Saturday night! Martha Argerich et al. playing Bach on four pianos, accompanied by strings!!

How I love Martha Argerich! I especially like how she hums and bops along with the music. This is an especial piece--suitable for Saturday night by oneself!

To all my crackpot friends.....?:0)

Linda Delk's mom sent her this. Love things like this....Thanks for sharing, Linda

Cracked Pot


An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the
ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect
and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked
pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home
only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and
miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it
spoke to the woman one day by the stream.

'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to
leak out all the way back to your house.'

The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your
side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?'

'That's because I have always known about your flaw,
so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while
we walk back, you water them.'

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to
decorate the table.

Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty
to grace the house.'

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we
each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding...

You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for
the good in them.

SO, to all of my friends, have a great day and remember to
smell the flowers on your side of the path!

Love this tune!!

The Circus Is in Town--Really! Not just Congress....

My friend Linda, who is a fab photographer, took some photos yesterday when the circus arrived.  She hustled over to see the elephants being downloaded from the train and marched up past the House of Representatives and the Botanical Gardens on their way to Verizon Center, where the big show will be taking place.  She graciously allowed me to post some of her photos!

Leaving the train stop (not a regular station--circus animals only!)

Walking past the House of Representatives

Cleaning up.....This is also by the House of Representatives. Lots of elephant poop from there, too!!

Pronounced "Aunty" lamentation, right?

Well!  Found this jewel in two places I visited this evening: Belgian Waffle and Minnesota Matron.  The latter one is from earlier this month, and I didn't see it then.  Life was waiting for the right moment.....

Antilamentation 

by Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

More E-mail

This is from Alan Grayson, whom I admire.  Mr. Grayson, formerly D-FL, was run off by the Repugs and various tea-partying types.  He gives me lots to think about regarding the No-fly zone for Libya.  That, apparently, is a topic whose time has come.  Kuchinich doesn't like it.

Dear Mary,

One of the unfortunate imperatives of public life is that when something is the lead story, you think you’ve got to be doing something about it. Not just have an opinion on it. Be doing something about it.
Volcano erupts? Prepare a news release on the new anti-volcano policy.
Zombies are multiplying? Introduce anti-zombie legislation.
Well, Libya’s been on the front page for a month now. Demonstrations. Civil unrest. Army attacks, etc. So our world leaders think that they’ve got to be doing something about it.
Hence the Libya no-fly zone.

Here is a link to UN Security Resolution 1973, authorizing the Libya no-fly zone. It shows a laudable, albeit rather repetitive, concern for civilian wellbeing. It also completely fails to explain how a no-fly zone will ensure the safety of civilians.

The Libyan Air Force hasn’t received a major delivery of new aircraft in 22 years. Roughly three-quarters of its “air”craft can’t fly.

It is true that the Libyan Air Force, such as it is, has been deployed. But the serious threat to civilians in Libya is not from the Libyan Air Force. It’s from the government security forces on the ground. A no-fly zone does not take away their guns, or their artillery.
For outsiders like us, there are two questions to answer:

(1) Do you want Gaddafi in or out? (2) Either way, what are you willing to do about it?

Here are my answers:

(1) Out, because Gaddafi is a dictator who has stunted the development of his country and its people (although in a list of the 5,000 things that are most important to America, I’d have to rank this close to the bottom, even if it is on the evening news every night). (2) Economic sanctions, including extending the de facto oil embargo and asset freeze that already are in effect.

And it’s likely that an oil embargo/asset freeze will work. Oil is 95% of Libya’s exports, and 25% of GNP. Libya has about four years of oil revenue in the bank, but with an asset freeze and economic sanctions, that becomes meaningless. Whatever the result in the streets, as soon as Gaddafi runs out of money, he’s gone.

But a no-fly zone? In the case of Libya, that’s a tactic in search of a strategy. The Yiddish word for it is “shmei,” roughly translated as aimless strolling around. A no-fly zone is basically just looking like you’re doing something to remove Gaddafi, at the cost of $60 million in a day (which was the cost of the first day’s worth of cruise missiles launched).
The last time we tried this, in Iraq, we had to sustain it for 12 years. At enormous effort and expense. And it didn’t bring down Saddam at all.

More fundamentally, a no-fly zone in Libya feeds the dangerous fantasy that every problem has a military solution. That the answer to the use of force is the use of more force. That if a hammer doesn’t drive that nail in, try a howitzer.

It was Mao Tse-Tung who said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Do we really want Mao’s principles running our foreign policy?
Sincerely,
Alan Grayson

“I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’
I said you wanna be startin’ somethin’
You got to be startin’ somethin’”

 Michael Jackson

We can eat, um, FABULOUSLY on $40/week, according to OPRAH

The April, 2011, issue of O, the OPRAH magazine, has an article (with a blurb right on the front cover) on how WELL we can eat for a whole week on just $40 worth of groceries!!! (There's a caveat at the bottom of the article, however.  OPRAH (the magazine) says the prices of the ingredients for this full week of swell eating for $40 were in effect 1) at the author's local grocery store and 2) at the time of writing.) 

Fair enough.  We can scan the shopping list for the week's food and ask questions later.

I'm going to cite a few of the author's grocery prices against what I'd have to pay for the same items at Giant, Safeway, Whole Foods, Glut Coop, Yes! Organic, Trader Joe's, or the Dupont Circle Farmer's Market--all in the DC Metropolitan Area. I don't shop at WalMart or CostCo (no car), but I generally avoid Dean & Deluca, too.

I can't remember all of the items now, and I LOST the list I copied this ayem. But you will get the drift. I DO recall that in no case, at my usual local outlets, was the price, however misremembered, of any item cheaper than its counterpart on the OPRAH list.

Here goes (approx 1/3 of total items) :


OPRAH's list                                           MY list
 
1 lb. fresh tilapia   = $1.00                         1 lb. fresh tilapia=$9.95/lb!!!
2 chickens (5 lbs ea.)  = $5.35 total           2 chickens, 5 lbs. ea  = $10.00
1 doz. eggs  = $1.29                                   1 doz.eggs = $4.50
3 lbs fresh kale = $1.00 total                      1 lb. fresh kale  = $9.00 total
1 loaf of bread = $1.19                               1 loaf of bread  = $5.00
1 lb. black beans  = $.99                             1 lb. black beans = $2.29
Approximate total =  $11.82                    Approximate total  =  $40.75

And so it goes. My questions for OPRAH (the magazine) are 1) WHERE does your author live, for pete's sake?  Mexico?  2) Just WHEN did the author compose this gem?  At the end of the Clinton administration?

Scared panda hugs the leg of a policeman after the earthquake... on Twitpic

Please click this link to see a remarkable picture!!

Scared panda hugs the leg of a policeman after the earthquake... on Twitpic

Spring, Indeed....

Belgian Waffle is one hell of a blogger. Her post today addresses Spring and Spring cleaning. I love Waffle's posts. She takes self-loathing to new heights. I am an amateur in every way compared with her. Like the following passage. It fully describes how I feel about cleaning my place--and I don't even have any kids or animals to clean up after like she does. Still...as my sister-in-law (I won't say which one) (actually, I can't remember which one, other than it wasn't Trudy) (or was it?) used to say, "if the foo sh*ts,...wear it."

In the meantime the bright spring sunlight, which is a joyful, wonderful thing, gives me several problems, what with being a mardy old cow. The first is the house. There's a reason spring cleaning is called spring cleaning, and it's because the spring sunlight makes you realise just what a nest of FILTH you (I) have been living in all winter. Ye gods. I thought it was bad, but now I can see it's .. well. I was going to show you what I found behind the recycling box, but apparently I can't, because the thing that looked like an enormous dead spider clearly WASN'T DEAD. Nice. You'll just have to take my word for it. The not-dead spider is just one of an endless series of housekeeping unpleasantnesses that I now feel I must tackle, and they all seem inextricably linked in a wearisome way. If I want to get the front shutter mended, I must dispose of the Christmas tree in case the landlady takes exception to it, wash the windows, and deal with the chip on the bath. If it does get mended, I'll be able to see the state of the sofa, and I know I won't like it. Can't I just sit here in the sun? Maybe go and get a Cornetto?

Worse, even, than the house is the sight that greets me in the (smeary, toothpaste flecked) mirror, where the sun also gives a new, entirely unwelcome clarity. Who the fuck is that old woman and what is she doing in my house (and why hasn't she hoovered, if she must be here)? It's not that I let myself go over the winter, exactly. More like I pushed myself of a cliff into a sea of butter with salt crystals, bouncing off the jagged cliffs of Daim bar and Hula Hoop. Alcohol should also be included in this ridiculous simile, but I can't be arsed to crowbar it in.

And so on....Mme. Waffle is a British ex-pat in Belgium, thus the cool Brit idiom. Thanks, dear Waffle....I can only watch so much Al Jazeera English.

More jokes, please....

I have an insatiable appetite for jokes these days, now that the planet has been jolted off its axis by the big earthquake in Japan. These are old, but I laughed anyway.

PONDERISMS

1· I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

2· There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.

3· Life is sexually transmitted.

4· Healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

5· The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

6· Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

7· Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?

8· Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

9· All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

10· In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

11· How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

12· Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze these dangly things and drink whatever comes out'?

13 · If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?

14· Why does your OB-GYN leave the room when you get undressed if they are going to look up there anyway?

15· If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

16· If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?

17· Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

18· Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?

19· Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

20· Do you ever wonder why you gave me your email address?

XE Gets E-mail....

This arrived in my inbox just now from Alan Grayson, former member of Congress (D-FL), now brave worker for people like you and me. I've got my red shirt on today to show that I Stand With Wisconsin.

Here's Alan's e-mail:

On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.

On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.

On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.

Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.

And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.

This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.

Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.

The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the "Right to Organize" Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.

So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st Century?

Because the teabaggers want to "take back America." They want to take it back, all right – take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.

Not to mention slavery.

I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.

They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.

We didn't ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.

As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, "it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny."

I'm ready to fight for what's right. What about you?

Courage,

Alan Grayson

Looks like heaven to me!

Thanks to TBTAM for this--and her wonderful recipe for frugal fig flatbread!! Yum! Slurp!!