How Far We've Come, and How Far We Have Yet to Go

Yesterday from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. was worldwide "Earth Hour." Participants - individuals, cities - were to turn off their lights in order to "celebrate" their love of the earth and to acknowledge what they consider man's part in the ruining of it. Mainly by our very existence.

The return to the dark ages is upon us. We are living in an age of inquisition and witch hunts - Galileo would find himself at home in our century. We are sinking fast into a morass of muddy thinking, stolen concepts (how would it be possible to celebrate the earth if we were not in fact upon it?) and outright hatred of humankind (again, a stolen concept - who other than humans can hate?) and all, and I mean all, of the history of human achievement.

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) wrote quite poignantly, in The Laws of God, The Laws of Man, of being

"a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made."

The lines are not, as some have usurped them, an existential cry about the benign neglect of the universe. Housman was a homosexual, and the first few lines of the poem announce his anguish:

"The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs."

Housman was also a classicist. One aspect of good poetry is its classical, that is, enduring, nature. We can easily transport Housman's words to our time. What do they have to do with yesterday's Earth Hour? Housman continues:

"Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire."

A cry for a laissez-faire attitude regarding Housman's sexual orientation could just as easily apply to today's public outcry against anything that could be even remotely responsible for the supposed wretched state of the earth, and the outcriers' demands to "wrest their neighbor(s) to their will." Cap-and-trade, anyone?



In terms of the supposed wretched state of the world economy, one only needs to witness the planned protests against the rich at next weeks' G20 summit (photo above), the employees (thugs) at 3M France who took their boss hostage as a protest against layoffs, the attack on the home of the CEO of the Bank of Scotland, and the death threats (garroting by piano wire was one) against anyone who works, or worked to fulfill the terms of his contract, at AIG. When CEO Liddy pleaded with Barney Frank at last week's hearings regarding bailout bonuses for assurances that the names of people who were given retention bonuses would not be made public, Frank could offer no such thing.

But I digress. Earth Hour. Time for another stolen concept. Have you guessed it yet? I'll help.

Earth Hour.

Hmmmm...I guess manatees invented the CLOCK.

The appeal to turn off your lights is a blatant slap at human achievement. A human invented the light bulb. It took other humans out of the dark. What happened then? The massive "exploitation" of the entire world population (except for maybe North Korea). Because of light, factories could be lit, and people could work (produce) at night. Factories could make more lamps to illuminate the darkest reaches. Because of light, people were no longer chained to the natural tempo of the rising and setting of the sun.

A new world resulted. People could live in a world that human achievement made. It is a world that proponents of Earth Hour are "stranger(s) and afraid" of.

Needless to say, I did not participate in Earth Hour. I'm a fan of human achievement! I embrace and celebrate it. And so, yesterday during Earth Hour, I did not sit in the dark. I did not weep for the rain forest or the polar ice caps.

I participated instead in "Human Achievement Hour." Organized by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, it promoted the celebration of humanity. All it asked was that participants keep their lights on. I did. And I watched television; a DVD recording of a show that is part of the family of one of the best TV series ever, Star Trek. I watched an episode of Voyager, the series with a woman as captain of an exploratory spaceship. I drank a glass of wine. I ate a delicious dinner - that I cooked on a gas stove. I dreamed of a world in which people understand that, according to Franklin Roosevelt, "Happiness lies in the joy of achievement, and the thrill of creative effort."

Imagine that.

I think I will.

But I'm afraid that day is long in coming. We are living in a "gimme" society. Producers will produce at their own risk. Money makers will bury their wealth in their back yards, or offshore. Achievers will achieve in the closet. But not if I can help it. I will do the opposite of what Housman resigns himself to in the closing lines of the poem:

"They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man."

I will not keep those foreign laws. I will make my world one of joy, one of freedom, one of achievement. I am proud to be Human.

The Blizzard of Oh-Nine

We heered it was a-comin'. We feered it was going to be big. It was.

Twern't nothin' to see for miles around but the snow.

Blowin' up the roads, off the rooftops, and under the eaves.



Winds so fierce they made a body fear the devil hisself was rattlin' their very bones.

Snow formin' drifts outside the winders...



Makin' it nigh-on impossible to see through.



Only a fool and his baby brother would go outdoors in this hell-ation.



It don't show no signs of quittin'

I reckon I best be gittin' back indoors.

The Sunday Chef - Coffee Cake

Who doesn't love coffee cake? The one I made is full of butter, sour cream, pecans, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, and cinnamon.



You know you want the recipe.

The Sunday Chef - March 2, 2009

Today's dish is a Viennese one - beefsteak with a vegetable and sour cream sauce. The ingredients are simple: bacon, carrots, celeriac (I used celery), carrots, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and a tender cut of beef. We had some of that tenderloin on hand, so I used that.

This is what the vegetables looked like in the pan:

bacon, peppers, onions, celery, onions, tomatoes, thyme

The vegetables are placed on top of the bacon strips, then the pan is covered so that everything can cook together for about 10 minutes. Once they are tender, broth is added so that they can steam a little bit more. The original recipe calls for the meat to be placed on top of this melange, but I browned it in a separate pan, put everything back together in the above pan, then made the sour cream gravy.

Here is how it looked before the gravy:

beef and vegetables

I made the gravy in the same pan in which I had browned the beef. Here is how everything looked on the plate:

The Finished Plate

I had also made blueberry scones for breakfast that morning. Here they are, on the baking sheet, ready to go into the oven.

Unbaked scones

And here they are, fresh out of the oven.

Blueberry Scones

That's it for this week. Let me know if you would like the recipes. Until next time, on The Sunday Chef!

The Sunday Chef - Remix

I added a post on Sunday the 21st but took it down because I was made to realize that I would be violating copyright by posting exact recipes. But I've decided that I can still post the photos of my efforts, and if any of you want the recipe, I can email it to you. As long as the recipe is not up here for the entire world (as if) to see, I think I'm in the clear.

Anyway, I thought of the new segment, The Sunday Chef, when I was organizing my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer before going shopping on Saturday. The fewer things I needed to buy, the better, so I started taking stock. After making three lists of all the items contained in the three food-holding areas, I made a fourth list of all the dishes I could make from these things. I had a lot more options than I realized. Like everyone else, I'm trying to keep my food budget low without sacrificing quality. And, we just like good food. Still, I needed some staples, so it was off to Costco.

I bought some boneless chicken breasts, a 5-pound whole, untrimmed tenderloin, mushrooms, lettuce, coffee, and a few other things - namely fruit. I went berry wild! Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

We had one portion of the tenderloin, cut into steaks, for dinner that night, along with a mushroom pilaf and a salad. Did you know that a 5-pound tenderloin can be cut to make three meals? At an original cost of $50, this comes to $16.66 per meal. Divide this by four people, and each person eats for a measley $4.16. The cost for Saturday's dinner was around $24, including wine. Way cheaper than in a restaurant for the same caliber meal.

Sunday we had Yakitori, a shiitake and brown rice soup, and a carrot salad - all Japanese-themed. For dessert, the berries! I made a berry tart. It was very simple, and the recipe came from a magazine that I bought at Costco, too. The recipe calls for puff pastry, cream cheese, vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, jelly or jam, and berries.

Ingredients

All that got turned into this:

The Final Product

Everything but the cream cheese and the puff pastry came from Costco, although one can purchase cream cheese there. About 10 pounds of it; but since we wanted to save a little room in our arteries for the fat in the puff pastry to go straight to our hearts, we decided against it.

In any event, if you want any of the recipies, let me know. Maybe we can start a recipe swap. See you next week on The Sunday Chef!

It's Eight O' Clock

Eight O' Clock Coffee

How many of you remember this? How many of you remember where it came from? That's right, the A & P - short for the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. The stores still exist, mostly in the northeast - Pennsylvania up through Connecticut. If there's no store near you, though, you can still shop online. Which is a good thing, especially if you like their coffee.

Consumer Reports recently ranked the Eight O' Clock 100% Colombian coffee #1 in a taste-test of 19 coffees. I didn't even know it still existed, but I found some yesterday at Target. Instead of the 100% Colombian beans, however, I bought the regular blend - it's the one I remember. When I was growing up, my mother always had a percolator full of it on tap, and she almost always had a cup of it in her hands.

This morning, I decided to make a pot for myself. I also decided to make something to go with it - a gluten-free vanilla cake. I had a mix that I had not tried, so this was a good time to test it. I also went berry-wild at Costco yesterday (more on that in my next post), and had some fresh raspberries to put on top of the cake.

Costco had strawberries, too.

While the coffee was brewing (I don't have a percolator), I decided to fancy things up a bit. I got out a china cup, and a nice plate. I would have a tea party of one (no relation to the one being planned in Chicago).

Cake and Coffee

It was a great success. The cake and raspberries were delicious and the coffee tasted as I had remembered. In fact, it reminded me of the kind of coffee one gets at fancy hotels or resorts. Which is not to everyone's taste, I know. Sort of on the mild side. Which was perfect for my breakfast retreat.

Three Cheers for Rick Santelli! Don't Drink the Water, or What if We Started a Revolution and Everybody Came?

Every morning while I am getting ready to go to work, I watch Squawkbox on CNBC. I especially look forward to the comments of the on-air commentator from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Rick Santelli. He is a straight-forward, no-nonsense kinda guy. I can always count on him for some clear-headed comments amid the current cultural fuzz. He is also a good showman, and fun to watch. I find myself talking over the ironing board back to the TV when he is on. "Yeah, that's right - you tell 'em, Rick." That sort of thing.

This morning, he outdid himself. Why? Because of his disgust at the climate in this country, which he said "rewards bad behaviour." He called for this administration, who he said is "so big on computers and technology" to put up a website to have people vote on the Internet, as a referendum, to see "if we really wanna subsidize the losers" or would we want to reward people who actually "carry the water" rather than just "drink the water!"

Santelli then announced his plans for a "Chicago Tea Party!" He said to all the capitalists, perhaps only half facetiously, who want to show up at Lake Michigan in July (on the 4th, presumably), he's going to start organizing. What will he dump into the lake? Santelli offered the idea of mortgage derivatives.

I have a better idea.

In 1773, the Sons of Liberty dumped 45 tons of tea brought into the colonies on the East India Company's ship, the Dartmouth, into the Boston Harbor. This symbolic act eventually proved to be the catalyst for the American Revolutionary War, which resulted in our independence from Great Britian - probably the single best example of philosophy in action - EVER.

I say Santelli should dump 45 tons of paper instead.

A ream of bond paper is 500 sheets, and weighs about 5 pounds. Which means that 1,588 sheets of paper, a little over three reams, weights a little more than 15 pounds; 15.88 to be exact (1,588 pages divided by 500 pages per ream equals 3.176 reams. Multiply that by 5 pounds per ream and you get 15.88 pounds for 1,588 pages). One ton, or 2,000 pounds, divided by 15.88 pounds per 1,588 pages, equals 125.944 three-ream sets. Multiply that by 45, and you get 56,667 three-ream sets.

Why did I pick the original number of 1,588 sheets of paper? That is the number of pages in President Obama's "Stimulus Package," that's why.

I say Santelli and his fellow capitalists (shall we call them the "New Sons of Liberty?") should dump 56,667 copies of that so-called stimulus monstrosity into Lake Michigan. It would be a symbolic act, as was the original. But it might just be the start of something big. Hell, it might even be the "beginning of the end."

Count me in.

Click here to see video.

Say Goodnight, Sydney (1992-2009)

Sixteen years ago our family made a new friend. We met her at the Guilford County Animal Shelter, where her previous owners had surrendered her, saying they "didn't have time for her." We gathered that much right away. She was filthy, her fur was atrociously matted in a tangled mess, and she was covered with fleas and fleabites.

But appearances meant nothing to this ten-pound combination of hope and tenacity. When the attendants brought her out for our inspection, she knew what she had to do. She stood up on her hind legs, and putting her front paws together as if to plead with us, danced around the lobby floor.

"Please, please, oh pretty-please! Take me home with you! I promise I will be a good girl and love you forever!" she said. If Cupid had shot an arrow straight through our hearts, we could not have been more smitten. So, home with us she went.

She kept her promise. She was a very good girl, and she sure did love us. She was a true-blue and trusted friend. She was steadfast and steady. Right up until the end. On Friday, February 13th, Sydney Oliver passed away. She died of kidney failure, a condition with which she had lived for the past year and a half.

Sydney was a Silky Terrier, a breed originally developed from a cross between a Yorkshire Terrier and an Australian Terrier, as a companion dog. That she certainly was. But as loving as she was to us, and to every person she ever met, she was also tough. She was a terrier, after all, a ratter. And even though she never killed anything (it was her late, great best friend Opal who had that honor, capturing and killing a vole - whose last sound was "eeek!") it wasn't for lack of trying. "Syd Vicious" was her nickname. Squirrels and chipmunks were her most abundant enemies, but she saved most of her animosity for cats. She hated cats. Especially this one:

Syd and Kitty

This one got the best of her. He swaggered up onto our back porch one day, sidled right through the open back door, and headed straight for Sydney. Cats are like that, I'm told. They can pick out a cat-hater from miles away. He slid over to Syd, and rubbed himself up one side of her and down the other. She was petrified, trembling with anxiety. How she wanted to put this guy in his place! But she knew she couldn't, because we would not have approved. She kept her promise. She was a good girl.

But that didn't stop her from giving him what for, from the inside of the sliding-glass door, once the cat was outside again.

Her killer instinct surprised us once. It was triggered in the summer of 2007, when we were returning to Greensboro from a trip to Florida to see friends before we moved to Colorado. It was late at night, and Sydney was asleep in the bed we had arranged for her in the well of the front seat (we know, not the safest place). The unmistakable odor of road-kill skunk suddenly saturated the car. Before we could open the windows to aerate, the sound of her ancestors rolled up out of the darkness: "Grrrrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrrrr, rrrrrrrr." That musk meant something! It was a good thing for that skunk that it was already dead. Because if Syd Vicious had caught up with it, well, my money would have been on the dog.

In her younger days, Syd loved to chase balls. She ran after them at light speed. She was so fast, we couldn't even see her feet moving, she was just a blur of happiness and purpose. She loved chicken, peanut butter, luncheon meat, rice, peas, cheese crackers, barbecued ribs, ice cream, and fortune cookies. Syd had recently developed a fondness - almost a craving - for eggnog. She was disappointed when the seasonal supplies went off the shelves.

Syd especially loved sunbathing.

Sydney loved her daily walks. During this past year, when I was away at work, she would anticipate my return, which meant it was time for our walk together. I would come in the front door and she would be waiting for me on one of the living room steps. Halfway up the stairs was the place she sat. Lately, she would sleep during most of the day, but when her internal clock told her it was time for me to come home, she was ready.

She would run up and down the hall, stand on her hind legs, put her front paws together, and dance around. "Please, please, oh pretty please! I've been waiting all day! Won't you please take me on a walk with you!"

And we did. Because that was just one of the promises we made to her.

Goodnight, Sydney

No Pretty Pictures Today

In Monday's post I mentioned that I had seen what appeared to be a coyote carcass in the frozen pond where I go on my lunch hours. The photo above is one piece of the evidence for that conclusion. It looked a little like coyote fur.


This is another piece, the ribcage that was above the ice. As you can see, the pond is no longer frozen.





I took these photos yesterday, when I went back to the pond to investigate a little more. It turns out it was not a coyote.

It was a deer.

It may have wandered out onto the pond when it was frozen, and fallen through the ice, becoming trapped. But the carcass is close to the shore, and the water is shallow there, so it is difficult to say. Whatever happened to the deer, it is a reminder that nature doesn't allow for any missteps.


We should all be careful of our own.