Here's Something New....

Lori Skoog's blog always has such gorgeous photos of her farm and surrounding areas, and Lori's of course a dedicated horsewoman, writer, and artist.  This fascinating video was on her blog post today:



Happy Thanksgiving!!

Wow....

Maybe once or twice a year I come upon a blog that makes me want to get up and dance down the aisle of the bus or twirl around one of the poles in the aisle of  the metro.  I found TWO good ones this week, and it's only Monday already.

First is Nailing Jello to the Wall. I actually found that a year ago, but the author took a rather longish hiatus and I forgot about it.  I'm happy to report that she's BACK!!

Second is Suburban Lesbian Housewife. Here's a sample (and the best thing written yet about Penn State):

How many children need to be raped before a University does something? Who could watch a child be raped and do nothing? Nothing at all? 

I see something like that? I'm getting a baseball bat or the heaviest object near me and I'm stopping it. Then, I'm going to the police. But I do not wait and go to my boss.

If someone was murdered, would you wait to tell your boss? Or do you call 9-1-1?

What football program is more important than reporting directly to the police a crime?

My god, what is wrong with this country? Full disclosure: I am a football fan. Love watching, playing, and I've been a Penn State fan for years. My grandfather went there, left a large donation and there's some plaque by a pond on campus with his name on it. I have always respected the graduation rates of football players from Penn State. 

Paterno knew for years. Years. Not a week, or a month, but long enough to have stopped the pain for many more victims. He could have stopped a predator. 

But he didn't. 

I'm suppose to sit here and shed a tear for him? I don't care what he did for how many years. 

And then there's her post "Meet Baby." A smidgen of that:

Meet Baby

I know you all think I'm miserably depressed all the time, and mostly that's true but I do still know how to laugh.

While Zachary and Jake were away on a road trip, I sent them pictures on their phones. Any time I saw a "punch buggy" I sent it to Jake and said, Punch yourself.

He would promptly punch Zachary.

I had found Zachary's "Baby" in the Ogunquit house. It was a gift from a good friend of mine and Zachary did love Baby. That is, when he was a baby. Poor Baby ended up on top of the refrigerator, long forgotten. Until I got Baby, dusted her off and took her on adventures.

Meet Baby.



Now, Baby did get a little annoyed while sitting on the refrigerator for so long.



If you mess with Baby, she will give you the finger.



Baby likes cake.

There's more...more Baby, more astute political comments..Enjoy!

Saturday night blog reading...

Emilie Johnson, whose blog displays her incredible photographs and writing, has a great post today: "Brecht."

A friend, Katelin Wilcox's, one woman show last night, performed at Theater Row on 42nd Street in the United Solo Fest left me thinking thinking thinking. She was stunning in a brilliantly written piece she herself wrote of the tale of Bertolt Brecht (1989-1956), or rather, the tale of his women. She switched between the roles of five fundamental women in the playwright's life - their love, losses and perspectives. These women each not only fueled Brecht's creativity, but were often the literal composers of his work, only eventually to be discarded. It was a feminist tale and one that, unfortunately, could be told countless times across history. One of the women, Elisabeth Hauptmann, literally wrote the piece that launched Brecht's career (The Threepenny Opera) and received next to no credit for having done so. If you look up the piece, she is still often listed, at best, as a 'collaborator' - when 80-90% of the writing was hers. The women in his life were writers, actors, creative forces who were stunted merely because they were women (Brecht seized the opportunity to make use of their force and these women often saw the 'collaboration' as the only way their voices could be heard, having been rejected from publishers and industry heads repeatedly).

The performance and its story were such a great illustrative response to anyone who asks, where were women in history? Artists, writers, thinkers, philosophers - they were there. 

Where are all the women, indeed?  It's always teed me off no end to look up the new videos on TED and see so few women (2 out of 15 on today's first page).  Ditto re the Writer's Almanac, although today's featured writer is poet Sharon Olds, with a marvelous poem about her daughter.  (Keep up the good work, Garrison. Remember, MORE WOMEN....or at least as many as the men.)

And thank you, Ms. Johnson, for blogging so all of us out here can see your spirit.

Saturday Blogaround While Cooking....

Ok, I have been up since 6:43am preparing dinner for four: roasted chicken, scalloped potatoes & onions, romaine lettuce with olive oil & lemon juice, sweet basil carrots (minus the basil...oops), and apple pie.  I'm doing this for a friend and her partner, who will be entertaining the friend's former partner and her husband. (Oh, go ahead, raise your eyebrows....it's life here in the City of Satan, and I love it). Chop chop chop chop, stir stir stir stir.

The pie is done, ditto the potato dish and the carrots, and the chicken is in the oven with something I've never tried before:  making herb butter and stuffing it under the skin.  I must say the place smells divine!!!  I expect the neighbors will be telling me this when I run into them in the hallway soon.

Meanwhile, however, I'm horsing around online and checking the blogs.  You may enjoy this one in particular, too:  Old Phat Stu, who had a fascinating post yesterday on ejection seats (as in pilots).  Stu was a flight instructor for "going on three decades," and he knows his stuff.  Stu also has a policy of using email for comments.  So I'm sharing my email/comments to & from him with you. He lives far, far away.

My first question regarding his post was this:

But how could he be killed with all those precautionary restraints?  or did he pull the handle himself?  you know SO MUCH!  glory....

To which he replied:

Given that I was a flying instructor for nigh on three decades, Mary, it would be an embuggerance (q.v) if I did NOT Know how an ejection seat works.
 
All technical devices (and even social structures) only work as intended when a (perhaps implicit) set of assumptions are satisfied.
Part of doing risk analyses is identifying those assumptions ( aka drawing a risk tree) and checking they are satisfied.
 
For Fukushima these (should have) included simultaneous earthquake AND tsunami;
uncovering the cores and the dampening pools, loss of electricity for more than 3 days, running out of diesel fuel , etc etc.
 
For crossing the road it includes looking both ways first. We teach our kids specific instances like that one, but as a rule people are not taught how to do General risk assessment.  

And I said:

As I read your note @technology and risk assessment, I am on the Metro going downtown to meet a friend to borrow a pie tin. An ordinary trip that usually takes abt 17 mins. And....tada....the train has stopped. A Metro employee walks through the cars shaking her head. Soon the train backs up to the platform, the doors open, and a bunch of people get on. Did the doors not open at that platform the first time? Now we're moving....and now we're stopped again. Does Metro do this to annoy us? It seems to be the law of technology these days that it always breaks down--whether it's a massive failure involving natural phenomena like Fukushima or just a Saturday morning glitch involving a worn-out switch. Ha. Soon I'll meet my friend, get the pie tin, and go back home to cook Sat. pm dinner--with apple pie. That I can do with my bare hands and my little red-handled knife (and the mostly risk-free assumption that the oven will work and the water in the sink will run).

And so on....then I asked him, since he's also a mathematician and so smart,

OK, so tell me. How do I pick a winning lottery number?

He says:

Buy ALL the tickets!!

Of course he's right. I'm still laughing.