anniemade

heart

2009-08-21T16:05:00.005-04:00

bittman and anniemade, on a wavelength

2009-02-18T11:39:00.002-05:00

below, i have pasted an article from today's new york times. mark bittman is writing about grains and breakfast and polenta. as always, he is entertaining and full of great ideas.
this weekend i used my new appliances, eep! eep!, to makes things like a giant pot o' grains (grandma's grain recipe from 101 cookbooks) and a polenta pizza (from the new moosewood cookbook). i think that somehow mark and i got, like, all aligned cosmically, or something. amazing.
anyhoo, the grains were fabulous. totally worth doing. i ate them sweet (brown sugar, butter, cream), savory (base for turkey chili), and as stuffing for peppers (currently in the crock-pot.) the recipe says that it will feed a family of four for a week. apparently, the man and i eat a lot, because we are officially on day three and they're gone. oh well, delish and good for you. what could be better?
polenta pizza, also a winner. and easy. my half, spinach, peppers, onions, garlic, goat cheese, cheddar. his? all the same, add sausage. make it. it's easy.
enough.
a

February 18, 2009
The Minimalist
Your Morning Pizza
By MARK BITTMAN

THERE are many reasons to rethink breakfast.

Maybe you’re trying to get more whole grains into your life, figuring they’re more beneficial (and cheaper) than the alternatives, or that they’ll help you lose weight or postpone hunger. Or you’re sick of sweet breakfasts. Trying to cut down on eggs. Looking for something new.

All of those were reasons for me when, a year or two ago, I started eating things at breakfast that you would more likely associate with dinner: black olives, quinoa, miso, dried tomatoes, sesame oil, bok choy, wheat berries, roasted carrots.

The foundation of most of these breakfasts has been whole grains, and making them a morning staple has done me nothing but good. I’m eating more of them, I’ve lost weight, the morning meal “lasts” longer before I’m hungry again.

The differences between the ways our bodies handle whole and highly processed grains may be arguable, but surely it would be foolhardy to pretend that a stack of doughnuts or a bowl of Sugar Pops is the nutritional equivalent of a bowl of bulgur or cooked oats.

But even putting aside the health argument, the narrow spectrum of highly sweetened morning food is limiting and ultimately boring.

At first glance, the savory options may seem just as limited. But everybody eats savory breakfasts at least occasionally, from bacon and eggs to bagels and lox, dim sum and the breakfast burrito. And, dare I say it, the Egg McMuffin. Then there are dinner leftovers — like cold pizza — and the occasional brunch dish.

Once I started looking around, in fact, I didn’t feel limited at all. It could be that my breakfast preferences stem from my mother, who served oatmeal and cream of wheat with nothing more than butter and salt — no brown sugar, no maple syrup. I thought this was the only way to go until I got out into the world a little and found out how unusual her approach was.

Or it could be that I’ve traveled enough to learn the joys of jook, the Chinese rice porridge also known as congee, which is among my favorite ways to start the day even when seasoned with nothing more than scallions, soy and chopped peanuts; of the kipper, baked beans, broiled mushrooms, tomatoes and other staples of the traditional English breakfast; of cucumbers, feta and olives, which I ate daily in Turkey; of ful medames, the lemon-kissed fava concoction of Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East; and, one glorious day about 10 years ago, of kao tom, the Thai version of jook, loaded with sausage, eggs and nam pla.

Everything is fair game at breakfast — and long has been, of course — but to most Americans it doesn’t seem appropriate to start making what amounts to dinner at seven in the morning. It’s one thing to eat leftover pizza, pasta, roast chicken, soup, whatever; it’s entirely another to start cooking them while your tea or coffee is still brewing.

It does feel natural, however, to see grains as the basis for a savory breakfast. Grains are the foundation of many traditional breakfasts, like cereal, toast and porridge; they can be fast or prepared in advance (more on this in a moment), they require little or no attention, and they’re satisfying. Their flavor is also neutral enough to be the starting point for a host of dishes that can be as simple as oatmeal with scallions and soy (or olive oil and tapenade, or chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, or miso and seaweed), or as complex as polenta “pizza” with greens and pancetta, an unusual and spectacular weekend breakfast dish.

About speed and the rushed-morning syndrome: I have long maintained that instant or even “quick” oatmeal is a hoax, given that rolled oats require only a few minutes to make, that even steel-cut oats can be cooked pretty quickly, and that any grain can be made “instant” by grinding it a bit finer in a good blender or food processor. There are other tricks that make whole grains faster (pre-cook halfway, soak overnight or use a pressure cooker, for example), but in the last few years I realized that even these aren’t crucial.

That’s because any whole grain can be cooked ahead of time in any quantity. The easiest technique is simply to boil a couple of cups of grains as you would pasta, in abundant water, until done and then refrigerate. If, as happens with finely ground grains, the cooked grain sets up in the refrigerator (often desirable, in the case of polenta), you just whisk in a little water before reheating, which you can do on top of the stove or in the microwave.

Uncovering this little-known fact has made the savory, grain-based breakfast a matter of routine for me. I do polenta with butter and Parmesan; steel-cut oats with peanut butter (sometimes with hot sauce); and, a recent favorite, brown rice with dried mushrooms and dried tomatoes.

In addition to the polenta “pizza,” and the wheat berry-soy-scallions bowl, which I eat in one variation or another at least once a week, you might consider this coconut oat pilaf, a spicy, aromatic dish that will change the way you think about oatmeal. As for the wild rice and quinoa dish, a kind of stuffing for breakfast, this — like the traditional post-Thanksgiving meal — is a perfect place for leftovers. As is breakfast in general.

Here are a few more fast ideas for savory, mostly whole-grain breakfasts (some of which come from readers of my blog, Bitten — for these I say a general “thanks”):

Breakfast risotto I can’t think of a leftover risotto I wouldn’t love at breakfast. But if you’re starting from scratch, fry sausage or pancetta in a little oil; add dried tomatoes, garlic, and onion, then rice. Make the risotto. Finish with cheese, parsley or sage, lemon juice.

Congee Best in a slow cooker. Use about one cup rice to six cups liquid — stock mixed with water, or all water. Cook with a little salt, maybe a bit of meat, until very soft and soupy. Top with dried or cooked shrimp, scallions, cilantro, bean sprouts, chopped peanuts, soy. You can use brown rice, too.

Saffron chickpeas Cook chickpeas in abundant water with garlic and a pinch of saffron; when they’re almost done, add salt and chorizo, along with a bit of pimentón if you like. Serve over barley, polenta, rice or flatbread. Other chickpea breakfasts: falafel, hummus.

Whole wheat flatbread With Parmesan or olive oil and rosemary.

Migas Essentially stir-fried bread: Take 1/2-inch pieces of good whole wheat or rye and cook it in (lots of) olive oil with garlic, crumbled chorizo, or whatever else you like, until the bread is crisp.

Stir-fry Any one you like. I do bok choy with tofu frequently, over whatever cooked grain I have around.

The sandwich Whole wheat bread, avocado, tomato. Mayo is optional; lemon juice is also good.

Grits or polenta A godsend with Parmesan or other cheese, lots of black pepper, maybe a bit of butter. Or with shrimp sautéed in butter. Or baked, as in the polenta pizza recipe, but with eggs in place of the greens or tomatoes and mozzarella. Or with eggs and greens, especially kale.

Vaguely Japanese Bake leftover brown rice with eggs; drizzle with sesame oil and soy sauce, garnish with toasted nori.

in a nutshell

2009-01-25T09:00:00.002-05:00

so, here is a quick summary of the trip to dc...

day 1. drive to portland, deposit cats. drive to boston.
day 2. drive to connecticut. lunch with t.l. jones, into brooklyn. dinner with them all. woop! oysters and wine, my friends. in brooklyn, the ceiling cries.
day 3. run around like crazy in the city, leave around 9 with asa and beth to drive to dc.
day 4. go to concert with sweet tickets at the lincoln memorial. transfer to other house out by american university.
day 5. go to finance committee breakfast, the zoo, reception for mainers at the inauguration.
day 6. inauguration day! try and fail to get into the inauguration, damn those blue tickets. end up standing by a fence with all sorts of really great people. party at chellie's house, nap, a trip to the eastern ball. the big gq vs. the cops.
day 7. drive to nyc with asa and beth and elliot. in a golf. train to ct to see t.l.jones. drive to boston. sleep, finally.
day 8. drive to portland, fetch cats, groceries, book it. make the middle boat, woop!

ok! yay! it was great.
a

we are alive and at the inauguration

2009-01-20T16:02:00.004-05:00

and we made the portland press herald! woop!
we didn't actually get to see the inauguration, but we did hear it. it turned out to be a little bit of anarchy. the blue section basically didn't take anyone, so, it was a crazy day. i was sad, but oh well. and, we are still going to the ball.
details to follow! woop!

snow-shoe-ing

2009-01-14T20:56:00.004-05:00

\annie b. and the bunny snowshoeing. by a rock.

so, it's official

2009-01-13T12:54:00.003-05:00

the big gq and i are inauguration bound. hoo-hah! i know it's official because the man just purchased a tuxedo for the ball. he clearly means business.
in other news, i am eating (and loving) potato salad. i almost spelled that with an "e", who am i, dan quayle?
*image from www.bensakoguchi.com

camden fire department rescues baby jesus

2009-01-08T16:04:00.002-05:00

from village soup, title is a link to the full story:

CAMDEN (Jan 5): When the baby Jesus figurine went missing from a nativity scene at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church on Chestnut Street in Camden over Christmas, the Rev. John Rafter said he was not interested in trying to search for who did it or why, he just hoped the figure would turn up and be safely returned to the church.

so, here it is, almost 2009

2008-12-31T12:04:00.003-05:00

so, i guess it is time for me to start paying attention to this blog again. i have recently begun to renew my knitting obsession, which i think is a sign that i finally have a handle on this commuting/island living thing. i mean, there are always things to work, aren't there? namely the kitchen, but that's a whole different story.

things that i'd like to focus on in the coming year (maybe if i write them down i'll pay more attention to them? cough cough.)
1. learning to be more responsible with my resources. (all types... money, food, time, energy, etc.)
2. focusing on preparation for each week, like, having healthy foods prepared ahead of time. maybe this one is really learn to think ahead.
3. living more sustainably/green what have you.
4. making more stuff. everything that i can make, i'd like to. knit, sew, stamp, cook, bake, even cleaning products and personal cleansers.... we'll see about that.

ok, those goals aren't too lofty, right? ha.
the only thing that i'm certain will happen in 2009 is my 10 year high school reunion. isn't that insane? i just can't even believe it.

anyhoo, here i am signing off for now. i am pledging to update more often in 2009. but, we all know how these things are.

feliz ano nuevo!

vote vote vote, text fom the daily kos

2008-11-04T12:10:00.001-05:00

*My whole day is devoted to this one moment in history, i never want to look back and regret that i was not involved in one of the most important moments in United States history.

*Considering that there are some that wait ....and sometimes fight a lifetime for the opportunity to vote, I will wait happily for as long as it takes to vote for my chosen candidate. I urge everyone to do the same!

*You take your pick: A few hours, or a few years. I’ll be voting tomorrow. Guaranteed.

*I’ve already waited 8 years. One day is nothing.

*Even though I’m 9 and 1/2 months pregnant and Obama will win California with or without my vote, I’ll wait in line as long as it takes. This election is too important to miss, and I don’t care how long and uncomfortable the wait is - I’m voting. It would be a lot more uncomfortable for me to sit by for the next four years knowing that I let my voice go unheard.

*I think if the veterns can do 3 one year tours of duty in Iraq, I can wait on line 24 hours if it will help get them home.

*I am prepared and willing to wait all day. I have cleared my calendar to make sure I can spend the whole day. And the time I don’t spend waiting or voting, I will spend poll watching and holding signs. This is far too important not to make a personal sacrifice to make sure my vote counts. And, as an Army wife, one day of work loss is meaningless compared to the days my husband has and will spend on deployment. To all within the sound of your voice: Get out and vote!

2008-09-06T11:16:00.003-04:00

milky white goodness

2008-08-12T10:34:00.003-04:00

Published on Monday, August 11, 2008 by Portland Press Herald (Maine)
Maine Dairy ‘Somewhat Vindicated’ As Monsanto Leaves Bovine Hormone Business
by Noel K. Gallagher

PORTLAND, Maine - Oakhurst Dairy owner Stanley Bennett welcomed the news that Monsanto was divesting itself of its controversial dairy hormone business, after taking on the agribusiness giant in an expensive David-and-Goliath legal battle five years ago.“We feel somewhat vindicated, given our position,” Bennett said. “I’d like to think that, in some small part, we played a role in that decision.”

The lawsuit centered on Oakhurst Dairy’s label, which read: “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones Used.”

Monsanto, the St. Louis-based biotechnology company known primarily for its genetically engineered seeds, sued Oakhurst, alleging the label misled consumers into thinking there’s something wrong with milk from cows treated with the hormone.

After months of talks, the dairy kept the label, but added a disclaimer: “FDA states: No significant difference in milk from cows treated with artificial growth hormones.”

Oakhurst was the first dairy in the nation to label its milk as hormone-free, something that is increasingly common. In the past year, Starbucks announced it would start using only hormone-free milk, and Wal-Mart announced its house brand of milk would be hormone-free.

At the time of the lawsuit, Bennett said he worried that people would think Oakhurst had caved in. That hasn’t been the case.

“Universally, people have congratulated us that we stuck by our guns, because we still have the label,” he said.

Although Monsanto settled with Oakhurst five years ago, the labeling issue has never gone away for the company. Most recently, several state legislatures have taken up the issue. All have essentially repeated the same argument as in the Oakhurst case, with Monsanto arguing for a disclaimer on labels for hormone-free milk.

“Some consumers prefer to purchase milk from cows that have not been treated with (growth hormone). Monsanto respects this choice, but we want to make sure that consumers have all of the information they need to make this decision,” the company said in an e-mail statement.

The statement describes milk processors as using the labeling issue “to profit from unfounded fears.”

Organic dairy farmer Spencer Aitel said the Oakhurst lawsuit was a major victory for consumers.

“Monsanto is really used to throwing their muscle around, and for Stan Bennett to choose to fight them, that was an awesome thing,” said Aitel, who owns Two Loons Farm in South China with his wife, Paige Tyson. “Stan listened to the consumers, and the consumer here has managed to change the industry, and you don’t often get that chance.”

Cheryl Beyeler, director of the Maine Dairy and Nutrition Council, agreed the lawsuit was a turning point.

“There wasn’t a lot of consumer knowledge about (the growth hormone). I think initially it was a very smart marketing technique,” she said.

With food recalls and other scares, the issue is becoming more important to consumers.

“They don’t like the idea that things are being put into our food supply that they don’t know about or have control over,” Beyeler said.

The growth hormone, a synthetic version of a natural substance, can boost milk production by 5 percent to 15 percent. Despite the FDA’s position that there is no difference in the milk, critics argue that the hormones increase stress for the animals.

Maine’s three major dairies, Oakhurst, Hood and Garelick Farms, all require that their farmers not use hormones, and they pay the farmers a premium for the milk.

“People want to know where their food is coming from, and more than that, they want to know how far away it was grown, who grew it and how they can support those farmers,” said Heather Spaulding, associate director of Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

“Labeling has always been important to our constituent base,” Spaulding said. “(Consumers) want to be reassured that they know where their food is coming from and that the label means something, that there is integrity in what is on the label.”

At the time, the lawsuit was very difficult, Bennett acknowledged.

“It did take our attention away from the day-to-day business, and it was very expensive,” he said. “But it raised our profile, and it made us think about how we really do have not just a marketing interest but an obligation to do what’s best for dairy consumers.”

In the years since, many dairies have gone “hormone-free.” In fact, Bennett says Oakhurst has largely lost its competitive advantage.

“In a sense, we’ve become a victim of our own success,” Bennett said. “We’ve lost that hook for our consumers.”

Today, the company describes its label as “America’s first farmers’ pledge.”

The Maine Dairy Industry Association doesn’t have an official position on use of the growth hormone, because it represents farmers on both sides of the issue, said director Julie Marie Bickford.

“A lot of this issue is about marketing and perception,” she said. “It’s been a positive thing because it promoted a Maine product, but it took away from Maine farmers a production tool.”

Some farmers are still upset about that.

“It’s sort of the principle of the thing,” Bickford said. “We’re told to get more efficient and use modern technology, and this was an example of that. The people who used it really loved it. Then they were told they couldn’t do it. I have some farmers who are still very upset about it. And some farmers who are resigned to it - they grumbled, but they did it.”

Aitel agreed that the dairy community is split over the issue, describing it as an “industrywide identity crisis.”

“There are a lot of farmers who don’t like the idea that milk can be set apart from other milk,” he said. “It was important that Stan Bennett and the family stood up for the idea that there is a difference in producing milk.”

Bennett said that despite the lawsuit being the biggest controversy to ever hit the dairy, it isn’t something he dwells on.

“It has come and gone, and we deal with the here and now,” Bennett said.

how neat is this?

2008-08-05T13:08:00.001-04:00

still life in island living

2008-07-22T12:21:00.001-04:00

ralph.

2008-06-25T13:14:00.001-04:00

Slate Magazine
green room
A Tick's Life
The first in a series on revolting creatures.
By Constance Casey
Posted Tuesday, June 24, 2008, at 8:04 AM ET

Ticks, which live on blood and nothing but blood, are loathsome to us. We strongly prefer not to share our blood, unless the act is voluntary and we get juice and doughnuts afterward.

It's good that ticks are loathsome, because getting them detached from us as quickly as possible is the best way to avoid being infected by the diseases they carry. Ticks not only extract blood, they ooze pathogens from their salivary glands into the wound they've sliced with their tiny claws and penetrated with their barbed mouthparts. Normal human beings don't sit around and watch with interest for days and days as this process takes place. (Undisturbed, a tick could happily sup for up to a week.)

It's generally known the danger these small creatures pose, particularly the deer tick—Ixodes scapularis. This tick's saliva is the medium for delivery of a particular spirochete, or corkscrew-shaped bacterium, called Borrelia burgdorferi—famous for causing Lyme disease. I managed to locate Willy Burgdorfer, the scientist who identified the Lyme spirochete in 1982, and asked, "Why did God make ticks?"

"I don't have the answer," Dr. Burgdorfer said. "There are a lot of things we assign to the good Lord and we ask the question, why? All I can advise is to check yourself for ticks and remove them fast."

We know about the tick's danger to us, but we haven't thought much about how the ticks themselves survive life's competitive drama—how they reproduce and how they die.

The tick's life is simple, fairly boring, but urgent. No host, no blood meal, and the tick dies. There's only one blood meal for each of the three stages of a tick's life—larva, nymph, and adult. At each stage, every one of the tick's behaviors has been honed by evolution to sense a victim and latch on.

Deer ticks don't find the mice, deer, or us by sight; they have no eyes. On the tips of their front legs they have sensors, the Haller's organs, that allow them to detect, from as far away as a few yards, the heat given off by warm-blooded animals and the molecules of carbon dioxide that we mammals exhale. Blow into a tube of ticks at a lab, and you'll see them begin to wave like excited fans at a Justin Timberlake concert.

Exhale on those other bloodsuckers, fleas, and they jump. The good news about ticks is that they cannot jump or fly. The bad news is that if you find a tick on your scalp, it has probably crawled up your body from about sock-top level. Ominously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises us to check for ticks between our legs and then in the belly button.

When the "mammal nearby" message is received, a tick's two front legs, equipped with claws that act like grappling hooks, thrust into the air while its three pairs of back legs hold on to a blade of grass, a twig, or a leaf. (Ticks are arachnids, with eight legs, in the family of spiders, scorpions, and mites. Insects have six legs. If you want to impress tick researchers, tell them that you know a tick in larva stage has only six legs.) A host brushes against a tick, and the tick hitches a ride.

He or she roams for a few hours looking for the right spot to attach. Then the two claws make the incision, and in goes the hypostome, shaped like a harpoon, with backward-facing barbs.

The tick then secretes a cementlike substance from its mouth, which glues it to the host and dissolves days later when the tick is sated and ready to drop off. Tick saliva also contains an anticoagulant to keep a host's blood flowing.

There they are, imbibing and drooling; it's the drooling that puts us at risk. Perhaps we should sympathize because the tick itself is a host. (We, too, by the way, carry spirochetes—harmless ones, in our mouths.) The parasitic spirochete sits in the tick's midgut until the blood flows in. Then, stimulated by the blood's nutrients and warmth, the newly expanded crowd of spirochetes migrates to the tick's salivary glands.

Entomologists estimate it takes more than 24 hours for the spirochete to move up and out, thus the importance of checking your body for embedded ticks and removing them as soon as possible.

An adult tick isn't as dangerous to us as a nymph, which is tiny enough to be mistaken for a freckle on light skin. The tiny adolescent is also likely to have fed on a mouse, the most efficient reservoir for the dangerous spirochete. (Though heavily infested with B. burgdorferi, mice don't get sick. In any case, no one has heard mice complain of fever, aching joints, fatigue, rash, and mood disorders.)

The male adult tick expands his repertoire to include finding females. He looks, logically enough, on the biggest moving mammalian blood supply around—a deer. Deer are in one way relatively innocent in the Lyme disease story—they have components in their blood that prevent the spirochetes from surviving. But they are also orgy enablers; if there were fewer deer, there would be fewer ticks, because the ticks would have a harder time finding one another.

Male and female engage in an impressive combination of gourmandise and lust. Maybe not lust exactly; for the female, it's more like being interrupted at breakfast by the UPS guy, with a package of perishables. Here's the setup: The female has her hypostome planted in the deer, imbibing. A long meal is the cue to her body to produce her 2,000 or so eggs. The male approaches from below, then uses his mouthparts to pluck a packet of sperm called a spermatophore from his genital pore. He delivers the packet into his partner's genital pore with his hypostome, the same barbed hollow needle that he sticks into mammals. The male frequently remains attached, mouthparts locked in the female genital aperture, to prevent other males from linking up with his chosen mate. After the female drops to the ground, full of blood and sperm, she lays her eggs, and then the fun is definitely over. She begins to atrophy. Her intestines spill out in a yellow blob. "When does the male die?" I asked Durland Fish, who studies tick-borne pathogens at the Yale University School of Public Health. "When he runs out of energy or sperm, whatever comes first," Dr. Fish replied.

So death for the tick comes from starvation, dehydration, egg-laying, or old age, rather than from predation. We don't seem to have any natural allies in tick control. It's not well known what kind of animal eats ticks, though the larvae are vulnerable to fungi. Dr. Fish scornfully dismissed the guinea hen as a form of pest control—"a Christie Brinkley-ism." (The former model advocates buying a flock of the cackling black-and-white birds to clear your yard of ticks.)

I repeated the question of why God made ticks for Dr. Fish. He responded with a growl to what he took to be my facetious tone: "Nobody makes them. They're just there. Their object, like ours, is to make a living any way they can."

And the tick's place in the great web of life? "They transmit disease. They control population."

"Including us?" I asked.

"Whatever is susceptible to the disease."

Next installment: Vultures!
Constance Casey, a former newspaper editor, was a New York City Department of Parks gardener for five years. E-mail gardening questions to gardening@slate.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2193879/

not the banana!

2008-06-18T13:45:00.001-04:00

from today's nytimes...
Yes, We Will Have No Bananas

Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAN KOEPPEL
Published: June 18, 2008

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel.

The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. But something larger is going on that will affect prices for years to come.

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening. The banana barons also marketed their product in ways that had never occurred to farmers or grocers before, by offering discount coupons, writing jingles and placing bananas in schoolbooks and on picture postcards. They even hired doctors to convince mothers that bananas were good for children.

Once bananas had become widely popular, the companies kept costs low by exercising iron-fisted control over the Latin American countries where the fruit was grown. Workers could not be allowed such basic rights as health care, decent wages or the right to congregate. (In 1929, Colombian troops shot down banana workers and their families who were gathered in a town square after church.) Governments could not be anything but utterly pliable. Over and over, banana companies, aided by the American military, intervened whenever there was a chance that any “banana republic” might end its cooperation. (In 1954, United Fruit helped arrange the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala.) Labor is still cheap in these countries, and growers still resort to heavy-handed tactics.

The final piece of the banana pricing equation is genetics. Unlike apple and orange growers, banana importers sell only a single variety of their fruit, the Cavendish. There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas — most of them in Africa and Asia — but except for an occasional exotic, the Cavendish is the only banana we see in our markets. It is the only kind that is shipped and eaten everywhere from Beijing to Berlin, Moscow to Minneapolis.

By sticking to this single variety, the banana industry ensures that all the bananas in a shipment ripen at the same rate, creating huge economies of scale. The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality and universally affordable.

But there’s a difference between a banana and a Big Mac: The banana is a living organism. It can get sick, and since bananas all come from the same gene pool, a virulent enough malady could wipe out the world’s commercial banana crop in a matter of years.

This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.

By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.

Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.

In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. Getting used to life without bananas will take some adjustment. What other fruit can you slice onto your breakfast cereal?

But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.

Dan Koeppel is the author of “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.”

bamboooooooooooo

2008-06-11T11:53:00.001-04:00

the green lantern
Bamboo and You
Are hardwood floors a crime against the Earth?
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 7:26 AM ET

A flooring salesman recently tried to sell me on the greenness of bamboo. He claimed that producing bamboo planks is more sustainable than the methods used to create oak or maple floors. Is there really that much of a difference?

Bamboo does have loads of green potential. But as is usually the case when it comes to crops, much depends on how the bamboo is managed, harvested, and ultimately made into flooring. Many producers assume that consumers won't pay attention to such behind-the-scenes details and will be dazzled by smooth-talking salesman who toss around words like "sustainability" and "sequestration." It's up to you to do your homework and avoid being cajoled in such a manner.

As most Botany 101 students learn, bamboo is widely regarded as one of the planet's fastest-growing plants—some species can grow up to three feet in a single day. That means that the plants can be harvested and regrown in a jiffy: A bamboo plant reaches full maturity within three to five years, versus 40 to 50 years for many species of hardwood trees. If culled correctly, so that a viable portion of the stalk and roots remain, the bamboo needn't be replanted; it can simply regenerate.

According to bamboo advocates, this rapid cycle translates into increased carbon sequestration, since fast growing trees (such as the eucalyptus) absorb carbon more quickly than the likes of oaks and pines. (Though it's technically a grass, bamboo is usually compared to trees because of its woodlike properties.) The World Wildlife Federation estimates that an acre of bamboo can store 6.88 metric tons of carbon per year, about 70 percent more than an acre of hardwoods. If that bamboo is turned into flooring or furniture that won't rot due to the treatments applied, then that carbon can remain fixed for decades.

The last point in bamboo's favor is its robustness. The plant will grow in a variety of climates and soils and can flourish unaided by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or gas-guzzling machinery. Bamboo producers also claim that the plant's extensive root systems prevent soil erosion, though the Lantern has yet to see evidence supporting this contention from sources uninvolved in the flooring trade.

But bamboo's environmental edge can evaporate if the stuff is heedlessly grown. Given the recent vogue for bamboo among Western consumers, producers in Asia (specifically China's Hunan Province) have been aggressive with their planting, often at the expense of old woodlands and their attendant ecosystems. To goose their yields, these plantations employ plenty of fertilizers and pesticides, thereby negating one of bamboo's primary advantages. And when the bamboo is converted into planks, the factories often use glues with high levels of formaldehyde, which can have serious health consequences for consumers (particularly those with asthma or severe allegies). Reading the label usually can't shed much light on these concerns. There just isn't much international oversight of China's bamboo plantations. While there are plenty of hardwood operations whose sustainability is verified by the Forest Stewardship Council, the Lantern knows of only one bamboo flooring company that has obtained FSC certification.

Manufacturers of hardwood flooring also point out that bamboo planks cause lots of fossil-fuel emissions when they're transported to the United States from China. The Lantern isn't totally swayed by this line of argument, however: While giant container ships certainly burn tons of fuel, they are also fairly efficient due to their massive capacities. (The shipping company Maersk, citing Sweden's Network for Transport and the Environment, contends that its ships are actually cleaner than trains, trucks, or cargo planes.) As a result, your specific geographic location will play a role in your flooring's transportation-related impact. If you live in California, shipping bamboo from China may result in less fossil-fuel consumption than, say, trucking in maple flooring from the Northeast.

The bottom line is that the onus is on you to ask questions before you fork over thousands of dollars for new flooring. Don't automatically assume that bamboo is the environmental winner, especially if there's a locally sourced, FSC-certified hardwood option. If you are tempted by bamboo, don't settle for the salesman's patter about his product's wonders—get in touch with the manufacturer and inquire about how the source material is raised and harvested. Some of the greenest bamboo doesn't come from monoculture plantations but, rather, from operations such as Madagascar Bamboo, which harvests naturally occurring plants from the edges of farms. (The farmers used to think of the bamboo as a valueless annoyance.)

Also look into whether the floors use low-formaldehyde glue. Don't be shy about asking for test results—reputable flooring companies should offer glues that emit less than 0.01 parts per million of the substance. (You'll probably have to pay around 75 cents more per square foot for such flooring, but it may be worth it.)

Above all, be sure to walk on an installed bamboo floor before forking over your hard-earned cash. There is a lot of variety in the feel of bamboo flooring, depending on how carefully the material has been treated and the finish applied. You want to make sure you're laying down planks that will grace your home for decades, not something you'll simply rip up in favor of maple five years down the line. As always in environmental quandaries such as these, the greenest decision is the one that will result in the least amount of turnover.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this space every Tuesday.
Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, is out now.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2193239/

is my lunch causing global warming?

2008-06-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

jeez louise

2008-05-22T15:31:00.000-04:00

Published on Thursday, May 22, 2008 by New York Daily News
New York 8th-Graders Boycott Practice Exam But Teacher May Get Ax
by Juan Gonzalez

Students at a South Bronx middle school have pulled off a stunning boycott against standardized testing.0522 03 1

More than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx - virtually the entire eighth grade - refused to take last Wednesday’s three-hour practice exam for next month’s statewide social studies test.

Instead, the students handed in blank exams.

Then they submitted signed petitions with a list of grievances to school Principal Maria Lopez and the Department of Education.

“We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year,” Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. “They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”

According to the petition, they are sick and tired of the “constant, excessive and stressful testing” that causes them to “lose valuable instructional time with our teachers.”

School administrators blamed the boycott on a 30-year-old probationary social studies teacher, Douglas Avella.

The afternoon of the protest, the principal ordered Avella out of the classroom, reassigned him to an empty room in the school and ordered him to have no further contact with students.

A few days later, in a reprimand letter, Lopez accused Avella of initiating the boycott and taking “actions [that] caused a riot at the school.”

The students say their protest was entirely peaceful. In only one class, they say, was there some loud clapping after one exam proctor reacted angrily to their boycott.

This week, Lopez notified Avella in writing that he was to attend a meeting today for “your end of the year rating and my possible recommendation for the discontinuance of your probationary service.”

“They’re saying Mr. Avella made us do this,” said Johnny Cruz, 15, another boycott leader. “They don’t think we have brains of our own, like we’re robots. We students wanted to make this statement. The school is oppressing us too much with all these tests.”

Two days after the boycott, the students say, the principal held a meeting with all the students to find out how their protest was organized.

Avella on Tuesday denied that he urged the students to boycott tests.

Yes, he holds liberal views and is critical of the school system’s increased emphasis on standardized tests, Avella said, but the students decided to organize the protest after weeks of complaining about all the diagnostic tests the school was making them take.

“My students know they are welcome in my class to have open discussions,” Avella said. “I teach them critical thinking.”

“Some teachers implied our graduation ceremony would be in danger, that we didn’t have the right to protest against the test,” said Tia Rivera, 14. “Well, we did it.”

Lopez did not return calls for comment.

“This guy was far over the line in a lot of the ways he was running his classroom,” said Department of Education spokesman David Cantor. “He was pulled because he was inappropriate with the kids. He was giving them messages that were inappropriate.”

Several students defended Avella. They say he had made social studies an exciting subject for them.

“Now they’ve taken away the teacher we love only a few weeks before our real state exam for social studies,” Tatiana Nelson said. “How does that help us?”

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

this is the coolest!

2008-05-15T13:50:00.000-04:00

check it out.

clean that s***

2008-04-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

From Plenty Mag

Green spring cleaning: the bath

Washroom, loo, powder room, toilet—whatever you call the bathroom, it's probably most people's least favorite room to clean. While scrubbing away soap scum and stains won't ever put a smile on our faces, we do enjoy using green products that won't harm our health or the environment.

For instance, conventional bathroom cleaners often rely on chlorine bleach, which is caustic to inhale or touch and turns into toxic organochlorines in our waterways. If combined with ammonia, which gives off acrid fumes and is highly poisonous if swallowed, chlorine produces toxic chloramine gas. Hey, accidents could happen in a cleaning frenzy, so best to avoid these ingredients.

Spring is the perfect time to buy greener cleaners or mix your own. Do remember, though, to ventilate well and wear gloves as you work.

Glass and surface cleaners (including windows, mirrors)

For quick grime removal and sparkle, we recommend this easy all-purpose recipe: Mix ¼ cup white vinegar and a few drops of plant-based liquid soap with a quart of warm water. Shake in spray bottle, spritz and wipe with a clean rag.

Porcelain and tile

For more persistent dirt, a good D.I.Y. soft scrub is baking soda moistened with liquid soap and white vinegar. To toughen, add washing soda, a natural mineral product found in supermarket laundry aisles. Or, dip half a lemon in Borax, another mineral-based laundry cleaner, and rub the encrusted lemon face on tubs and tiles. Scents your bath with natural fragrance, too!

To buy, the following powders and soft scrubs work well and are healthily free of ammonia, chlorine, and potentially hormone-disrupting petrochemicals such as alkyphenol ethoxylates (APEs), phthalates (added to synthetic fragrances) and glycol ethers.

We also like the following companies because they freely list their active ingredients even though they are not required to disclose these so-called “trade secrets” by law. The Velvet Hammer, Ecover, Seventh Generation, Naturally Yours, and Bon Ami all-mineral scouring powder or soft scrub, found in most household supply and drug stores.

Mildew busters

Spray with a slightly stronger vinegar mixture, say, up to 1 cup with a quart of water and some liquid soap. Leave on for at least 2 hours, and wipe clean. Add baking soda for extra scouring. This removed four years’ worth of mildew on the "Honu" (green sea turtle) shower curtain with which our son will never part. Or use a vinegar-based product such as Eco Friendly Window Kleener, sold at drug and natural foods stores, or here.

The toilet bowl

Last but not least, the toilet can always benefit from a little brightening. A green chemist we know recommends a “two-step method”: Use a toilet bowl cleaner and brush to scrub off stains and mineral deposits with baking soda or one of the commercial powders or soft scrubs above: spray toilet seat, rim and lid with a cleaner containing hydrogen peroxide, let stand for five minutes, and wipe off with a sponge. Hydrogen peroxide, which is registered by the EPA as an antimicrobial pesticide—really, see for yourself!

That’s if you’re terribly worried about germs. In most cases, a wipedown with white vinegar should suffice for the lid and seat.

Now that your bathroom’s green and clean, treat yourself: Be the first to enjoy the facilities!

i'm the worst

2007-12-14T12:54:00.000-05:00

and have been gone oh-too-long. but, here is a great article released yesterday:

Published on Thursday, December 13, 2007 by Earth Policy Institute
Bottled Water Boycotts: Back-to-the-Tap Movement Gains Momentum
by Janet Larsen

From San Francisco to New York to Paris, city governments, high-class restaurants, schools, and religious groups are ditching bottled water in favor of what comes out of the faucet. With people no longer content to pay 1,000 times as much for bottled water, a product no better than water from the tap, a backlash against bottled water is growing.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents some 1,100 American cities, discussed at its June 2007 meeting the irony of purchasing bottled water for city employees and for city functions while at the same time touting the quality of municipal water. The group passed a resolution sponsored by Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, and R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis that called for the examination of bottled water’s environmental impact. The resolution noted that with $43 billion a year going to provide clean drinking water in cities across the country, “the United States’ municipal water systems are among the finest in the world.”

While the Mayors Conference fell short of moving to stop taxpayer money from filling the coffers of water bottlers, a growing number of cities are heading in that direction. Los Angeles, which has restricted the purchase of bottled water with city funds since 1987, now has more company. By the end of 2007, purchasing bottled water will be off-limits for San Francisco’s departments and agencies, saving a half-million dollars each year and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. St. Louis is poised to ban bottled water purchases for city employees in early 2008.

At the launch of Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign in October, Mayor Anderson of Salt Lake City described the “total absurdity and irresponsibility, both economic and environmental, of purchasing and using bottled water when we have perfectly good and safe municipal sources of tap water.” He urged city government departments and restaurants to stop buying bottled water.

In November, the city council of Chicago, beleaguered by swelling landfills and a stretched budget, placed a landmark tax of 5¢ on every bottle of water sold in the city in order to discourage consumption. That same month, Illinois state agencies were banned from purchasing bottled water with government funds. With 86 percent of used water bottles in the United States ending up as garbage or litter instead of being recycled, switching from the bottle to the tap helps to alleviate the trash burden.

New York City is urging residents to drink tap water, which is naturally filtered in the protected Catskill forest region. In Kentucky, the Louisville water utility hands out free bottles for residents to fill with “Pure Tap.” Dozens of other local governments are talking up tap water and are looking into banning the bottle. (See list of other cities and initiatives.)

Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed quaint a few decades ago, when water in bottles was a rarity. Now such endeavors are needed to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. When Pepsi announced in July that it would clearly label its Aquafina water as from a “public water source,” it no doubt shocked everyone who believed that bottles with labels depicting pristine mountains or glaciers delivered a superior product.

Despite the less-frequent quality testing and sometimes commonplace origin of the product, bottled water consumption has soared. Annual consumption in the United States in 1976 was less than 2 gallons for every man, woman, and child; some 30 years later, Americans on average each now drink about 30 gallons of bottled water a year. (See data.)

All this hydration costs Americans more than $15 billion a year. The price of individual bottles of water ranges up to several dollars a gallon (and more for designer brands), while tap water is delivered directly to homes and offices for less than a penny a gallon. People complaining about $3-a-gallon gasoline may start to wonder why they are paying even more per gallon for bottled water.

With sales growing by 10 percent each year, far faster than any other beverage, bottled water now appears to be the drink of choice for many Americans-they swallow more of it than milk, juice, beer, coffee, or tea. (See data.) While some industry analysts are counting on bottled water to beat out carbonated soft drinks to top the charts in the near future, the burgeoning back-to-the-tap movement may reverse the trend.

In contrast to tap water, which is delivered through an energy-efficient infrastructure, bottled water is an incredibly wasteful product. It is usually packaged in single-serving plastic bottles made with fossil fuels. Just manufacturing the 29 billion plastic bottles used for water in the United States each year requires the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of crude oil.

After being filled, the bottles may travel far. Nearly one quarter of bottled water crosses national borders before reaching consumers, and part of the cachet of certain bottled water brands is their remote origin. Adding in the Pacific Institute’s estimates for the energy used for pumping and processing, transportation, and refrigeration, brings the annual fossil fuel footprint of bottled water consumption in the United States to over 50 million barrels of oil equivalent-enough to run 3 million cars for one year. If everyone drank as much bottled water as Americans do, the world would need the equivalent of more than 1 billion barrels of oil to produce close to 650 billion individual bottles.

Concerns about this high energy use and the associated contribution to climate change, along with worries about waste, are driving many groups back to tap water. The United Church of Canada is one of the religious groups abandoning bottled water for moral reasons. The Berkeley school district no longer offers bottled water. And after watching 3,000 empty bottles pile up each week, the Nashville law firm Bass, Berry, & Sims has stopped stocking bottled water.

Europeans have long led the world in per person consumption of bottled water. Italy tops the list worldwide, with Italians drinking 54 gallons per person in 2006. Italy is closely trailed in per capita consumption by the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, followed by France, Belgium, Germany, and Spain. (See data.)

Yet even in Western Europe the bottle is starting to lose clout. Rome, a city of many historic fountains, is promoting its tap water. Florence’s city council, schools, and other public offices offer only city water. In the United Kingdom, the Treasury and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have ceased offering bottled water at official functions. Bottled water sales in Scandinavia are projected to fall because of growing environmental concerns.

Even France, home to Evian, is seeing a sales slowdown. During a 2005 tap water promotion campaign in Paris, the water utility handed out refillable glass carafes. Now Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë serves only tap water at official events and encourages others to do the same. Total bottled water sales in France fell in 2004 and 2005, but rebounded in 2006.

Slowing sales may be the wave of the future as the bottle boycott movement picks up speed. With more than 1 billion people around the globe still lacking access to a safe and reliable source of water, the $100 billion the world spends on bottled water every year could certainly be put to better use creating and maintaining safe public water infrastructure everywhere.

two years

2007-08-29T13:19:00.000-04:00

so, it's been two years since katrina hit, and, it seems like new orleans is still in shambles. i've been looking on the internet and have found some interesting sites to review.

check out:
common ground collective wish-list
nola
emergency communities

just a few things to look at! i'd love to hear of more...
a

set editions

2007-08-01T09:35:00.001-04:00

holy cow

2007-07-26T16:30:00.001-04:00

2007-07-24T11:20:00.000-04:00

lovely.

done and done

2007-07-23T11:01:00.000-04:00

what can i say but "action packed"?

Buying into the Green Movement

2007-07-03T10:49:00.000-04:00

check out this article. then, go to see greenfeet. excellent.

2007-07-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

wow

2007-06-22T15:48:00.000-04:00

i was reading an article in the nyt today, and i happened across this. all i can say is wow.

A Festival With More Than Just Jam-Bands

2007-06-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

i am so bummed.

The 'tute made the PPH

2007-06-01T11:32:00.000-04:00

here are a few bullets from the whole story, read it here. (it's about Maine, of course!)

ACCESS TO THE COAST

-Within the Maine coast's 142 towns and 5,300 miles, there are 1,555 access points, from public boat landings to private fishing docks.

-Of these, 888 support commercial fishing activities. But more than half of these are privately owned and vulnerable to conversion to other uses.

-Only 81 of the 1,555 access points qualify as "prime working waterfront," and only 62 of these support commercial fishing.

-Only 446 of the 1,555 saltwater access points in 45 of Maine's 142 coastal towns are protected under some type of water-dependent use zoning.

design for the other 90%

2007-05-29T11:10:00.000-04:00

here is a really interesting show at the cooper-hewitt. i certainly wish that i was in the city so i could visit it. i guess a trip may be in order!
in other news, the clapboards are off the house! construction is beginning!

what the hell does a vegan eat anyway?

2007-05-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

um?

2007-05-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

look at this, folks.

5 second rule, from today's NYT

2007-05-10T13:14:00.001-04:00

May 9, 2007
The Curious Cook
The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?
By HAROLD McGEE
A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.

Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include “bologna” and “carpet,” it’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it.

I first heard about the rule from my then-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at snack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun was part of it, but they knew they were playing with “germs.”

We’re reminded about germs on food whenever there’s an outbreak of E. coli or salmonella, and whenever we read the labels on packages of uncooked meat. But we don’t have much occasion to think about the everyday practice of retrieving and eating dropped pieces of food.

Microbes are everywhere around us, not just on floors. They thrive in wet kitchen sponges and end up on freshly wiped countertops.

As I write this column, on an airplane, I realize that I have removed a chicken sandwich from its protective plastic sleeve and put it down repeatedly on the sleeve’s outer surface, which was meant to protect the sandwich by blocking microbes. What’s on the outer surface? Without the five-second rule on my mind I wouldn’t have thought to wonder.

I learned from the Clemson study that the true pioneer of five-second research was Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois in 2003. Ms. Clarke conducted a survey and found that slightly more than half of the men and 70 percent of the women knew of the five-second rule, and many said they followed it.

She did an experiment by contaminating ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then analyzing the foods. They had become contaminated with bacteria.

For performing this first test of the five-second rule, Ms. Clarke was recognized by the Annals of Improbable Research with the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in public health.

It’s not surprising that food dropped onto bacteria would collect some bacteria. But how many? Does it collect more as the seconds tick by? Enough to make you sick?

Prof. Paul L. Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson have now put some numbers on floor-to-food contamination.

Their bacterium of choice was salmonella; the test surfaces were tile, wood flooring and nylon carpet; and the test foods were slices of bread and bologna.

First the researchers measured how long bacteria could survive on the surfaces. They applied salmonella broth in doses of several million bacteria per square centimeter, a number typical of badly contaminated food.

I had thought that most bacteria were sensitive to drying out, but after 24 hours of exposure to the air, thousands of bacteria per square centimeter had survived on the tile and wood, and tens of thousands on the carpet. Hundreds of salmonella were still alive after 28 days.

Professor Dawson and colleagues then placed test food slices onto salmonella-painted surfaces for varying lengths of time, and counted how many live bacteria were transferred to the food.

On surfaces that had been contaminated eight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood.

What do these numbers tell us about the five-second rule? Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria, but it’s no guarantee of safety. True, Jillian Clarke found that the number of bacteria on the floor at the University of Illinois was so low it couldn’t be measured, and the Clemson researchers resorted to extremely high contamination levels for their tests. But even if a floor — or a countertop, or wrapper — carried only a thousandth the number of bacteria applied by the researchers, the piece of food would be likely to pick up several bacteria.

The infectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for the deadly strain of E. coli.

Of course we can never know for sure how many harmful microbes there are on any surface. But we know enough now to formulate the five-second rule, version 2.0: If you drop a piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that just a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think about where you dropped it and whether or not it’s worth eating.

2007-05-08T15:13:00.000-04:00

i encourage you all to buy things here.

Wowza!

2007-05-04T12:11:00.000-04:00

take a closer look here.

yes, it's true

2007-05-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

now that i get to see him every sunday night, my love for dan harris has returned. when i was in high school, we were both at the pizzeria uno at the same time. this is unbelievable. plus, he is just so dreamy and smart.

workers of the world unite!

2007-05-01T10:40:00.000-04:00

according to everyone's favorite source, wikipedia...
International Workers' Day
International Workers' Day (a name used interchangeably with May Day) is a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labour movement. May Day commonly sees organized street demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of working people and their labour unions throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world — though, as noted below, in neither the United States nor Canada. More-radical groups such as communists and anarchists are also given to widespread street protest on this day as well.

May Day was originally the commemoration of the Haymarket protests in Chicago in 1886: in 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle (1889), following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. These were so successful that May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently.

In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." As the most effective way of demonstrating was by striking, the congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."

May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs, usually right as the first day of May begins [1].

Due to its status as a celebration of the efforts of workers and the socialist movement, May Day is an important official holiday in Communist countries such as the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.

In countries other than the United States and Canada, resident working classes fought hard to make May Day an official holiday[citation needed], efforts which largely succeeded. For this reason, in most of the world today, May Day is marked by massive street rallies led by workers, their trade unions, anarchists and various socialist and communist parties.

Due to its importance in Communist countries, the First and Second Red Scare periods ended May Day as a mass holiday in the United States, which has celebrated Labor Day on the first Monday of September since 1880.

the organic prince

2007-04-25T16:17:00.000-04:00

Farmer, Cookie Maker, Ecologist and, Yes, the Future King

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: April 25, 2007
Tetbury, England

WHEN Prince Charles gazes from the upstairs windows at Highgrove, his home near this tiny town in the English countryside, he can see a tree planted by the Dalai Lama. It grows near a field of rare British wildflowers, which fade into a row of box hedges trimmed to frame four small busts of the prince’s head. Tigga, his late, beloved Jack Russell terrier, is immortalized in a relief sculpture on a nearby garden wall, behind which a longtime gardener prepares the ground for the prince’s favorite vegetables, potatoes and Brussels sprouts.

Read the rest here.

remember when i had my birthday at the roxy?

2007-04-23T14:13:00.000-04:00

well, look at this article from today's times. i mean, aren't you so happy that we went?

Crown Heights
The Last Lace-Up
Kelly Shimoda for The New York Times
THE GOODBYE GLIDE The 66-year-old Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, one of the city’s last roller rinks, will close Sunday.
By JENNIFER BLEYER
Published: April 22, 2007

ON Tuesday night, a blurry mass of people could be seen flying and shimmying around the 150-foot-long “miracle maple” rink of the Empire Roller Skating Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The bass thumped and the lights were dimmed. Boys wearing baggy jeans and Yankee caps in every color of the rainbow whizzed along the curves. Gamine girls in halter tops and dangling earrings careened backward on the straightaways.

Empire, as the beloved 66-year-old roller rink is known, sits on Empire Boulevard east of Bedford Avenue on a bleak strip of gas stations, Laundromats and storefront churches. A single-story brick building painted canary yellow and lime green on the outside and decorated with neon palm trees and kitschy murals of dragons and volcanoes inside, it will hold its last day of skating today.

When news of its closing, which followed months of “will it or won’t it?” speculation, was confirmed last month, the announcement rocked the city’s sprawling roller skating community, a mixed-age crowd that revels in a wholesome good time. After the Skate Key rink in Mott Haven in the Bronx shut its doors last year and the Roxy on West 18th Street in Manhattan, a legendary gay nightclub with skating every Wednesday night, closed last month, Empire was the city’s only remaining indoor wooden-floor rink. Its distinction was bolstered by its history as a place where generations of Brooklynites have skated since it opened in 1941 in a former Ebbets Field garage.

The rink, which could accommodate 2,500 skaters, was often so crowded that “if you fell, you couldn’t fall,” said Chester Fried, a former competitive roller skater who grew up skating at Empire.

Attendance dropped in the 1950s with the arrival of television, but it bounced back in the 1970s with the creation of roller disco, said to have originated at Empire. The rink’s traditional organ was replaced with a booming sound system over which a D.J. played the likes of Donna Summer and Stephanie Mills.

In recent years, as young people discovered the thrills of dance skating and speed skating, Empire became a favorite of the hip-hop generation. Young men routinely transformed the rink into something of a human autobahn, linking arms to create a centipede of bodies zipping around the rink.

For many of them, it provided a safe alternative to the wildness of the streets. “I would be in jail if it weren’t for this place,” said Darryl Tyler, a 31-year-old, bucktoothed chef from Bedford-Stuyvesant, who was wearing diamond stud earrings. He had been going there for long so long, he added, “I practically skated out of my mother.”

Although Empire’s building is unremarkable, some regulars tried to save it by having it considered for landmark status, and last month, 200 skaters gathered for a rally outside the rink. But by the time the rink’s fans mobilized, its closing was a done deal. The building had been sold for $4.5 million and was to become a storage facility.

Resigned to Empire’s fate, thousands of people have been circling the maple floor during the past few weeks, including many who had skated there for decades. On Tuesday, Kevon Johnson, a 46-year-old communications supervisor, showed up early to get in when the rink opened at 9 p.m., along with scores of others waiting in a line that snaked down the street. Tying on his custom $800 skates, a high-end pair with black leather boots and Snyder plates, Mr. Johnson recalled when he started going to Empire in 1977 as a teenager.

TOO poor to afford his own skates, he rented pair No. 877 every night. Then, in 1978, Mr. Johnson’s godfather, Marcellus Williams, a skate-dancing choreographer who was known as the poet laureate of Empire, bought him his own pair.

“They were royal blue suede with blue wheels, a blue stopper and blue laces,” Mr. Johnson said with a smile. “When the D.J. saw me, he yelled out, ‘Oh, I see some new skates out there!’ I was in heaven.”

During those years, celebrities like Cher and Ben Vereen made appearances, along with virtuosos on wheels known by their skating nicknames: Pat the Cat. Virgo Black. Ultra Freak. Puerto Rican Mike. Miss Mean Wheels. Roller Rocker Kid.

“From seeing Slinky do a spin and Rap do the first 360, those were the two things I wanted to do,” said Mr. Johnson. “Now I can do a 360 real well. In fact, I can do a 540 and I’m working on a 720.”

As the clock ticked past midnight on Tuesday, many skaters took a moment to mull their options once Empire closed. Some planned to trek out to rinks in New Jersey and Long Island. Some murmured about a new rink that may open as soon as next month in Richmond Valley on Staten Island. Others simply skated, enjoying their last rapturous turns on Empire’s floor.

miss k's surprise bachelorette party

2007-04-16T12:54:00.000-04:00

it was drag queen themed!

moving right along

2007-04-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

so, i'm officially on the road. i spent the last two nights with my mom in portland, visited grammie, the whole nine. in a few hours, i'm off to boston for a week of computer training. huerpa. this is going to be, at the very least, a change of pace from my island-lifestyle.
and, surprises may be lurking on the horizon! stay tuned!

Maple tree tapping, North Haven style

2007-04-01T17:17:00.000-04:00

today the big gq, his mother, and i went to tap trees to make syrup.
kate, his mother, says that last year she got 5 gallons of sap, and she got 1/2 a cup of syrup. isn't that amazing?

more on a theme

2007-03-29T10:05:00.000-04:00

From today's NYT:

Bare-Knuckle Enforcement for Wal-Mart’s Rules

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: March 29, 2007

The investigator flew to Guatemala in April 2002 with a delicate mission: trail a Wal-Mart manager around the country to prove he was sleeping with a lower-level employee, a violation of company policy.

The apparent smoking gun? “Moans and sighs” heard as the investigator, a Wal-Mart employee, pressed his ear against a hotel room door inside a Holiday Inn, according to legal documents. Soon after, the company fired the manager for what it said was improper fraternization with a subordinate.

Wal-Mart, renowned to outsiders for its elbows-out business tactics, is known internally for its bare-knuckled no-expense-spared investigations of employees who break its ironclad ethics rules.

Over the last five years, Wal-Mart has assembled a team of former officials from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and Justice Department whose elaborate, at times globetrotting, investigations have led to the ouster of a high-profile board member who used company funds to buy hunting equipment, two senior advertising executives who took expensive gifts from a potential supplier and a computer technician who taped a reporter’s telephone calls.

Read the rest here.

Wowza! Fantastic news from the NYT!

2007-03-28T16:26:00.000-04:00

Wal-Mart Chief Writes Off New York

By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: March 28, 2007
Wal-Mart to New York: fuhgeddaboudit.

An ad in Wal-Mart’s campaign to open a store in New York City.
Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

see the whole article here.

baby sheep

2007-03-25T20:08:00.000-04:00

photos of my trip to the farm today, and from some recent commutes.

keep your fingers crossed

2007-03-23T15:49:00.000-04:00

look what i applied for!

no impact man

2007-03-22T14:21:00.000-04:00

today i read the article, The Year Without Toilet Paper, in the New York Times. it is fascinating. this family is living in new york, on the ninth floor of their apartment building, and they are trying to leave no impact on the world for one year. this is very interesting, as most tree-hugging environmentalists live in rural areas. check out his blog here. definitely go and read the full article here.

2007-03-19T19:51:00.000-04:00

a new favorite

2007-03-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

bridgewater bird mugs. i am pretty much obsessed. i want them all. to view the collection, please visit this fine website.

the homesteading lifestyle?

2007-03-07T09:42:00.000-05:00

as i am now living more rurally than ever before, i thought that i might take this time to reflect upon three new things that have happened to me over the winter of 2006-2007.

1. cooking on a wood stove.
i have never lived somewhere where you buy gas by the tank, and therefore, can run out. luckily, we have a wood stove, otherwise, we couldn't have cooked anything. this happened in december, i think, and i made a delicious roasted chicken and baked potato feast. lemons to lemonade anyone?

2. chimney fire.
one night a month-or-so-ago, our chimney started to shoot flames like a torch. it sounded like a jet engine. i mean, it was nighttime, so, you could really really see how high the flames were. and sparks. lots of sparks. but, a chimney is a fairly contained space, so fires go out quickly. by the time the volunteer fire department showed up, it was mostly just sparks. they went through the motions, though, and put up spot lights and climbed onto the roof, and scraped down the inside with this fancy brush, and looked at the chimney through an infrared camera so that they could tell if there were any hot spots, and wore these fancy yellow outfits, and fell down on the ice. i was preoccupied, because i was in charge of getting the littles out of harm's way, and i could only find piggy. bingo knows to hide when the cat carriers come out of the closet. but, the big gq got his guitar. so, we were 2 for 3 of important things getting out in case the house went down. or, up in flames, i guess is a better phrase. maybe we should take Chas Tenenbaums' lead and start having safety drills. and wearing matching track suits.

3. no running water.
this morning, the big gq woke me up by saying that the pipes were frozen. i couldn't pee, brush my teeth, or shower. it was a little bit shocking. then, he had to chip all this ice off of the window into the space under the house, which isn't quite a basement, but he couldn't fit through the window. he is big. so then, he went to find his sister, to make her go under the house, and i was all, i'm little, i can go. but he thought that it would take hours and hours to thaw the pipes with a little heat gun (technically my embosser for rubber stamping), and i have to go on the boat in order to go to work. (the boat waits for no man.) so, then his sister came with a super-duper hot gun-thing, and the big gq wedged himself into the hole, and heated the pipes. he was wearing a head lamp. presto-changeo the water came back on full force. i mean, running everywhere, so we had to adjust the faucets so that they continued to trickle down the pipes and hopefully prevent freezing. so, gq is focused on hooking up a heater under the house today, and running a fire in the wood-stove at full blast to keep our little house as warm as possible.

can you believe it?

guess who has a snowday? me!

2007-03-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

deep-fried collard greens just seems like a publicity stunt

2007-02-28T13:07:00.000-05:00

From Phobia to Fame: A Southern Cook’s Memoir

By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: February 28, 2007

IS mayonnaise the food lover’s Botox?

One look at Paula Deen, the Food Network’s face of Southern food, and you have to wonder. Ms. Deen may be best known for drinking straight melted butter on television, but she also soaks Krispy Kreme doughnuts with custard, deep-fries refrigerator biscuits, and isn’t above digging her diamond-crusted fingers into a bowl of pimento cheese to make sure the cream cheese is blending in smoothly. In one afternoon last week, making the Southern lunch classics that started her cooking career — ham salad, pimento cheese, and an irresistible egg salad mixed with saltines — she went through two full jars of mayonnaise.

so you think you can dance?

2007-02-27T08:30:00.000-05:00

dance party tonight! yeah! (click on it, suckers.)

89%

2007-02-23T15:42:00.000-05:00

You are 89% Mainah!

BORN RAISED AND LOVIN IT!!!!You are all Mainah and wouldn't have it any other way. You are the rare breed of Mainer that would never leave (even if you won them there megabucks!)

How Mainer are you?
Make a Quiz

Just FYI

2007-02-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

yesterday the thorofare started to freeze over and today we have lots of snow. i am working from home, and enjoying the winter. once i have some photos, i'll share. hopefully we still get to go out for dinner! fingers crossed...

how beautiful are these?

2007-02-09T16:38:00.001-05:00

you can get them here.

ballon

2007-02-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

meggy.
michael.

check-check-it

2007-02-01T11:54:00.000-05:00

miss ariana- now in color!
more katie jane w. look at those boots (and moves!)

mas

2007-01-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

anne.
r.t.

winter photos

2007-01-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

island kids love the ferry.
boats and vinalhaven.
downtown #1

downtown #2
in other news, i received my secret pal package, and it's awesome. i don't have a camera right now, so i can't photograph the goodies. let's just say that i'm not that only person who is really really excited by the insides of the cardboard box. the littles have re-discovered their love of catnip! yeah! there are two books, including one skein, which is fantastic. and, a bunch of really nice soft yarns, including a white angora blend that is almost good enough to eat. thanks tina! i do have to say, though, that this SP9 experience has been a challenge, on my end and tina's, i think. turns out the holiday season is not conducive to me being successful at this, so, i learned a Big Lesson from this, too. it has been really fun, though! thanks again, chemical pink....

this is So Cool

2007-01-15T14:43:00.000-05:00

cheer up charlie

2007-01-13T19:04:00.000-05:00

patrick.
pam.
katie jane w.
junio.

2007-01-08T17:12:00.000-05:00

Red Scarf Project 2007

Interweave Press is proud to endorse the RED SCARF PROJECT again in 2007. Please participate and show someone out there you care!

Orphan Foundation of America’s
Red Scarf Project – Guidelines, 2007
Love to knit or crochet or know someone who does? Send warmth and encouragement to America’s college-bound foster youth. OFA needs thousands of handmade scarves to put in our Valentine Care Packages to these parentless youth attending college on their own. Your handiwork will truly be the personal touch in these packages and bring students the encouragement they need to move forward and graduate to a brighter future. For over 25 years, OFA has provided funding and family-like support to foster youth in transition. www.orphan.org

Scarf guidelines:

* Size: about 60” long and 5” to 8” wide. Scarves should be long enough to be wrapped around the neck with tails long enough to be tied in the front.
* Style: Think unisex collegiate. Fringe optional. Should drape, tie easily, and be soft.
* Color: Red! This could mean burgundy, cherry, russet, red stripes with other colors, multicolor hues including red. Other unisex colors, including black, navy, gray, teal, olive or gold, are also welcome.
* Finished and tagged: Yarn ends securely sewn in. For the personal touch, attach a tag saying “Handmade for You” with your first name, city, and group affiliation, if any. Donors have also included washing instructions, messages of encouragement, and gift cards/burger bucks/book of stamps.

Thank you! Your scarf may be the first handmade gift a young man or woman has ever received. Your efforts will truly be appreciated!

Mail to (January Only):
Orphan Foundation of America
Red Scarf Project
21351 Gentry Drive, Unit 130
Sterling, VA 20166
Scarves are accepted throughout the month of January ONLY due to limited/temporary storage capacity.

For more information, please visit OFA’s official website at www.orphan.org

out with the old, in with the

2006-12-29T14:57:00.000-05:00

happy 2007! may it bring peace to us all!

Here it is, already after Christmas

2006-12-28T12:26:00.000-05:00

can you believe it? 2006 has flown by, and so much has happened. the gist of it being: i am now living on an island (surrounded by water) 13 miles out to sea with two cats and one large-sized man. that, my friends, makes 2006 a doozy.
one more set of facts: i have been at my new job for 21 weeks now, we'll say that i haven't been in the office (including holidays and working from home) 9 times. that means that since 10 august 2006, i have taken a boat on 96 days, with an approximate hours-on-the-boat total of 220.8 hours. can you believe that? that is 9.2 full days of boat time. holy crap. no wonder i'm not getting anything done.
anyhoo, i had a swell holiday. much fun and festivities, but i am so relieved to be done. and, for the first time ever, i am fully committed to doing nothing for new years eve. fantastic. i'm going to watch movies and cure myself of exhaustion. and, i am oh-so happy that christmas is another year away.
there is no news on the crafting front, unfortunately. i have been way too swamped with work and holidays and crippling tendinitis to make stuff. boo to that. i did make some holiday truffles, as i do every year, with a new mystery flavor. i'm only going to say that it was delish.
see you!

bugger.

2006-12-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

so, as stated before, i am the worst blogger ever. but, as d.cripple says, you can only do what you can only do.
on the cripple front, i went to the massage therapist for a little pick-me-up, turns out that i've got tons of things happening and i needed some fixin', but, i've had all this pain in my arms and shoulders and neck. turns out? tendonitis. what did i do? knit. and type. so much that i injured myself.
can you believe it? i knit so much that i hurt myself. and now doing things like opening a jar is a monumentous task.
ick.
for the last two nights we've had holiday chorus concert. it went pretty well, way better on night #2. my dad, the conductor, had this deal where he made me sing my own part. that is some pressure, friends. pressure.
i'm sure that there's a video of it somewhere, so maybe i'll post it. you'll all weep from laughter, i'm sure.
as piggy is burrowing under my blanket to demand attention, i'm gonna run.
see you!

anniemade, TW

2006-12-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

hello hello. i am officially the worst blogger ever. it turns out that when there is actually enough work to do at work, then i don't have enough time to post. funny how that works, eh?
anyhoo, tons has happened since my last post.
1. i am officially 26, which means (as the big gq likes to emphasize) that i need to round up to thirty. hats off to that!
2. thanksgiving, for you miss meggy, happened at my dad's house. 20 people? i'm not sure. the day before i had a stomach virus. can you believe it? so, the thanksgiving meal was extra-delicious due to my near-starvation status. unfortunately, grammie couldn't come due to needing to go to the hospital. she is ok, but fell and hurt her hip. here's a good grammie story: she has been noticing that there are lots of oak leaves in her pond. like, lots of oak leaves. so, she has figured out that someone must be putting all of their oak leaves into her pond. this is something that she does not support. so, how does she solve this problem? well, call the cops, of course! oh, grammie. (i'm sure that you sane people out there realize that no one is putting leaves in her pond, and that she is just a bit, well, less-than-sane sometimes.)
3. secret pal. i've been awful at this. turns out that the end of the calendar year is incredibly busy in a non-profit. so, my attention has been there. i'm sorry to disappoint you all. i feel the necessary amounts of guilt, don't worry.
4. next week i am doing a craft fair in portland, me, if anyone's around. happy hour and crafts at una martini bar, 5-8 o'clock on the 11th of december. come one, come all! cosmos and 1970s style wrist cuffs... need i say more?
5. my job is still iffy. turns out, i've got a little too much brain to be running this particular operation. like, i am not all that great at monotony. and, this job will have some great opportunities to be creative and smart, once i pan off the mundane stuff on another employee. watch out! i am aiming to be back in new york in 12 or 13 months. who can tell, though?
6. the littles. charming as always, but bingo is itchy. this frontline business is not working so well. i'm going to get him a cone, another photo to watch for. ha. bingo in a cone.
7. in tres sad news, marmar's "orange man", seymour, aka mr. pants had to be put down. she is distraught, of course. which is another reason to come have a cocktail at una next week!
8. and, christmas is almost here! wowza. i've gotta do some planning, eh?

that's all for now. i'm going to be better about this starting next week, i hope. the job will slow back to its normal pace, and i'll be able to keep my wits about me.
see you!

they say it's your birthday,

2006-11-17T13:51:00.000-05:00

ode to muriel, aka, lard makes the best crust

2006-11-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

y'all, you've got to read this. i've included the beginnings to inspire readings:

Heaven in a Pie Pan: The Perfect Crust
By MELISSA CLARK
Published: November 15, 2006

A FEW years ago, I achieved perfection in a pie crust and it smelled like pig.

Not in a muddy, barnyard way, but with a very subtly meaty, nutty aroma.

Carefully confected with part butter and part freshly rendered lard, this pie pastry was everything baking-book authors and bloggers wax poetic about: a golden-brown-around-the-edges epiphany richly flavored and just salty enough to contrast with the sweet apple filling, the texture as flaky as a croissant but still crisp. It shattered when you bit it, then melted instantly on the tongue.

The only problem with my masterpiece, I told my guests as they licked the crumbs off their plates, was that I was never, ever going to make it again.

2006-11-09T10:16:00.000-05:00

again with the forgetting

2006-11-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

so, sandra and elisha had their baby, jack. to visit him on the web, go see misses d.
he is pretty good looking, and gets to wear those fancy green (see below) booties that i made! welcome, jack!

The Results are in

2006-11-08T12:30:00.000-05:00

so, there were no huge upsets in the election. snowe, baldacci, most incumbents back in office. (surprise? nah.)
however, we did have two referendums on the ballot, TABOR and a constitutional ammendment. the results are, according to mainetoday.com:


TABOR CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE
No	270309	54.08%
Yes	229502	45.92%

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
Yes	251910	54.03%
No	214296	45.97%

this is kind of interesting to me, as the anti-TABOR folks were pro-AMENDMENT. what does that mean? well, that the people of Maine didn't like that the TABOR people got their issue on the ballot through the lax-attitude of the court system, and we don't like TABOR, either. (for those who don't know, the court let them submit their signatures after the deadline because they had them all gathered and dated from before the deadline. they thought that it was in the spirit of initiative and referendum to allow them the flexibility to be on the ballot even though they missed the deadline.) and, it means that almost the same amount of people who don't like the strictness of TABOR don't like the looseness of the court. funny, but somehow logical. (we don't like that this got on our ballot through those loosey-goosey judges, and we don't want it anyway sort of thing.)
interesting, no?

2006-11-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

ooops. i forgot the littles.

2006-11-05T21:32:00.000-05:00

bingo little.

piggy little.

heavy with photos

2006-11-05T19:43:00.000-05:00

cake!

isn't it pretty?

upside down trees at massmoca.

mass-moca. (from our trip to see dylan in august.)

cupcakes. yum.

booties for baby jack. twice.

the big gq and me.

sorry, i can't figure out how to rotate the pictures.

well my goodness

2006-11-03T10:48:00.000-05:00

this person lived in maine! and, i think she might've lived on an island! at least, sometimes! plus, she is making a killer sweater for her man (aka mr. cable, or something like that) and the big gq has been after me for sweater attempt #2. i'm ready, i think.
still no pictures, sorry. i'm heading home tonight, leaving my country-club lifestyle behind me. yesterday i went swimming and into the hot tub and sauna, it really is the life. oh, and early this week i had a hot stone massage, which is pretty much the best thing in the whole world. all you doubters, schedule yourself one (ask for kristy) and be ready for the best hour of your life. for reals.

why hello there: a wee update

2006-11-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

i am currently living in a country club. it's where people get married and golf and go to corporate retreats. it is where the big gq's family vacations every year, and happens to be able to relieve me of 2+ hours of ferry time every day. this means that two people who have spent their entire adult lives living on north haven, vacation 15 miles away. every year for more than 20. wowza. anyhoo, it's great for me. miss sandra is joining me for a swim tonight.
my first SP9 package arrived at its destination. i am so pleased that my recipient liked it. kind of relieved, too. i haven't been knitting because of this pain in my left hand, so i'm pretty much sticking to other sorts of presents. hopefully i'll get back on it soon.
when you don't live on the island, you get to go out for dinner. and cocktails. it is a very nice change.
i miss the littles.
i went to portland last week and got new shoes. plus, i got to hang out with a few good friends. such a very nice thing. one is in beauty school and is going to give me a bitchin hair cut for my birthday.
my secret pal told me she is mailing my first package soon. i am tres excited.
i hosted a stampin up party, which was a raging success. i have a new favorite activity: embossing. my goal was to make $30 for free stuff, you know, from the sales?, but i made, well, an obscene amount. like, over $200. so, i'll i can say is, i will have enough embossing powder to coat my house from roof-to-crawl-space. friends, i am going to emboss the walls. watch out! *the demonstrator, though, got stuck on island for two nights. she literally wept with happiness when she got off the ferry on the mainland. she was so awesome and such a trooper. it was a great experience overall.*
oh, and last weekend, we lost power for a whole bunch of time and i read by lamp-light. this is another grand thing.
i think i might make these for thanksgiving. gobble.
i finally have some pictures on my computer to upload, but i keep not using my computer. so, soon there will be a picture heavy post to show you all some recent projects and some funny stuff that's been a-happening. okie.

origami pumpkin, my meagre attempt at halloween

2006-10-31T11:33:00.000-05:00

check out ben folds!

2006-10-23T20:39:00.000-04:00

here he is singing one of everyone's favorite songs! neat.

four things

2006-10-19T10:24:00.000-04:00

Four jobs I’ve had:

*Lotion sales-person a la the mall
*House Chair
*stage manager for the worst person ever
*costume coordinator for two Oren Shai films

Four movies I can watch over and over:

* Dirty Dancing
* The Royal Tenenbaums
* The Thin Man
* even though it's not all that great, Almost Famous

Four places I have lived:

* Portland, ME
* Pacifica, CA
* Bennington, VT
* Brooklyn, NY

Four television shows I love to watch:

* CSI (only las vegas. the rest suck.)
* Veronica Mars
* Weeds
* Jakers! the adventures of piggly winks

Four places I have been on vacation:

* Route 66
* Glasgow, Scotland
* Montreal, Canada
* San Francisco, CA

Four of my favorite dishes:

*Macncheese. real, no boxes here.
* winter squash.
* the big gq's mom's crab dip. holy crap.
* ooo. chowder! and cupcakes! ach! i can't choose!

Four websites I visit daily:

* knit and tonic
* google
* nytimesr> * um. let's say, fig and plum?

Four places I would rather be right now:

* home in bed with some tea and my book.
* magnolia bakery getting a cupcake and a capp. or, balthazar getting a croissant.
*making crafts (utilizing my vast rubber stamp collection.)
* morrocco or spain or nicaragua. (places i'd like to visit next, now that i have a passport.)

(at this point, i'm supposed to tag some people. but, i don't know about that. it makes me feel like those chain emails where you have to pass it on to get the joke or jesus' blessing, or that guilt you get from not passing it on, where they might do something terrible to you (they know who i am.). i don't know, i clearly have some sort of pass-it-on-or-else fear here. so, if you want to participate, please do. no guilt from me, friends. none.)

he floats through the air with the greatest of ease this daring young man on the flying trapeze

2006-10-18T15:42:00.000-04:00

ah-one
ah-two

the life ferry

2006-10-17T12:42:00.000-04:00

so, last night when i went to get on the ferry, (after much insanity with the big gq and miss L to get groceries. this business about buying and transporting your food via ferry boat turns out to be a bit, well, complicated.) the little man who is a deck hand came over to our car and asked if we knew about the boat switch. and we're all, wait, what? and he's all, yeah, they're switching your boat out with vinalhaven's stinky old boat because the lobstermen over there are mad that they can't get two tractor trailers of lobbies off at a time. so, they made such a stink that we have this crappy ferry because our boat (the governor burgess) can carry multiple tractor trailers. this boat we have now is slower and ugly on the inside. plus, the women's bathroom is covered in less-than-nice comments about some lady name "loopy linda." sucks to be her, friends. so, i am now destined to a month of alternative ferry riding. oh well. it could be worse. (of course, all the north haven people are starting to make a big stink of their own to the ferry people, and the crew is, too. the design of this boat doesn't work as well with our dock. anyhoo, tempers are flaring.)
oh, yeah. SO, we get to the boat all sweaty and hyped up and the guy says, oh yeah, it's not leaving for another hour. for real. so, of course, we went to get cocktails and pub-fare to remove some of the shock. fantastic.
oh, congratulate me. i sent my first package off for SP9. ole!

secret pal-secret pal!

2006-10-16T09:37:00.000-04:00

hee hee! secret pal is underway. i have both MADE and RECEIVED contact with the spoilee and spoiler. ha. this is fantastic. i have to send my package internationally, so i'm going to drop something in the mail today. gotta make sure my spoilee gets some presents asap.
my spoiler, is that right?, asked me a few maine-type questions. today is the coldest its been so far, but it is so nice and fally. the big gq and i went collecting apples from all sorts of trees this weekend. it was great, he'd shake the branch and it would rain apples. i made delicious apple sauce and froze 5 pints. (get this, i also gave away 4 pints, and we delivered a serving bowl for dinner with the big gq's folks last night. tons o' sauce, my friends, tons.) once i get the pictures off the camera, then i'll put them up here!
i do like halloween, of course, but i more like the making of things happening than the participating. i'm kind of a facilitator-type. i am hoping to help make a really scary house this year and carve some pumpkins. near halloween this year, miss L, who's wedding pictures are below, is hosting a murder-mystery dinner. it is going to be hysterical. the big gq is stressed out because he has to dress as a mummy. for reals.
oh, and guess what? my spoiler is from texas, which i love. just so she knows, i've even been to the big texan and watched someone win that free meat. and swum in a swimming pool shaped like texas. and, you know what else?, they really do have tumbleweed there. fantastic.

three things

2006-10-13T15:29:00.000-04:00

1. i still haven't received my secret pal assignment, and i have pretty much expired from holding my breath. what i mean is, i'm so excited, so why can't the 15th come any sooner?
and, 2. check out this thing from rock-paper-scissors. it is great.
oh, and 3. um, yeah.

ok, back to politics

2006-10-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

(you know you're in maine when...)

i just found this interesting AP article. maine has now changed its rules so that for each referendum, there are going to be three voices for and three voices against. they are not going to edit or change the comments in any way and it's a first come, first serve basis. the comments will be printed in our voter guide. kind of interesting, no? oh, i forgot, it costs $500.00.
so, i decided that i'd try to look at the voter guide. when i googled maine voter guide 2006, i got this. as we can tell, this is not an un-prejudiced source, now is it? interesting, though.
the only voter guide available on the maine state website is how to register, which doesn't really count.
anyhoo, that's all for now. i am still trying to find some good information on referendum question 2, which is lost in the shadow of TABOR. i saw an article in one of the smaller newspapers, but am still tracking down an electronic copy.

and there were more

2006-10-11T11:18:00.000-04:00

the happy couple

and all four of us at J.O. Brown's boatyard.

2006-10-10T16:13:00.000-04:00

first photo from the wedding. by misses d, of course.

to die for

2006-10-03T16:09:00.000-04:00

my goodness do i want this! (think: sea grass.) imagine the mittens!
also, i forgot to announce that i now have insurance! yahoo!

Secret-Pal-Survey-Anwers

2006-10-02T14:21:00.000-04:00

Here are my answers, posted in record time. I'm so excited!

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like? I love anything natural, no acrylics here. I like fuzzy and soft things, but not so much with the variegations. I have used self-striping yarn once and thought it was divine. Generally, I knit pretty chunky, with size 6 needles and above, but recently I have made both my first sock and a set of booties, both on #1s, so I’m open to anything at this point.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in? A plastic cowboy boot that I got a beverage in at the Big Texan in Amarillo. It’s not ideal as the beasts tend to knock it down and gnaw on the needles for some extra fiber. 3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?

I’ve been knitting since the winter of, let’s see, 2000. I am very much a beginner, I think, but I’m also adventurous. I learned to knit from someone who had taught herself and was a leftie, so, I knit kind of funny. I need to relearn, methinks. I do know all sorts of things, like, increasing and decreasing, knitting in the round, how to follow a pattern… but I usually just kind of jump in and sort it out as it goes. 4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?

No. 5. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products, etc.) I’m pretty sensitive about fragrance. I usually have things like lavender and naturally fragranced soaps and things.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy? Of course! I love baked goods. I love chocolate. Oddly enough, I also really like gum.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?

I love arty quilts and making them, and I use rubber-stamping as much as possible. I have a new-ish addiction to them, about a year, and I have an extensive collection already. I am also hosting a Stampin’ Up party on 28 October. It’s going to be fantastic.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)

Oh, I like most music. I like Belle and Sebastian, The Decemberists, The Postal Service, but have recently been into things like Al Green and James Brown. I also really like bluegrassy folk and adore the new Bruce Springsteen album. Oh, and that new Dylan album is pretty killer. I have a computer and an iPod, so I can listen to digital music or CD-style.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?

I don’t much like purple. Besides that, I like ‘em all. 10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets? I have two cats: Piggy and Bingo Little. They are fantastic, but they’re a handful. 11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?

Ix-nay on the onchos-pay. I cannot handle the poncho. They are just so wrong, I can’t even pontificate about them. All other knit goods are right up my alley, though. 12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit? Hats, scarves. Mittens. 13. What are you knitting right now? I just finished up two projects, so, I’m on the quest for a new project. I just made myself a fall-hat, which didn’t come out exactly right, and some booties for a friend’s baby on-the-way.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts? Um, hell yeah!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic? Either straight or circular, bamboo or aluminum. 16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift? No. 17. How old is your oldest UFO? At least 4 years. 18. What is your favorite holiday? Thanksgiving. I love pie. 19. Is there anything that you collect? oooooo. Fiesta ware. Rubber stamps. Mess. 20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have? I am painfully out of touch with publications right now; this move to the island has done me in. I would love a copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting, or anything else that is inspirational. I don’t even own any E. Zimmerman books! And I call myself a knitter! 21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn? Knitting “properly” (although, I’ll probably just ignore that), cables and bobbles. Writing really clear and concise directions. 22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?

Well, I have technically knit a sock. But, just one up to now. So, no, not really. I’d like to be, and am working on it! I wear a size 6.5 shoe, I don’t have the measurements with me.

23. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)

17 November! Yahoo! The big 2-6, baby.

should you read this book?

2006-09-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

no. not really. it is pretty embarrassing that i've read this all. it was bathtub reading for just about 10 months, it was that riveting. i direct all blame for purchase (money was exchanged for this thing) to my mother. not only is the mystery not very mysterious, but the knitting is rudimentary and boring. awe over knitting in the round? i think not. eyelash yarn problems? so passe. this is a resounding two thumbs down. well, at least one and a half thumbs down. however, that business about the skull made of yarn in the basket is pretty sweet, y'all.

election 2006

2006-09-28T15:56:00.000-04:00

so, while i was living in new york city, i was highly involved with politics. i recently re-registered in maine and realized that i had no idea what was on the ballot. i searched and i searched, but couldn't get anywhere. i figure that i could put together a little summary for those other mainers in a similar situation. (many thanks to my state representative hannah pingree for the info.) without further ado, i give you:

maine ballot summary 2006!

referendum
1. Citizen Initiative

"Do you want to limit increases in state and local government spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth and to require voter approval for all tax and fee increases?"

remember? this is also know as the Tax Payer's Bill of Rights, TABOR. There are all those commercials about it? With people from the west dragging brief cases?

pro TABOR re source

anti TABOR resource

2. Constitutional Amendment

"Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to state that a citizens' initiative or people's veto petition must be submitted to local or state officials by the constitutional deadline in order to be certified and, in the case of a citizens' initiative, must be filed with the Secretary of State within 18 months?"

personally, i don't know anything about this. when i googled it, i got this link. really, making people file on time is alright with me. the 18 month thing i don't understand. more research forthcoming.

then, we have the candidates to United States Senate:
Incumbent: Olympia Snowe, Republican.
Challengers: William H. Slavick, Undeclared.
Jean Hay Bright, Democrat.

and gubernatorial candidates:
Incumbent: John Baldacci, Democrat.
Challengers: Patricia LaMarche, Green.
Barbara Merrill, Undeclared.
Philip Morris Napier, Undeclared.
Chandler Woodcock, Republican.
so, that's it for state-wide issues. here's a link to all the other local candidates. (the list is offered in a few different forms, click one of the links at the top.)
hope this information helps you!

surprise surprise surprise

2006-09-27T15:33:00.000-04:00

um, yeah. so, the big gq and i got the mail yesterday. (which, by the way, still involves using a truck, despite it being delivered "to our house" now. ha. across the street, down the bend. get this, they don't deliver to our side of the street, so no matter what our address, our box is across the way. this island is filled with insanity.)
anyhoo, he's all "oh no, you can't see this." which, of course, means that i'm filled with the pushiest of curiosity. after a few minutes of pestering, he says, well, you can see this. and it's an envelope fom jetblue! yahoo! and, he won't tell me anything else. he did ask when i get to take vacation though-- too bad not til march, eh?
isn't that exciting? i made him promise not to tell me anything no matter what i say. now he's saying that he's trying to lead me astray and there's no airfare involved and that he is full of surprises. i mean, c'mon!
for someone who hasn't really ever given me a present, this is tres sophisticated. don't you think?

good-for-you yarn?

2006-09-26T11:47:00.000-04:00

like many of you, i visit the hunger site regularly. in their store, i recently found some good conscious yarn, we can get our favorite drug (fiber) and support good causes, too! wahoo! (plus, the picture on the left is from purl soho- of course, they have the best website- a lovely pink angora. to die for!)

why lookee here

2006-09-25T14:18:00.000-04:00

the new knitty's up! yahoo! i'm not finding any of the projects all that inspirational, but it still is a great online source. i do like the sweater featured on my right here, it's called ivy.

first day of fall

2006-09-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

so, life on the island has been terrible recently. we've had a two deaths and one near-fatal car accident. all this happened in a three day span, last sunday, monday, and tuesday. the morale is really low out there, and it's kind of hard to be a newbie with little connection to the people who have passed or are injured, as it's so much easier for my life to continue on its regular path.
three things that i'm working on:

still furiously knitting the green, fuzzy fall hat. as it's officially fall now, i really should be closer to done than i am. i'll knit on the boat today, i promise!
claymation. the plans coninue, but will it happen? who can tell?
furious planning of a stampin-up party at the library on north haven. (because the big gq's mom is the librarian, of course.)

oh, and fingers are crossed on trekking to the common ground. miss L is pretty shaken up, so our plans might be changed. sigh.

this week is inching by

2006-09-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

at work we've been sans computers for most of 3 days. the first days was novel and there were things that could be done. this is no longer the situation. and i'd like to print my work so i can MOVE ON, but i can't. so, i'll think nice thoughts and move on to this:
the fantastic, fabulous, common ground fair! yay!
i am going on saturday morning. thus far, the plan is...
1) miss L puts her car on the last ferry on friday. i meet the boat in rockland, and take it off.
2) i return to the island-homestead on the last boat on friday.
3) saturday morning, miss L's dad will take us to rockland before he goes out hauling. this means in the wee hours of the morn and travel across the bay in a swank lobster boat. forget this business with the ferry.
4) we pick up miss L's car, and with the others in tow, we drive for a few hours to the fair grounds, or what-have-you. i'm so excited.
another reason why i'm excited is: blogger is letting me put pictures on again. this week is turning around, it really is.

check it out!

2006-09-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

these people are SO cool. ikea pillowcase skirt? i think so.

holy crap

2006-09-13T16:09:00.000-04:00

have you seen the new ipod shuffle? it puts even me, the anti-shuffle, in awe. it is so cool! and so tiny! 240 songs that can clip onto your pocket? fantastic.
(for some reason, i can't get a picture to load up on blogger these days. so, click on the holy crap above, and you'll be redirected to the new shuffle's website. wowza.)