More photos from the weekend, just to get them off the iPhone and into the world.
Alex is the only property owner on his little lake who lets his shoreline remain more or less natural. “Frogs live in there,” he said. How could he mow a frog’s house? Thanks, iPhone, for your panorama option:
You can click it to big it.
Alex also has a stray cat who has taken to more or less permanent residency in his gardens, killing rodents as her rent. Her name is Sissy, and don’t let Alex tell you it’s really Pussy, because it’s Sissy. Here she is:
Sissy. Sissy the cat.
You guys have been so good about posting links I feel like I can’t bring you anything you haven’t seen yet. But I have a little.
From the WashPost, Gene Weingarten sends an open letter to his new boss:
Back in 1982, when I was an editor at Tropic, the Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, the publisher asked us to run a story on our cover about the winners of The Silver Knight award, which was given out every year at a gala to the most promising high school seniors in the Miami area. The Silver Knights were a fine and noble enterprise, but the event was run and financed by Knight-Ridder, the corporate owners of The Miami Herald; Herald stories about the Silver Knight awards were inevitably uncritical, nakedly celebratory, and drenched in self-promotion. We at Tropic declined to run the story of the awards on the grounds that we were a small magazine trying to establish a feisty, pugnacious identity, and being a corporate suckup toady lickspittle didn’t fit in with our plans. The publisher glowered, muttered something about insubordination, and steered the story to another, less visible section of the paper. We went unpunished.
Wikipedia tells me that one of the Silver Knight winners that year was little Jeffrey Bezos of Miami Palmetto High School. Haha.
You and I briefly crossed paths as younger men, and I dissed you. I guess it’s clear who won that race.
We had a similar award at the News ‘n’ Sentinel, the Sterling Sentinel award, but not even one section that could get out of the self-promotional story-writing.
Rembert Browne visits Detroit. I’m a little tired of these pieces, but OK. His heart is in the right place.
Having endured only one episode of “To Catch a Predator,” and learning to my horror that it was part of a long-running series, and finding myself in the very uncomfortable position of feeling sorry for some of these poor saps, all I can say is: This couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Late night, early morning. Let’s all have a good Wednesday.
Sherri said on August 7, 2013 at 1:58 am
I’m a sports fan, and I know I’m tired of reading about PEDs, so I imagine everybody else is too, but if you only read one article about the latest PED uproar in baseball, make it Dave Zirin’s: http://www.thenation.com/blog/175609/alex-rodriguez-and-true-pink-elephant-elefante-rosa-room
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Dexter said on August 7, 2013 at 2:41 am
Michigan State grad Chris Hansen…of course he’s going to exhibit animalistic behavior.
Sherri, have you, like me, become a disciple of Yasiel Puig yet? He’s Kaline, Clemente, and young Bonds all rolled up in number 66 in Dodger blue. http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2013/06/10/yasiel-puig.jpg
Now we have lab-produced hamburger in the pipeline. http://www.rferl.org/content/stem-cells-burger-tasting/25066989.html
(Now, a patty would cost $3,500). But it is coming, cloned from real beef and grown in the lab. I quit eating hamburger meat a few years ago…it’s disgraceful how this meat may be from many countries, all thrown together…Yuck!
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beb said on August 7, 2013 at 7:53 am
Tooting Nanncy’s horn…
http://www.freep.com/article/20130807/OPINION05/308070037/detroit-voting-auto-insurance-rates-turnout-election
by our own NN.
Anyone who lives in Detroit knows how horrible car insurance rates are. It’s a major impediment to Detroit’s recovery. I did not know that affected voter registration, too.
And speaking of voting, Detroit’s primary was yesterday. The crazy-ass carpet-bagger who got thrown off the ballot for filing too early too in 46% of the votes as a write-in candidate. I have never known a write-in candidate to actually win an election.
The man who sued to keep him off the ballot finished 5th with 4% of the vote.
The secret ingredient to lab-grown hamburger patty is beef blood so this is not a vegetarian treat. In fact it sounds a little more gross than before.
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basset said on August 7, 2013 at 7:56 am
We try to avoid store meat… buy half a grass-fed beef from a private producer every fall and I “harvest” several deer, that’ll just about carry us through the year. I have gotten into canning and preserving, maybe as some kind of lizard-brain reaction to the recession, maybe not… venison can be canned in Mason jars just like vegetables, takes awhile but it’s worth the trouble.
So there’s a coney-dog feud in Detroit? Our allegedly genuine Detroit coney dog place here in Nashville, the one with twelve-packs of Vernor’s and Faygo stacked around the counter, has closed… can still get Vernor’s in the grocery, though.
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Mark P said on August 7, 2013 at 8:18 am
In a former life I worked at The Augusta (Ga) Chronicle. the big promotion every year there was the Soapbox Derby. The obit writer got to cover that story and accompany the local winner to the big finals in Akron, Ohio. Kind of a bonus for doing that crap job all year. So, how appropriate: as a reward for that tedious job, you get to go to (drumroll and trumpets) AKRON!
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alex said on August 7, 2013 at 8:24 am
Pussies. PUSSIES. That’s her name. Don’t wear it out. But thanks, Nancy, for suggesting a name that’ll let us keep a straight face when we take her to a veterinarian.
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LAMary said on August 7, 2013 at 9:33 am
The in house Brit calls my cats Pusses. No y or ie. In any case, Sissy or Pussies is a beautiful cat and I think it’s very considerate of her to manage the rodent issues in your yard. My cat Albert does the same and I remind him that is an excellent specimen of cathood all the time.
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Julie Robinson said on August 7, 2013 at 9:34 am
Chris Hansen…skeevy.
Alex, your garden is gorgeous and tranquil. It makes me think of Monet.
Back to the opera discussion a few days ago, here’s a defense of the art form from an opera singer: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/08/06/209255996/and-in-this-corner-a-baritone-fights-for-opera-on-the-bbc
Accused of irrelevance, the singer says this. “Opera, he explains, comes from a deep desire to tell a story of how people interact with themselves. It’s a laboratory of dilemmas of people, and that can only always be relevant in my opinion.”
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 9:44 am
As much as I’m enamored of Rachel Maddow, and indeed, of Lawrence O’Donnell after her on MSNBC, it is always jarring on a Friday evening, when the Maddow show ends, and the network goes into prison/predator mode.
Usually I can switch off before it begins, because Rachel helpfully reminds her gentle viewers, with some exhortation like “And now, it’s off to PRISON with the lot of you!”. But when she’s away, the replacement hosts often fail to do this, and the ‘ick’ factor of those shows is pronounced and immediate.
But I WILL say, I can usually stomach at least a few segments of “Caught on Camera” (if it’s not plane crashes or other death-fest features), if only for the always-beautiful host of the show, Contessa Brewer
And Alex, your Pussies is a beautiful kitty, indeed. Our two house-cats wouldn’t know what to do with a mouse if their lives depended on it!
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 7, 2013 at 10:00 am
Hey, Akron has . . . . uh, okay. Point taken.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 10:53 am
Did you know that yesterday was the 68th anniversary of the nuclear attack upon the city of Hiroshima?
And do you know what occurred in Japan yesterday
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/world/asia/japan-new-warship/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
The photograph alone is worth a double-take.
And China is expressing muted protests
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Deborah said on August 7, 2013 at 11:10 am
Brian, they’ve been having protests in Los Alamos about the ongoing nuclear research, commemorating (that’s not the right word) Hiroshima.
And my cat would be frightened to death if she ever saw a mouse. She rarely sees other animals.
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Julie Robinson said on August 7, 2013 at 11:20 am
Well, I was all set to defend Akron based on the inspirational National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum, where we spent a happy afternoon a few years back. Except it moved to Virginia last year. Oh dear.
Actually, back in the Knight Ridder glory days, the Akron property was the source of many innovations*, at least on the advertising side.
*Which meant that our guys copied their guys a lot.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 11:25 am
Akron = Goodyear blimp, no?
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Judybusy said on August 7, 2013 at 11:40 am
Alex, your garden is just beautiful! And Pussies is gorgeous. Our cat, Gabe has brought live mice into the house on more than one occasion just to have something to play with. Years ago, he lost interest pretty quickly, which left us chasing the damn thing. I finally fetched another cat who dispatched it with speed. I carried cat and meal outside.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 12:17 pm
http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/local/burmese-mother-struggles-to-bring-sons-body-home
An update on a terrible story from yesterday; I cannot see how a kiddo falls asleep on railroad tracks, but the key word there is ‘kiddo’.
Given that Stand By Me is a Stephen King novel, I suppose comparing it to that begs the question what these young folks were running from.
Then again, I suppose sometimes young folks just feel like running.
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Deborah said on August 7, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Alex, I envy your garden. We really tried to get something going here in Santa Fe, but so far it’s rather pathetic. We killed one of the 10 lavender plants and none of the seeds we planted did anything. Right now we have sunflowers right under where we’ve had the bird feeders. We let weeds grow tall in the planter where we planted seeds because we thought they were our wildflowers coming up. Turns out they were ragweed and Little Bird was having terrible allergy problems until we figured it out and got rid of them. We’re terrible gardeners. Hopefully we will learn from our mistakes. The only thing we can count on now is the slime mold, every morning I scrape up batches of it and deposit in plastic bags then into the dumpster. They say there’s nothing you can do except to constantly remove it ASAP. When the rainy season is over it will stop.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Deborah – I bet you and yours could be the best gardeners in the world, and you’d still have a heck of time west of the 100th longitude, as another poster aptly noted a week or two ago (let alone the 105th!)
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Dexter said on August 7, 2013 at 12:48 pm
musical interlude…Traveling Wilburys, “Congratulations”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKShNYsclLU
For a rainy humid nasty day, a day for hot tea and dreams of a lottery win, as a Powerball jackpot, August 7, 2013…$425 mil.
http://scienceblogs.com/obesitypanacea/wp-content/blogs.dir/347/files/2012/04/i-52709b37a20ece96e5b25e9112d6b12c-fat%20man.gif
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Deborah said on August 7, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Nice thought Brian, but other people around here have gorgeous gardens. It takes a lot of time, know how and apparently money. We’ve shelled out for most of it so far and since we’re renters our landlord loves us. Plus we’ve done all the work. It’s fun to do, just frustrating when the time and money expended doesn’t measure up. I think I need to be more patient and figure it will look better next year.
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 1:46 pm
corporate suckup toady lickspittle
Don’t mince words, man. Say what you really mean.
Back in my days sof waiting tables, I was repeatedly faced with the redneck question re the wine list. What’s this Pussy foosay. Hard not to laugh, but I figured out eventually to just say, Oh, that’s a white and it won’t go with your prime rib well at all. Then there was the time we were raided by the Oconee Co. Sheriff’s Dept. for selling liquor without a license. His best bubba from way back had a restaurant just down the street. They tried to seem professional and catalog the bottles confiscated, as if they weren’t going right out later to dump everything in a trash can and get loaded and shoot guns. One yokel picked up a bottle of Triple Sec and said “Looky here. Triple Sex. What is wrong with these folks?” My other favorite was the couple at the salad bar. She to he: I woan eat onions if you doan eat onions. I thought about offering Binaca, but thought better of that idea. The money was good, especially on football weekends, but the entertainment had value too.
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 1:54 pm
What is that Dada sculpture looking thing in the right forground of Nancy’s panoramic shot?
Dexter, I read that TP and the Heartbreakers have been doing rousing versions of Tweeter and the Monkey Man in their latest round of shows.
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Judybusy said on August 7, 2013 at 2:03 pm
Deborah, a good resource would be your local Master Gardener program. I am an intern in our local program, and am amazed at what our collective knowledge is. I also found out I know little about gardening, even after 20 years!
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Sherri said on August 7, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Dexter (way back in #2), I have enjoyed Yasel Puig this season, even if he is a Dodger, though I don’t watch nearly as much baseball as I used to. I’ve become much more of a football fan than I used to be, thanks to the combination of HD television and insanely complex offensive and defensive schemes that appeal to my analytical mind.
As my favorite player Russell Wilson would say, Go ‘Hawks!
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Mark P said on August 7, 2013 at 2:46 pm
I actually have a connection with Akron. My mother grew up there, and we visited her mother and stepfather as well as her sister/BiL and brother/SiL almost every summer. Plus, when I was working in Augusta, I got a ride in the pilot’s seat of the Goodyear blimp. Bonus trivia fact: the blimp has a zipper on the envelope. If it is forced from its mooring, it unzips and the envelope collapses. I know because it did that at the Augusta airport. The Goodyear blimp is not very big when it’s not full of helium. Say, isn’t that true of Rush? Except the helium is hot air?
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 3:06 pm
NYRB is staging a summer sale, featuring some classics like Dead Souls and a lot of vg mid-20th Century fiction Big discounts. I have to shut it down cold turkey, since our condo is running out of room for books and music. I’m at the point where I bought a book simply because I was captivated by the title: The Physics of Imaginary Objects. Mighty good, but that’s when I know it’s time to stop. Some Renata Adler, too. And Nancy Mitford, The Sun King. Dead Souls, which I loved in college.
Lab-produced beef in the pipeline? I can see it delivered that way. And when it plugs up, Harry Tuttle?Robert DeNiro shows up to fix it. My only reaction to that stuff is “It’s people”. And Yeeeeeccchhhh. It reminds me of the pink slime fiasco.
Extremely gross.Let’s have a Big Mac ammonia burger for lunch.
Yasiel Puig is exceptionally fun to watch. Bryce Harper should take a look at video of all those pitchers throwin at Puig his first couple of weeks. Trot down to first, steal second, come around to score on an infield single. Or maybe weedle Brycie should just hit himself in the head with his bat again. What a childish character. If Puig has a fault as a player, it’s believing he can do anything at all, even the impossible.
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LAMary said on August 7, 2013 at 3:18 pm
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I have a lot of blimp traffic over my house. I live about halfway between the Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium. By a lot I don’t mean daily, but every time there’s a ball game at either of those venues, I hear the blimp circling. My dogs don’t like the sound. My late great Dane Charlie used to growl at it.
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Sherri said on August 7, 2013 at 4:01 pm
The Goodyear blimps are soon being replaced by zeppelins, though Goodyear will still call them blimps: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/goodyear-goodbye-blimp-zeppelin/story?id=19687868
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Julie Robinson said on August 7, 2013 at 4:11 pm
A very depressing article about the consequences of No Child Left Behind:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/09/a-warning-to-college-profs-from-a-high-school-teacher/
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Charlotte said on August 7, 2013 at 4:17 pm
Bassett — please tell me you’re safely pressure-canning your venison! Hot water bath canning of meat is an open invitation to botulism (see here: http://www.kplu.org/post/home-canning-hobby-leads-near-fatal-medical-emergency#.UeyV1aOqkX4.twitter). That said, I love my pressure canner. I’ll do a whole bag of pinto beans, then pressure can them for later. Much yummier than the store ones. And we’re with you — we’re about to put our annual order in for a county fair pig (lovingly raised by a 4H kid).
Deborah — there’s a gorgeous new cookbook by Santa Fe local Deborah Madison called Vegetable Literacy — it’s got a lot of info about gardening in your area. And my bible when I started here was the Sunset Western Garden book. The trick is that the first year or two, you have to water more than you want to … I hate to think what my July water bill is going to look like here.
As for baseball — my hometown team soundly booed when A-Rod took a pitch to the elbow last night. And I am not at all sorry. He should just retire already.
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LAMary said on August 7, 2013 at 4:22 pm
I’m still fighting the good fight to stay in my house rather than sell and split the equity with the ex, but if I have to move, I really want to find a house in the part of LA they used to call Frogtown, on Blimp Street. I would love my address to be something like 123 Blimp Street, Frogtown, California.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Well, Mary, I was entirely smitten by southwestern California*, and you would be the Princess in Frogtown, no doubt!
*Hoosier-hick confession: I especially loved the Los Angeles airport…way cool! And our 15 year old loved the Adam Levine/The Voice tee shirt I got her from the NBC-Paramount store there
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Dexter said on August 7, 2013 at 4:49 pm
prospero, ‘Tweeter and the Monkey Man’ is my fave Wilburys tune. I used to play it all the time and my little daughter memorized it and sometimes would just break out in song with it. Very cool lyric.
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beb said on August 7, 2013 at 5:00 pm
On I-75 between Detroit and Toledo there is a town called “Luna Pier.” As an SF fan I’ve thought how neat it would be to have an address in Luna Pier.
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Long Dylan story songs are always a sure bet. This one’s near the top of the list:
http://vimeo.com/64007736
The only time I saw Dylan was with the Heartbreakers. Tweeter is full of Springsteen song titles and heavy on Jersey settings.
A friend just sent this great Savoy Brown song to tell me it’s Lonesome Dave Peverett’s birthday. Amazing guitar solo, and remarkable vocal. Listen for the slide train whistle toward the end. Savoy Brown played the Grande many times. Hellacious live band that sadly devolved into Foghat. Not as sad as what became of Fleetwood Mac, but pretty sad, I think. I’m guessing Dexter and some others of y’all liked Savoy Brown decades ago
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coozledad said on August 7, 2013 at 5:09 pm
These people don’t belong in this country:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/anti-obama-protest-turns-racist?ref=fpa
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Can’t wait for DOJ to get into this mess. GOPers will squeal like stuck pigs about the race card, but isn’t freedom to move about the country a basic American value? And if BeaverCreek blows that federal money, how does anybody vote for any of them ever again? Morons.
Online slap Hillary game. Because GOPers find violence against women just tickles their otherwise non-existent funnybones. These people need psychiatrists.
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 5:52 pm
Here’s a potential corruption scandal you won’t see Issa dogging.
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Mark P. said on August 7, 2013 at 5:55 pm
Sherri, interesting about the Goodyear “blimps”. I did a little reading on that subject, and apparently what Goodyear will use is a “zeppelin” not because it is a truly rigid airship, but because Goodyear is buying them from the Zeppelin company. The new “blimps” will actually be semirigid, not fully rigid like the classic zeppelin. It’s also interesting that they will not be lighter-than-air ships. They will need engine power to lift off under most circumstances. But they will look pretty much like the old blimps.
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basset said on August 7, 2013 at 6:28 pm
Prospero@21, that kind of elitist bullshit is why I have walked out of several restaurants… “faced with the redneck question… hard not to laugh”), if the waiter gives me any attitude for not knowing enough about wine, I make room for someone who will meet his lofty standards.
I even had a wine-store clerk take a bottle back across the counter once and offer me a different one, he said something like “oh, you don’t know anything about wine, this one will be good enough” and I was outa there.
Charlotte@30, we do pressure-can the meat, an hour-15 at ten pounds if I remember right. Warming some up now, so if I post tomorrow you’ll know we did it safely. My FIL told me how they used to can venison out on the farm in Newaygo County before they had electricity, and I had to try it. Seems to work, and the easiest deer to shoot (small does) are also the best eating… we have an oversupply of them, in this part of Tennessee you can take three does a day every day all season.
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Dexter said on August 7, 2013 at 6:32 pm
prospero, Savoy Brown indeed made the concert circuit near here, but mostly they played San Francisco, NYC, and other large venues when they weren’t kicking ass in England and around the world.
http://thebritishsound.blogspot.com/2010/12/coming-soon.html
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Bill said on August 7, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Prospero @ 22: It’s a boat lift. Click on it and you’ll get an enlargement.
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Joe K said on August 7, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Alex,
Nice view, am I wrong or is that the lake just east of tonkle rd, at the corner of the road that goes to Leo, where the fire station and archery place is? If it is, let Me know and when I get a chance I’ll fly down low and give you a wave.
Pilot Joe
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Prospero said on August 7, 2013 at 7:50 pm
Basset: I wasn’t amused about the customer’s ignorance or knowledge of wine. I don’t claim to know much about it myself. It was the mispronunciation I found funny. How does anyone get pussy from pouilly (which I doubt I know how to pronounce correctly)?
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basset said on August 7, 2013 at 10:05 pm
Mocking his lack of knowledge in any case, same thing. If he can’t pronounce French properly, hit him with some froggie condescension.
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basset said on August 7, 2013 at 10:09 pm
Meanwhile… Mr. Moose is gone:
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/0807/Cosmo-Allegretti-Captain-Kangaroo-character-behind-Dancing-Bear-and-Mr.-Moose
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alex said on August 7, 2013 at 10:46 pm
Joe, that’s the one. I’m always hearing a plane circling around at 5-6 AM. Is that you coming in for landing?
If I recall correctly, you don’t live too far from what used to be a town called New Era on 11A I think between 66 and 64 or so. A bunch of my ancestors lived in that area and are buried in the Cedar Chapel Cemetery on 68 and 11A.
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brian stouder said on August 7, 2013 at 11:09 pm
Basset, I always loved the dancing bear and Mr Moose and Bunny Rabbit (and Mr Greenjeans, but we digress).
I almost blur it together with the old Red Skelton variety show, and the Town Clown and Freddie the Freeloader.
But indeed, of that whole group, the dancing bear was sublime
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Sherri said on August 7, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Mr. Moose was my favorite, because of the ping pong balls.
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alex said on August 7, 2013 at 11:59 pm
Chris Hansen should have been greater fodder for conversation. I haven’t watched lately, but happened upon his show several times over the years and it was pretty icky, like the proverbial train wreck that makes you want to look away as much as gawk. On occasion, they’d get repeat offenders, people so stupid they didn’t learn their lesson and were stung by the same sting within days of having been ambushed and arrested already. A lot of the offenders were just pitiful. I remember one guy who was rather handsome but had the shortened lower extremities typically seen in cases of fetal alcohol syndrome. Probably didn’t have the self confidence to be able to score in a normal setting. But the offenders ran the gamut in terms of age and looks and it’s anyone’s guess what motivated them. Even though every one of them denied having ever attempted such a thing before, what struck me most about that show is how prevalent online hookups between adults and juveniles evidently must be. The show had no difficulty reeling in an endless supply of adults seeking such relations.
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Prospero said on August 8, 2013 at 1:14 am
Sorry, but pronouncing a word spelled Pouilly as pussy is is so stupid it’s worthy of mockery. On the other hand, I didn’t mock anybody nor did I laugh. I may have pointed out once or twice it’s puyee foosay, but mocking a customer you want a tip from would be raather stupid, and I was certainly not being condescending in any way. And when you come from the deep south or have lived there a long time, it’s reasonable to cqall a rednec a redneck. That’s not elitism, it’s just accurate.
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