October 21, 2013

"it's time for people to stop rooting for its failure"!

President Obama, October 21, 2013

October 21, 2013

So - my husband scored some german marzipan - any suggestions

for some shapes to mold for Thanksgiving and Christmas? This will be our first attempt, so any pointers will be appreciated. I'm thinking we can cut out stars and trees for Christmas.

October 21, 2013

Fruit cake - let's hear it:

October 20, 2013

Fans of Thomas Cahill's "Hinges of History" -

Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World

From the inimitable bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history—this one focusing on how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. A truly revolutionary book.

In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill guides us through the thrilling period of the Renaissance and the Reformation (the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century), so full of innovation and cultural change that the Western world would not experience its like again until the twentieth century. Beginning with the continent-wide disaster of the Black Death, Cahill traces the many developments in European thought and experience that served both the new humanism of the Renaissance and the seemingly abrupt religious alterations of the increasingly radical Reformation. This is an age of the most sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies and of newly found courage, as many thousands refuse to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. It is an era of just-discovered continents and previously unknown peoples. More than anything, it is a time of individuality in which a whole culture must achieve a new balance if the West is to continue.

Coming out October 29

October 20, 2013

Have you been waiting for this book?

Heretics and Heroes - Thomas Cahill

From the inimitable bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history—this one focusing on how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. A truly revolutionary book.

In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill guides us through the thrilling period of the Renaissance and the Reformation (the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century), so full of innovation and cultural change that the Western world would not experience its like again until the twentieth century. Beginning with the continent-wide disaster of the Black Death, Cahill traces the many developments in European thought and experience that served both the new humanism of the Renaissance and the seemingly abrupt religious alterations of the increasingly radical Reformation. This is an age of the most sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies and of newly found courage, as many thousands refuse to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past. It is an era of just-discovered continents and previously unknown peoples. More than anything, it is a time of individuality in which a whole culture must achieve a new balance if the West is to continue.

October 19, 2013

Christmas carols: I know people get really sick of Christmas music being played on the radio

and in every store from Halloween to Christmas. As it happens, I sing in two choirs. What I'd love to do is sing a nice arrangement of traditional carols. Instead, every music director feels compelled to dig up the latest and greatest. Ironically, these are often not very "christmasy" at all, just sort of generic Christian rock.

The set of contemporary carols I really like and have never sung are the ones John Williams wrote for the Home Alone movies.

October 19, 2013

Chicken weeding: My free range chickens love scratch grain,

so when I'm cleaning the garden beds or prepping new ones, I toss scratch grain in the area. They do a great job of scratching out the weeds and working in a little organic fertilizer.

October 19, 2013

New method for eggnog:

Mix 1 1/2 oz 80 proof liquor per egg with the eggs, spices and sugar; then refrigerate for 3 weeks.

When ready to serve, add the milk and cream.

Supposedly the alcohol sterilizes the mixture and all the flavors mellow.

October 19, 2013

Eggnog in the stores? Really? already?

Who drinks eggnog before Halloween?

October 18, 2013

Here's why I am doubtful about Hillary Clinton -

and please, I'm asking for information here, so give me your best sales pitch -

but back in 1993, she was in charge of bringing us a Health Care Plan. It got slapped down by the Right, and as far as I know, that was the end of that. It's not that she compromised, it's that as far as I can tell, she left the field entirely.

that's one reason. Here's the second - she stands for women's rights worldwide, but what else does she stand for? It's great for me that one of my daughters has a job as well paid and with as much responsibility as one of my son's. But I have another daughter and another son who are both underemployed. All of my kids are still paying off student loans, will be for the next ten years, and they all went to state schools. As Senator from New York, I don't know what she did for my region except to grease the skids for a major mall expansion in Syracuse that neither the city nor the county wanted. It sucked the life out of the rest of the city, and coincidentally made money for a Republican developer who happened to be a big Clinton donor. Now I know that politicians need money, so I don't have to like all their friends. I do expect them to do something for me and mine as well as the big money people.