his children must be shocked, stunned by what has happened to them, that there was no regret that they did not live their life as they wanted, and that is certainly something to be grateful about. I want to believe this, and I do sense that it's true. So, please, please, think about what's important, and do something about it so that you can say that you are making every moment count.

Wow. Just...wow.

2009-03-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

I stole this from Andrew Sullivan's blog. It is absolutely amazing.

Now I REALLY Don't Want Any More Snow

2009-03-14T18:27:00.001-07:00

Boy was today a nice day in Willsboro. Actually, Dana and I started in Willsboro, headed to Essex for our twice a month visit to the transfer station (where we take the trash!), and then to Plattsburgh for some shopping. The shopping was mostly to get some supplies for gardening: chain, hooks and s-hooks to set up the lights for my seedlings, a couple of barrels for flowers or herbs. I almost picked up some more seeds, but seriously, I have LOADS of seeds. I will be getting the lights set up over the table where I will be starting my seeds tomorrow. This week I will wash all of the containers I've been saving in my 10% bleach solution to get them all ready. My plan is to try to get the tomatoes, peppers and rosemary in their pots by the end of the week. Then next week I'll start on other things, some vegetables, some flowers. I'm not in a huge rush because I can't put anything into the ground until I come back from Spoleto Festival after Memorial Day weekend. But having nice plants ready to go will be awesome. I can't wait to see how the garden grows!

Dramatic Vistas

2009-03-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Even though I am looking forward to spring, I do still appreciate the beauty of winter in the north country. My drive in to work today was beautiful, the snowfall from yesterday just enough to make everything pretty again, thick snow weighing down the tree limbs, mountains in the distance snow covered, the apple orchards dotted with tufts of snow on the bare but soon to be budding branches.

Here is a picture I took a few weeks ago of the drama inherent up here in the snow, and the melt. I don't have pretty pictures of the melt in my yard - that's mostly just mud. This was on the drive from Keene to Lake Placid on route 73. Striking, isn't it?

Yes, I will miss these pretty pictures of winter. But I suspect there'll be lots of nice things to see in the spring and summer, too. Plus, there's gardening!

The Right Wing Mindset

2009-03-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

It's kind of like they've lost their minds. I had mentioned Roger Kimball in my post yesterday. Here is a rebuttal to his diatribe about Obama the Leninist, copied from Damon Linker's blog at The New Republic (a link to his blog is now available to the right here on my blog site):

The Meltdown of the Conservative Mind

Roger Kimball has been a strident, highly polemical right-winger for a long time. But he's also very smart and highly literate. He writes with authority about art and philosophy, literature and politics. He knows a lot about history. And the quarterly he co-edits with Hilton Kramer (The New Criterion) has published erudite commentary and criticism on culture and the arts for more than a quarter century.

What, then, are we supposed to make of this astonishing post? Not only does Kimball endorse the view, expressed repeatedly by right-wingers over the past couple of weeks, that Obama deserves the blame for a stock-market collapse that began and accelerated months before Election Day 2008. And Kimball does not merely suggest, like many other (so-called) conservatives, that we can already, fewer than six weeks (!) after Inauguration Day, judge Obama to be an incompetent president. No, Kimball goes much further than these comparatively level-headed expressions of dissent to suggest something far more sinister. Yes, it's true: Roger Kimball -- accomplished intellectual and cultural critic -- believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist.

Now in fairness to Kimball, I should note that he's merely endorsing a tirade by that paragon of political and economic good sense, financial guru and CNBC loudmouth Jim Cramer. But Kimball not only endorses Cramer's vulgar and philistine analysis (I mean: "analysis"); he also provides readers of his blog with an informative quote from Lenin himself on the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat to impose "a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists." You know, just like Obama! It's perfectly fitting, then, for Kimball to conclude his post by quoting Article II, Section IV of the Constitution on the requirements for impeaching the president and by calling on "some clever legal talent to show how deliberately sabotaging the United States economy [sic] counts as Treason, a high Crime, or at least a Misdemeanor."

Here is Andrew Sullivan's incredulous response to Kimball's suggestion:

Obama's predecessor secretly invoked the power to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments for seven years, authorized the seizure and torture of American citizens, launched two decade-long wars of attrition, doubled the national debt, presided over the worst financial bubble since the 1930s, provided the weakest level of economic growth in decades, and left the US in the grip of the steepest depression since the 1930s. But after five weeks, it's Obama who should be impeached?

Well put. But I think something more needs to be said in response to Kimball. Something more needs to be said because Kimball's post raises important questions about just how far the American right is going to go in marginalizing itself during the Obama era. Are its leading intellectuals going to engage in constructive, thoughtful, informed debate about the policies proposed by the president? Or are they going to become indistinguishable from populist rabble-rousers like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin -- men who routinely confuse venomous, paranoid ranting with thinking? Because here's the thing: If Roger Kimball really believes that Barack Obama is a Leninist who deserves to be impeached for deliberately sabotaging the American economy (presumably as a prelude to imposing communism), then he has definitively demonstrated that he has a reckless, irresponsible mind and a temperament ill-suited to serious intellectual engagement in our public life.

The right can certainly afford to have a few cranks running around. (The left certainly has its share.) But how many is too many? When will sensible citizens conclude that the right simply should not be trusted with political power -- not because its policies diverge from what the American majority prefers, but rather because the right is in the grip of a form of ideological madness that renders it incapable of governing -- or even thinking -- responsibly? Five-and-a-half weeks into the Obama administration, I fear we might not have to wait very long for an answer.

(This is Denise again) I find it absolutely amazing that just five short weeks into a new administration that these idiots could call Obama the worst president ever, especially after what we have had to go through these last eight years. It's one thing for people to hate Obama because they see things differently, that they are afraid of new big government because that is what they think of when they think of a Democrat. But it is something completely different to call Obama the worst president when we have just finished two terms of a man who cared nothing for the Constitution and recreated his own idea of what the president could do. Trampling the Constitution became de rigueur for George Bush. That he will most likely not be held accountable for his crimes is despicable. History will certainly tell where Bush stands against his predecessors; he's already been dubbed one of the worst by many historians. How he compares against Obama is years away to be properly analyzed. But only insane people would have the nerve to judge him after only five weeks in office.

Reading and Thinking

2009-03-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

I don't think enough people do either of these things these days. If they did, they would be able to find out that the drivel that the right is spewing about how Obama is Leninist, Socialist, whatever, is just that. Drivel.

Here is an interesting snippet from Andrew Sullivan's blog:

No Empty Wallets responds to Jim Manzi's argument (and Jim responds in the comments). The data on job growth in the Bush and Clinton years are interesting (Clinton wins). I'm not sure that returning marginal rates to the levels of the 1990s is that big a deal. But long-term creep in government spending as a share of the economy is troubling, if it pans out. Matt Miller urges calm:

"We know from the Clinton boom of the 1990s that marginal tax rates of 39.6 percent put no brakes on entrepreneurship or growth. And the modest limits Obama is proposing on the value of itemized deductions for mortgage interest and charitable donations puts their value exactly where they were under Ronald Reagan, which no one would say was a 'socialist' interlude for the U.S. economy. So everyone jumping up and down about how supposedly 'radical' Obama's plan is should calm down and look at the facts."

You can get to more links if you go directly to Andrew's blog post here:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/taxes-and-entre.html

More reading, less listening to assholes like Rush Limbaugh or Roger Kimball or Ann Coulter. As you can see, Andrew is still skeptical, but he's certainly not stupid enough to think that there does not exist the possibility that what worked during the Clinton years might work now. Because only idiot ideologues would ever try to argue that times were better during the eight years of Dubya than they were during the eight years of Clinton. And the situations that these two presidents left for their predecessors were light years apart.