Happy Twitterday! (For new readers, that means more links to major newspapers.) Categories: Coal, Christmas, Election 2016, Food, Green, Health, Pictures, Politics, Recycling.
Coal
Cleaning the coal-burning process may be a pain, and expensive, but...
Christmas
No apologies...although this site wishes people happy Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, etc., as may be applicable, too. Anyway, this link to a short Bible study also includes an audio link to a Christmas song, for those who can listen...
Lights! "Fairy lights" to some readers. I don't know whether my cell phone will photograph Christmas lights or not; if it will, a sponsor may help this web site do a Search for the Best Light Show in Gate City (with different categories). I wish local people would display these lights for just an hour or two every night, though, so we could see the stars--some nights it's not clouded over, and I like stars.
Christmas critters...
Election 2016
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The #BankruptcyBillionnaire is right about his being more like Franklin D. Roosevelt than like Hitler. And, much as I respect President Roosevelt's victory over polio...I'd oppose FDR, too, if he were alive and campaigning. Not least for his despicable policy toward German Jews during the war, and if you don't think he was part of the Holocaust, you need to review your history. And can you imagine FDR claiming to be a Republican?!?!?!
For those who say that at least the jerk is intelligent...let me just add, as a hillbilly, that if you're building a house above running water, you want "just a little view," through trees, and you want to walk down a switchback trail through the trees to get to the water. One reason: residents of the towns below you do not want to be picking recognizable particles of your unavoidable waste out of their water. Another reason: you don't want the soil, then the rocks, and then your house, to slide down into the water. Like duh! #BankruptcyBillionnaire may be clever at grabbing money and running, but...y'know, actually my cats do have enough sense to save a little extra food for another meal, instead of gulping it all down at once and being sick.
Food
U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1) is an interesting woman, and is sponsoring an interesting bill. Here's what she says about it:
Here's the full text. Frankly, Gentle Readers, I'm not sure what to think. It may be on the intrusive side (well, she's a Democrat) but she has an excellent point.
(I've been interested in Chellie Pingree since I checked Maine Island Classics
out of the library...since Maine Island Kids
, Sweaters from the Maine Islands
, North Island Designs
(4), and North Island Designs 5
came out I've bought the books, knitted at least one version of most of the patterns, and have one of'em currently for sale. The book? As a Fair Trade Book (contact information in the lower left-hand corner), $10 per copy + $5 per package = $1.50 to Congresswoman Pingree or a charity of her choice; you could fit the whole set into one package.)
out of the library...since Maine Island Kids, Sweaters from the Maine Islands, North Island Designs (4), and North Island Designs 5 came out I've bought the books, knitted at least one version of most of the patterns, and have one of'em currently for sale. The book? As a Fair Trade Book (contact information in the lower left-hand corner), $10 per copy + $5 per package = $1.50 to Congresswoman Pingree or a charity of her choice; you could fit the whole set into one package.)
After yesterday's discussion of ugliness at the Blogjob, regular readers may be interested in this discussion of "ugly" as a possible technical term for irregular fruits and vegetables. These items are wholesome and tasty, but they don't have the look the food industry promotes. (Often that's because they grew around twigs or pebbles, or received more sun on one side than the other.) To home gardeners, who know how delicious they are, some "ugly vegetables" look pretty cute. Apologies for the fact that this article appeared at nytimes.com; the way that site interacts with some computers really is ugly...
Kelp...isn't oobleck. It can be dried, ground, and sprinkled onto food as a seasoning, like salt. Since it's sort of salty, it's been marketed as a kind of lite salt. We are talking serious flavor--although I suppose it's an acquired taste, and there's some concern about how much pollution sea vegetables soak up, whether we really want to eat them every day. But if you want a food adventure, I can testify that my family nibbled our way through a big jar of dried kelp flakes, sprinkled on green beans and potatoes and suchlike, from 1973 to 1976, and it didn't taste bad or make us sick. In fact, kelp is naturally iodized, so if you're in a landlocked area and don't want to use a lot of iodized salt, kelp may help you stay healthy!
Holiday parties? Don't forget the raw broccoli...for all the vegans, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, diabetic, allergic, and other special diet followers out there, raw vegetables are the party food all of us can eat!
Green
Is GMO corn even fit to burn?
Health
For those who don't sleep well at night...
And, to treat insomnia, reduce weight, lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety and hostility, experience that wonderful state of being in which you feel trust and good will toward your neighbors even though the terms of your acquaintance with them are that you know that all of their names are "Neighbor"...This is what's wrong with urbanized Southern California. ISIS sympathizers are bad, and ISIS sympathizers on Prozac are worse, but crowded, denatured people are capable of being just as bad as ISIS sympathizers on Prozac.
Pictures
Nostalgia for me. Eye candy for some readers. Warning: lots of big glossy photos may overburden some readers' computers.
This is the nature walk we used to do in summer and fall at Columbia Union College. The "Billy Goat Trail" detour really was for goats back then; one year a summerboy (a high school student, not yet admitted as a freshman, allowed to take a freshman class) managed to break his neck. Literally. He survived, but interest in rock climbing on campus declined drastically. The main trail, I'm glad to observe, is still wheelchair-friendly...and it can have a spiritual quality...
Politics
Glenn Kessler checks Marco Rubio's facts, and hates to admit Rubio is right.
Hmm. The Washington Post is being nice and bipartisan. I'd like to return the favor. Here's a review of a Democrat's book
--vintage comedy riffs on facts that are still relevant for Election 2016, and issues Republicans need to address.
--vintage comedy riffs on facts that are still relevant for Election 2016, and issues Republicans need to address.
Recycling
Actually, the way I heard this story from older people, it wasn't so much about kindness or desperate poverty as it was about frugality. Frugal people thought wasting a cotton sack was wrong, whether they used it to make garments or quilts or cleaning rags or whatever. Flour mills started designing reusable sacks in different cutesy-wutesy patterns to encourage people to buy more of their sacks! Anyway, whatever motives different people had...the fact is that, in the early twentieth century, flour and meal came in reusable sacks of garment-quality cotton fabric. According to Adayahi, who grew up in a coal camp, a real "miner's quilt" contains a high proportion of fabric from these sacks. Here's a collection of some of the fabrics...
Shameless Self-Promotion
This blog does not actually want readers' "donations." This blog would rather sell you things in our Store!
(...I was starting to enjoy those Wordpress tags: antique quilts, bad decisions of Donald Trump,edible kelp, filtering coal smoke, Great Falls of the Potomac River, U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1), ugly (irregular) fruit and vegetables.)
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