On Friday I was trying to put together a few links to post on Sunday, when Chrome started running very very slowly. At first the other browsers seemed to do a little better, except that I didn't give the other browsers inside access to Blogspot. Then the storm broke and the whole Internet went down. On Saturday Gate City had limited Internet access--one or two tabs at a time would open, but no audio, no video, and only a few small pictures could be seen. Duffield, I'm told, had no access at all. Connections continued to be very feeble all weekend. Nature intended people to visit their relatives, go to the lake, watch fireworks, that sort of thing. Nature sort of forced some of us to do those things. From time to time I'd pass by an Internet connection and check it. As of Sunday night the Internet is still running at about ten percent power.
On Friday Blogspot was one of the tabs that wouldn't open. I had enough tabs open to confirm a pattern: simple things, like blog posts and short articles that contained text only, would open; pages that contained a lot of coding, like the inside of Blogspot and like any page with big pictures or audiovisual content, would not. I was able to work on a copy-editing gig, with breaks to read poems and short simple blog posts, but not visit fora, or listen to music, or do research. By Sunday evening, Blogspot is opening but not running smoothly. So, well, a few links anyway. Regular posts will resume...I can't say when. I am aware of obligations to sponsors and readers, but serious heat and humidity are here, my neighborhood's been poisoned, and my Internet connection's been fried. I have opened the tabs for the next butterfly post but the server's not actually connecting to most of them, so even that's being delayed. Indefinitely. I will do that, and likewise some long-awaited (at least by some writers and publishers) new book reviews, when I can. There will be a Petfinder post but it may not be Tuesday. There will be Long & Short Reviews and Poets & Storytellers United posts but they may not be linked up, and may not appear on their regular schedule.
I have to figure...McDonald's has its own server and may have a stronger connection, this week, but every computer person in Duffield is likely to be at McDonald's. If I can do some online work closer to home, going to McDonald's and taking up bandwidth that Duffielders need would be cheating.
Food
Simple recipes for baked desserts, with funny stories:
I don't remember just when I started being allowed to help cook--mostly stir together things dumped into the mixing bowl to produce breads and cakes. Mother had an electric mixer but used it only to beat egg whites. Using it to beat batter was Cheating (1930s rules). The tool of choice for beating batter was a child. The batters a child would beat a few hundred strokes, counting out loud, were the sweet ones into which the said child could dip a spoon. We had that Betty Crocker Cook Book and used it.
The first thing I was taught to cook "all by myself," to be able to cook while Mother was recovering from the birth of my natural sister, was cornbread:
1. Your father is in charge of the wood stove. It should be as hot as possible. Remember not to touch it as you are probably wearing the kind of clothes people wore around 1970, which were different forms of spun plastic, and melted easily.
2. Pick a baking pan, If using an 8-9" round or square pan dump 2 cups white cornmeal into mixing bowl. If using the 9x13" pan, 3 cups. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in the pan.
3. Stir in 1 teaspoon baking powder per cup of meal, and 1 teaspoon salt. For extra "health food cooking" points, omit the salt.
4. Tilt the baking pan to coat with butter and drop the rest into the meal mixture. Mix to distribute evenly through the bowl.
5. Pour in 1 cup of milk. Into the milk crack 1 egg. Stir the egg into the milk, then combine evenly with the meal and add water until it feels right. Usually you use a little less liquid than meal, but this depends on the humidity of the air and should be determined by touch.
6. Pour into the hot buttered pan, slam it into the oven, close the door tightly, and bake until the smell of baked bread fills the house. The hotter the oven, the less baking time. Faster baking is better but, realistically, a wood stove tends to maintain a moderate to slow oven.
Real buttermilk was often in the refrigerator, since we made our own butter by shaking cream in a clean canning jar, and if you have real buttermilk you can substitute plain baking soda for baking powder and buttermilk for milk. This gives a distinctive flavor and texture that some people prefer. If, alternatively, you have "self-rising" cornmeal, with the baking powder and salt mixed in, you can skip step 3. These are the only variations that can properly be called cornbread. Dozens of other things can be made by varying this recipe further; they are not cornbread.
Biscuits are made the same way, but with wheat flour instead of cornmeal. Biscuit dough is more cohesive than cornbread dough and can be cut into rounds and squares before baking. Biscuits can be held in the hand while eating, but slices of cornbread are transferred to bowls, at the table, to which children add milk and adults add tomato juice. This is eaten with a spoon.
Either cornbread or biscuit dough may be made thinner with extra milk or water and cooked on top of the stove as pancakes. These are served on plates. Cornmeal pancakes may be topped with molasses or tomatoes. Wheat flour pancakes may be topped with molasses, maple syrup, or any sweet fruit topping and/or butter.
Adding either flour or sweetening to cornbread dough was something Northerners were supposed to do, therefore ridiculous. Mother, who grew up in the North, never did anything so Yankee-ish as to adulterate cornbread with flour or sugar. Leaving out the salt was as low as she'd go. Baked desserts were, however, normally made with flour, sometimes eked out with oatmeal; making gluten-free cakes with cornmeal was downright hippie-ish, when I started experimenting in my thirties. And one thoroughly Southern great-aunt liked to experiment with multi-grain breads, adding oatmeal, rye flour, or other ground-up grains to her cornbread. I don't remember anyone else raving over these results or trying to copy them, but they disappeared fast enough and nobody accused the great-aunt of being Yankee-ish.
As a gluten-free adult I do all kinds of innovative things with cornmeal. Use a can of fish, beans, or vegetables, or a cup of soup, in place of the milk. Add onions, sage, and pepper to cornbread dough. Use cornmeal to make banana bread or similar sweet "quick" breads. Bake cornbread in a deep dish and pour vegetables and/or beans and/or meat over it like an instant tamale pie. Bake a layer of meat sandwiched between two layers of cornbread dough. I would probably have thought these variations were disgusting at the age when I started making cornbread and biscuits.
Poetry
Seasonal:
This is what we call a testerical male. In this case it's been pounded into his testosterone-poisoned head that the price of sharing a yuppie wife's income is doing his share of household chores, but in his mind he's still thinking that he's doing "women's work," that his floor is supposed to be scrubbed and his laundry done while he's out of the house. It's a sickness some men get. It needs lots of chore therapy.
Politics (Election 2024)
Yes, it's possible for the Trump haters to be obnoxious enough to generate sympathy for Trump. Though one of Trump's more obnoxious traits is his reliance on his haters. He works haters. I don't think a person should depend on the "I can't be all that bad, because look at the kind of creeps who hate me" dynamic; I think Trump does depend on it. But, crumbs, look at the kind of creeps who hate him.
The only thing Trump's ever had in common with Abraham Lincoln: being hated by snobs.
The only thing he's ever had in common with Andrew Jackson: deliberately baiting those snobs.
But he has, through no merit of his own, had one thing in common with Ronald Reagan: both of them stayed out of war with Russia. Though credit for that needs to be given to the people, here and also in Russia, who either realize that war is never a good idea, or at least recognize that war between the US and Russia would be a spectacularly bad idea.
Risking a "hot" war with Russia is a D specialty but the party as a whole can't be blamed for it; most Ds aren't that bad. It has to be blamed on a small select group of Ds who are well past draft age, probably never had children, and particularly hate young men. A typical D would probably be willing and able to throw these aged lousy creeps into the solitary prison cells where they belong. Joe Biden is older and less alert than the typical D.
Politics (General)
Exactly. There's little if any actual revival of fascism or feudalism but there is an increasing awareness that nations are better off when the citizens are informed and independent and free to do their own thing. And people who fret about "inclusivity" need to start including that in their plans--plans to grow up and let other people grow up, get medical help if they can't control their control cravings, stop screaming that free markets don't correct themselves and strip away the protectionist regulations that keep the free market from self-correcting. If we really want all people to enjoy equal rights and freedoms, that's the way it's done.
I clicked over to X last week. I can't say I recommend anything I saw when I clicked to see what was making the name "Candace" trend, but ohhh, the dogpile of misogyny and even racism that spewed forth when Candace Owens dared to express some "moderate" thoughts. I think Owens might do well to work with a professional speech writer; she said some things that were easy for haters to pounce on, things that made her sound "too young." I think Owens' haters should be identified as individuals who have lost all claim to any moral high ground. It's one thing to be young, get carried away, and overstate expressions of love, loyalty, even indignation. It's another thing to be infantile and kick and scream "I hate you!"
What is the matter with left-wingers who can't say things like "Candace Owens certainly is Black, and American, and female, and young, and also gifted. We wish she were in our party. As things are, we owe respect to her as a human being even if we end up voting for someone else"?
Why is it so easy for right-wingers to say things like "Joe Biden has always been more a figurehead than a leader, and the strain of it has been visible throughout his presidency. He should retire. His performance in the CNN Debate against Trump was that of an aging champion, but even if his gift for oratory had been as great as Ronald Reagan's, his presidency has been something nobody wants to extend for one more day. We owe respect to him as a human being even if we end up voting against him and the party he rode in on"?
There is a depth to left-wing hatespews that's just not there in right-wing rhetoric. Right-wingers do of course make fun of left-wing politics and the way left-wing ideas fail left-wing politicians. Right-wingers may never get tired of remembering that Biden's earned the lowest approval rating ever recorded of a sitting President of the United States, that Mrs. Obama struggled visibly with her weight and diet, that Bill Clinton got someone's clothes dirty, and so on. Have right-wingers ever even pretended to doubt that Biden and Clinton are still White, or the Obamas Black? Even if Rush Limbaugh did enjoy letting his audience bicker about whether he meant to say "Hillary Rodham Clinton is not loyal" or "Chelsea Clinton is an awkward adolescent," even if there are Republicans who rate themselves repulsive enough to suggest that sex with them would be the worst thing they can wish on Joe Biden, "conservatives" just don't spew out the kind of hatred that seems to roil continually beneath so much recent talk about "inclusivity."
I'm wondering whether that's because all humans, even extroverts, are just hard-wired to feel better when they're not following religious dogmas that have been clearly shown to be harmful to humankind, the way Socialism has. Whether left-wingers' bitterness is a product of long-denied, unconfessed, unforgiven, festering guilt.
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