Monday, November 30, 2009
Another Picture of the Wedding Ring
click to enlarge. Star sapphire in center, jade green leaves on either side, woody pattern carved around band because the HG loves greens, blues, and woodsy things.
Incidentally, the HG said this week that only being married to the right man could reconcile her to spending Thanksgiving Dinner elsewhere (they did come out later that day, but that was when several of us had the flu).
Food Stamps and Stigma
Recently I stood in line at the grocery store, waiting, and waiting some more, while the person in front of me sent her companion back through the store again and again to exchange items. She griped the entire time. I tried to think of something else, but gradually I couldn't ignore it anymore. She was talking loudly enough to be heard over two aisles, at least.
She was complaining about WIC, a supplemental food program for women, infants, and children. With WIC you get vouchers for things like eggs, bread, cheese, peanut butter, beans, cereal, juice, baby formula and I don't know what all else. She was complaining about being cheated. She was complaining that the kind of bread WIC allowed wasn't the right size, and they weren't giving her enough milk, and not enough formula, and she was being gypped and it wasn't right, nobody liked to be cheated and shortchanged the way this program was cheating her, and not giving her enough.
I guessed the word 'supplemental' did not mean anything to her.
She finally finished complaining and accepted that she could not just go choose a different package of bread because she didn't like the one offered and I was able to check out. When the cashier asked how I was doing, I did stop myself from saying, "Not very well, because I don't have anybody giving me free food so I can complain about being cheated."
So I was interesting in reading this thread over at NRO:
I've been there. I know the lines are frustrating, the bureaucracy inhuman and dehumanizing, and pretty much every state employee acts as though your time is a wide open vista and they need not worry about wasting it, because you have nothing better to do than run about from office to office and hurry up and wait some more. It's frustrating, and it is rude, and it is maddeningly inefficient.
And I know that when you don't have any money, it's frustrating that you can get more meat, eggs and cheese you want (remember the guy at my husband's work who asked him how to cook crab or lobster or something like that, and when my husband said he had no idea, we couldn't afford it, the man said, 'Well, couldn't either if I wasn't on food stamps?"), but you can't find the quarters to do your laundry, so of course, if you're smart, you will work at using the excess food available with food stamps to get cash and other goods and services you cannot otherwise purchase (like gas to go look for a job).
But I have zero sympathy with complaints about things like supplemental food program offering you the wrong bread or not enough formula.
These things are not anybody's due. They shouldn't be looked upon as an entitlement, something other people owe you, and not only do the rest of us owe you food, it HAS to be exactly the brands you like.
Food stamps are supposed to be a safety net, not be a lifestyle. When people are so unashamed of it, so unaware of any stigma that might be attached to receiving this sort of help that they can stand at the grocery store and gripe about being cheated and defrauded because they don't get the brand of bread they like- or, in another case, gripe about having to pay three dollars for a prescription when the state (that means me) is paying over fifty dollars for the rest of it, then something's gone wrong. Wonky.
We've been on foodstamps, and I was so embarrassed about it I would walk out of the store and go home if a cashier I knew was working. I'm not saying everybody should be as mortified as I was, but I am saying nobody should feel so comfortable about it that they feel like it's nothing more than their due, either.
She was complaining about WIC, a supplemental food program for women, infants, and children. With WIC you get vouchers for things like eggs, bread, cheese, peanut butter, beans, cereal, juice, baby formula and I don't know what all else. She was complaining about being cheated. She was complaining that the kind of bread WIC allowed wasn't the right size, and they weren't giving her enough milk, and not enough formula, and she was being gypped and it wasn't right, nobody liked to be cheated and shortchanged the way this program was cheating her, and not giving her enough.
I guessed the word 'supplemental' did not mean anything to her.
She finally finished complaining and accepted that she could not just go choose a different package of bread because she didn't like the one offered and I was able to check out. When the cashier asked how I was doing, I did stop myself from saying, "Not very well, because I don't have anybody giving me free food so I can complain about being cheated."
So I was interesting in reading this thread over at NRO:
E-mail #2:
I am a surgeon and deal with a lot of low income patients. I am interested in their perception of the public assistance they receive. By and large, the attitude seems to be that food stamps are their due, like earned income. The second most common sentiment is frustruation at the difficulties encountered in applying for and utilizing the assistance.
Furthermore, I have found that what is netted from food stamps/WIC is fungible, and there is an underground economy in it. For the most part, these programs allot WAY more food than most families can reasonably eat. "Excess" food is frequently purchased/obtained via stamps/WIC and sold or traded for goods or services from non-assistance recipients.
I've been there. I know the lines are frustrating, the bureaucracy inhuman and dehumanizing, and pretty much every state employee acts as though your time is a wide open vista and they need not worry about wasting it, because you have nothing better to do than run about from office to office and hurry up and wait some more. It's frustrating, and it is rude, and it is maddeningly inefficient.
And I know that when you don't have any money, it's frustrating that you can get more meat, eggs and cheese you want (remember the guy at my husband's work who asked him how to cook crab or lobster or something like that, and when my husband said he had no idea, we couldn't afford it, the man said, 'Well, couldn't either if I wasn't on food stamps?"), but you can't find the quarters to do your laundry, so of course, if you're smart, you will work at using the excess food available with food stamps to get cash and other goods and services you cannot otherwise purchase (like gas to go look for a job).
But I have zero sympathy with complaints about things like supplemental food program offering you the wrong bread or not enough formula.
These things are not anybody's due. They shouldn't be looked upon as an entitlement, something other people owe you, and not only do the rest of us owe you food, it HAS to be exactly the brands you like.
Food stamps are supposed to be a safety net, not be a lifestyle. When people are so unashamed of it, so unaware of any stigma that might be attached to receiving this sort of help that they can stand at the grocery store and gripe about being cheated and defrauded because they don't get the brand of bread they like- or, in another case, gripe about having to pay three dollars for a prescription when the state (that means me) is paying over fifty dollars for the rest of it, then something's gone wrong. Wonky.
We've been on foodstamps, and I was so embarrassed about it I would walk out of the store and go home if a cashier I knew was working. I'm not saying everybody should be as mortified as I was, but I am saying nobody should feel so comfortable about it that they feel like it's nothing more than their due, either.
Electric Passenger Train
Old Engine Driver
by Robert William Service (1874 – 1958)
For five and twenty years I've run
A famous train;
But now my spell of speed is done,
No more I'll strain
My sight along the treadless tracks,
The gleamy rails:
My hand upon the throttle slacks,
My vision fails.
No more I'll urge my steed of steel
Through hostile nights;
No more the mastery I'll feel
Of monster might.
I'll miss the hiss of giant steam,
The clank, the roar;
The agony of brakes that scream
I'll hear no more.
Oh I have held within my hand
A million lives;
And now my son takes command
And proudly drives;
While from my cottage wistfully
I watch his train,
And wave and wave and seem to see
Myself again.
by Robert William Service (1874 – 1958)
For five and twenty years I've run
A famous train;
But now my spell of speed is done,
No more I'll strain
My sight along the treadless tracks,
The gleamy rails:
My hand upon the throttle slacks,
My vision fails.
No more I'll urge my steed of steel
Through hostile nights;
No more the mastery I'll feel
Of monster might.
I'll miss the hiss of giant steam,
The clank, the roar;
The agony of brakes that scream
I'll hear no more.
Oh I have held within my hand
A million lives;
And now my son takes command
And proudly drives;
While from my cottage wistfully
I watch his train,
And wave and wave and seem to see
Myself again.
Text:
On many railroads electric locomotives as well as steam locomotives are used for hauling trains and for switching cars. The electric locomotive is very strong. IT can pull heavy trains over steep mountain grades. It can run forward or backward with equal facility, thus eliminating the time and expense of having to be turned around at the end of each run. It can pick up and reduce speed rapidly.
Electric locomotives are sometimes used for heavy freight and passenger service in mountainous regions, for switching service in metropolitan areas, and for passenger service in highly developed, high traffic density zones where rapid acceleration and high speeds are essential and where station stops are frequent. They are also sometimes used for pulling trains through long tunnels.
An electric locomotive in good condition is ready for instant service. There is no fire to build or steam to generate before it starts on its run. As will be noted from the picture, the electric locomotive differs in appearance from the steam locomotive. For one thing, its driving wheels are smaller. It has no smokestack. Its bell is usually concealed. Electric locomotives are equipped with horns for sounding warnings or sending signals. In some electric locomotives the engineer has two control rooms, one for use when the engine is going in one direction and the other for use in driving the engine in the opposite direction. Within his reach when he is seated are many switches, gauges and controls which enable him to keep the engine running properly.
The engineer’s helper (corresponding to the fireman on a steam locomotive) sits on the opposite side of the room, or cab, and helps the engineer operate the train and look after the motors.
Railroad electrification is of two kinds—(1) overhead power wires, as shown in the picture, and (2) third rail construction. In either case, there must be a point of contact between the wire or rail that supplies the current and the locomotive. With overhead electrification, a pantagraph, or hinged framework which can be folded down on the roof, is attached to the locomotive or motor car. On top of the pantagraph, as can be seen in this picture, there is a metal “shoe” which runs along the copper wire to carry the current into the motor by means of relays and switches.
The method of picking up electrical current from a third rail, which is usually located just outside the wheel rail, is similar to the overhead wire system except that the metal “shoe” hangs down from the side of the locomotive or motor car and slides along the third rail.
Electricity to run the trains comes from power houses, sometimes located long distances from the railroad.
The electric locomotive was invented by Thomas A. Edison. Mr. Edison built a small experimental model in 1880 and tried it out on a specifically built track at Menlo Park, New Jersey. The first electric locomotive operated regularly on an American railroad was placed in service at Baltimore in 1895. Today there are hundreds of electric locomotives in operation in the United States.
In addition, several railroads operate electric motor cars in suburban passenger train service to and from metropolitan centers. These cars draw their current either from third rails or from overhead power distributing systems, or catenary wires, similar to those shown in the picture. Electric motor cars are usually operated in units of two, four, six, eight or ten cars, every other car being equipped with electric motors, somewhat similar to an electric street car. (The interior of each electric motor is fully occupied by seats for passengers, as the motor equipment is located beneath the car floor.)
The second car of a two-car unit is known as a trailer. Although it has no power unit and cannot therefore be operated independently, it is equipped with control mechanism connected with the motor car to which it is attached and other motor cars in the train, so that the train can be operated by a motorman located in the trailer car.
The man who runs a steam or electric locomotive is called a locomotive engineer or engineman, while the man who runs an electric motor car train is called a motorman.
More here.
Questions at the bottom of the page:
- Who invented the electric motor?
- When was the first electric locomotive built?
- How long since the first electric locomotive was placed in service in America?
- What are the characteristics of electric locomotives?
- Where are they especially useful?
- Have you ever seen an electric locomotive or an electric motor train in operation? If so, where?
- Where does the electric power come from?
- In what services are motor cars or motor trains used?
- What is the man called who operates (a)the electric locomotive (b)the motor car train?
From ClimateGate Emails- avoiding FOIA Requests, Ignoring Faults In Their Work
Dr. Roy W. Spencer at Watt's Up With That:
Bishop Hill:
This next is extremely interesting:
In April of '07, Keenan had written to Wang (having previously contacted him by phone and by mail on the same issue) with concerns about Chinese Meterological data Wang claimed to have analyzed, and his findings were published in Nature in 1990 in an article which he co-authored with somebody else. Wang claimed to have analyzed the histories of a number of Chinese weather stations and drawn certain conclusions based on that research. However, Keenan found a number of problems with this, including:
Michael Mann (the hockey stick guru) replies, suggesting the only reasonable response is to ignore them- and he, too, dismisses the idea of Wang's false claims not as false, but as irrelevant. He clearly doesn't even care if Wang lied or not:
And did you note what he admitted to? They don't have all the data, so nobody can check their work.
Ben Santer's first response can best be summed up in two sentences, "But Phil, you are a god of research, and anyway, global warming is real so it doesn't matter whether the data in that paper was falsified or not." In his second response we find him declaring that he'd like to meet these guys in a dark alley. He complains that climate skeptics have "no appreciation of the fact that uncertainty is an integral part of what we do," which is pretty amusing given how insistent this cabal has been that there is no uncertainty, no room for doubt, no questions left to be asked, and the entire scientific community is in complete agreement.
Phil, who seems to be in the habit of breaking confidences, (see how often he is passing on information he's not supposed to share by searching the emails with words like 'confidential', 'quiet,' and FYI- he comes across as a stereotypically gossipy old woman) writes to Tom Wigley:
Wigley strikes me as the least dishonest of this group. For more information on the concerns Keenan and McIntyre had about the paper, see here (scroll down).
And then Phil Jones said the following on 6/19/2007 4:22 AM:
At a minimum, some of these e-mails reveal an undercurrent of elitism that many of us have always claimed existed in the IPCC. These scientists look upon us skeptics with scorn. It is well known that the IPCC machine is made up of bureaucrats and scientists who think they know how the world should be run. The language contained in a draft of the latest climate treaty (meant to replace the Kyoto treaty) involves global governance and the most authoritarian means by which people’s energy use will be restricted and monitored by the government.
Even if this language does not survive in the treaty’s final form, it illustrates the kind of people we are dealing with. The IPCC folks jet around the world to all kinds of exotic locations for their UN-organized meetings where they eat the finest food. Their gigantic carbon footprints stomp around the planet as they deride poor Brazilian farmers who convert jungle into farmland simply to survive.
Even mainstream journalists, who are usually on board with the latest environmental craze, have commented on this blatant display of hypocrisy. It seems like those participating – possibly the best example being Al Gore — are not even aware of how it looks to the rest of us.
Bishop Hill:
- Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
- Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow!
- Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122)
- Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research. Says he encourages the publication of crap science. Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
This next is extremely interesting:
In April of '07, Keenan had written to Wang (having previously contacted him by phone and by mail on the same issue) with concerns about Chinese Meterological data Wang claimed to have analyzed, and his findings were published in Nature in 1990 in an article which he co-authored with somebody else. Wang claimed to have analyzed the histories of a number of Chinese weather stations and drawn certain conclusions based on that research. However, Keenan found a number of problems with this, including:
the data was obtained from 84 meteorological stations that can be classified as follows 49 have no histories 08 have inconsistent histories 18 have substantial relocations 02 have single-year relocations 07 have no relocations Furthermore, some of the relocations are very distant--over 20 km. Others are to greatly different environments, as illustrated here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1323#comment-102970 The above contradicts the published claim to have considered the histories of the stations, especially for the 49 stations that have no histories. Yet the claim is crucial for the research conclusions. [...] I ask you to retract your GRL paper, in full, and to retract the claims made in Nature about the Chinese data. If you do not do so, I intend to publicly submit an allegation of research misconduct to your university at Albany.Phil Jones sends Keenan's email on to several other people, dismissing it as irrelevant without ever actually addressing the issue of Wang claiming to have considered the histories of nearly fifty stations that have no history at all, and he explains how he intends to respond (which response will also not involve actually addressing whether or not Wang made claims that he knew to be false at the time).
Michael Mann (the hockey stick guru) replies, suggesting the only reasonable response is to ignore them- and he, too, dismisses the idea of Wang's false claims not as false, but as irrelevant. He clearly doesn't even care if Wang lied or not:
...So > they can harp all they want on one Chinese data set, it couldn't > possibly change the big picture (let alone even the trends for China). The > > So they are simply hoping to blow this up to something that looks like a > legitimate controversy. The last thing you want to do is help them by > feeding the fire. Best thing is to ignore them completely. ....Kevin Trenberth thinks ignoring them is not adequate. He prefers marginalizing them through demonization, and also suggests that it is irrelevant whether or not the paper in question was dishonest:
Keenan may or may not be > bluffing, but if he tries this I believe that British law would make it > easy for Wang to win a defamation suit against him (the burden is much > tougher in the states),
the response should try to somehow label these guys and lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database. Indeed technology and data handling capabilities have evolved and not everything was saved. So my feeble suggestion is to indeed cast aspersions on their motives and throw in some counter rhetoric. Labeling them as lazy with nothng better to do seems like a good thing to do. How about "I tried to get some data from McIntyre from his 1990 paper, but I was unable because he doesn't have such a paper because he has not done any constructive work!" There is no basis for retracting a paper given in Keenan's message. One may have to offer a correction that a particular sentence was not correct if it claimed something that indeed was not soBecause casting aspersions against their character and undermining the case through dishonest rhetoric is plainly vastly more important than good science and honest data.
But some old instrumental data are like paleo data, and can only be used with caution as the metadata do not exist. It doesn't mean they are worthless and can not be used. Offering to make a correction to a few words in a paper in a trivial manner will undermine his case..
And did you note what he admitted to? They don't have all the data, so nobody can check their work.
Ben Santer's first response can best be summed up in two sentences, "But Phil, you are a god of research, and anyway, global warming is real so it doesn't matter whether the data in that paper was falsified or not." In his second response we find him declaring that he'd like to meet these guys in a dark alley. He complains that climate skeptics have "no appreciation of the fact that uncertainty is an integral part of what we do," which is pretty amusing given how insistent this cabal has been that there is no uncertainty, no room for doubt, no questions left to be asked, and the entire scientific community is in complete agreement.
Phil, who seems to be in the habit of breaking confidences, (see how often he is passing on information he's not supposed to share by searching the emails with words like 'confidential', 'quiet,' and FYI- he comes across as a stereotypically gossipy old woman) writes to Tom Wigley:
> Tom, > Just for interest! Keep quiet about both issues. > > In touch with Wei-Chyung Wang. Just agreed with him > that I will send a brief response to Peiser. The allegation by Keenan > has > gone to SUNY. Keenan's about to be told by SUNY that submitting this has > violated a confidentiality agreement he entered into with SUNY when he > sent the complaint. WCW has nothing to worry about, but it still > unsettling! > All related to a paper in Nature from 1990! Keenan ought to look at the > temperature data (which he has) rather than going on and on about > site moves.Wigley replies (August of 2007):
Phil, Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect. Whether or not this makes a difference is not the issue here.
Wigley strikes me as the least dishonest of this group. For more information on the concerns Keenan and McIntyre had about the paper, see here (scroll down).
And then Phil Jones said the following on 6/19/2007 4:22 AM:
[...] 1. Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.[...]This is illegal. You cannot ignore FOIA requests because you do not like the associations of those who ask for them- and, this gives the lie once again to CRU and friends' claims that the data was readily available and CRU was worn out replying to FOIA requests. What may have worn them out was the stonewalling.
My Kitchen Woes
This is our kitchen counter. It's called Celadon Glaze. We have the back splashes going all the way up, so this is also a significant part of our kitchen wall. We have a lot of counters and cupboards. As always, the color and contrast will vary from computer to computer. The crackling wasn't quite so stand-out in the show-room as it is on my monitor.
We looked all over at laminate and counter patterns and colors when building this house, but once I saw this one, there was no further question. It was mine. It reached out and whispered seductively in my ear, it entwined around my heart and it cuddled up cozily and said it wanted to come home with me.
This is my favorite, favorite, favorite laminate pattern ever at all, and it seems they quit making it a few months ago. Probably immediately before the kitchen fire. You can still get plain celadon, but without the crackling, the 'glaze.' And that is like cake without frosting, eggs without salt, chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips, biscuits without butter, pancakes without syrup, a summer without strawberries, a piano with no minor notes, a bedtime without kisses.
The insurance company will pay the cost of replacing the entire kitchen counter rather than the burned section, since we have to choose a different color. But, my husband says, they won't replace the laminate on the walls behind the counter or on the island, so the color has to match *really* well. It's going to be flush up against the wall, after all.
And I am pouty and sulky because I do not like anything else half so well as I love this celadon glaze with its beautiful crackling (it's also a much greener green than it appears on my monitor). Every time I look at it, it makes me happy. And then I am plunged into despair because I cannot have it and I want it I want it I want it.
And that's so unattractive and childish.
But I really love this color and style, and I do mean love. I love it.
I like my kitchen very much, even though we never did paint the trim red.
I would not be thrilled about changing the cork floor color- I like the mottled green with irregular patterns, but I could change it without too much agony.
I like my wall paper border very, very much indeed, but I could change my wall paper or do without. I am normally not a terribly visual person and I don't always even notice my wallpaper border any more.
I like my creamy my paint color (although we never did paint the trim red as we intended), but I could change it without any heart-ache.
I really like my honey maple cupboards, but I could change my cupboards if I had to. (although the cupboards would be hard, I like them VERY much).
I like all these things, some of them a lot, but most of them I do not notice anymore. My celadon glaze pattern is not like that. I see it every time I go into the kitchen, and several times while I am in there. I see and feel a deep wave of satisfaction pass over me. It is like catching a whiff of lavender and roses. It is happy making.
This particular laminate pattern and no other is MINE, world, MINE. I want it I want it I want it. Without it my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes and broken expectations.
Is this silly? Why, yes it is. Is it acting like a spoiled brat? Why, yes, indeed. And is it wrong to love things that can't love you back? Very likely.
Do I still want my celadon glaze and no other? Why, yes, yes I do. So does my Inner Crybaby, who has been pounding her fists on the wall, stamping her feet and opening up a fifty gallon drum of pout-face every day. She needs a time-out and a spanking, does my Inner Crybaby. Problem is, I totally agree with her.
Y'all pray for me.
But oh, how I want to keep my entire kitchen counter surface covered in Celadon Glaze. I think I would rather keep the burned chunks than give up my glaze.
Have I mentioned that I WANT IT?
Turkey Leftovers And Other Frugal Ways
You can, of course, just reheat your leftovers and have another mini Thanksgiving meal. But sometimes you need to spread the turkey and other ingredients a lot further, and that's when recipes using leftovers are helpful.
I posted several recipes we use with leftover turkey (or chicken) over at Frugal Hacks this weekend. Here are a few more dishes to make using Thanksgiving leftovers, and not just the turkey:
Shepherd's Pie
Put a layer of leftover meat in the bottom of a pan- the size pan you use will be determined by things like how many mouths you have to feed and how many leftovers you have, especially mashed potatoes. I have used leftover poultry, leftover ground beef, meat loaf, and even leftover chopsuey
Spread a layer of leftover cooked vegetables over the top of this- green beans, corn, mixed vegetables such as peas and carrots, peppers and diced onions, whatever you have that goes well with your meat.
Top this with a generous layer of leftover mashed potatoes. You can stir in more milk and melted butter if you like (sour cream is also yummy), or you can dot the mashed potatoes with butter for a golden color when it all comes out. Season to taste.
Put this in the oven and bake at around 400 until it's hot all the way through and the edges of the potatoes are lightly golden.
Turkey Tetrazzini-
Basically, you cook up a batch of spaghetti (or linguini) noodles. Meanwhile reheat your turkey gravy, thinning it out a bit with some milk, and add some Parmesan cheese.
Dice leftover turkey and stir it into the gravy/sauce. When the noodles are done, drain them and stir the sauce into the spaghetti.
You want measurements? Can't do it, and it doesn't much matter, but if you have about twice as much turkey as you do parmesan cheese, and more gravy/sauce than you do turkey, that's good. But it's pretty forgiving no matter what you do.
Homemade Turkey Helper
First some preaching- it makes me gnash my teeth in frustration when I am reading an article or website about living frugally and I see people recommend Hamburger Helper (the boxed convenience food). This is NOT a frugal meal. It's a convenience food, and there's nothing wrong with that (in moderation), but it hurts me to see spending more money than necessary recommended as a way to save money. You can make a very similar dish and twice as much of it for the same price or less.
For instance:
I adapted from the More With Less Cookbook. It serves 8
Heat together
2-4 cups of diced cooked turkey (or saute 1 1/2 pound ground beef)
2 t. salt
1 t. pepper
2 T. onion, very finely diced
Add to the meat mixture 1/2 to 1 cup of canned or frozen vegetables your family likes- this can be peas, mushrooms, cooked potatoes, corn, cooked turnips or parsnips- whatever your people will eat and you have on hand. Use the leftovers from Thanksgiving.
1 1/2 2 cups leftover gravy (thinned if need be)
Meanwhile, cook 2 cups of dry noodles, or use four cups of cooked noodles you have on hand from a previous meal (leftover macaroni and cheese sounds nasty, but actually, it's quite good in this).
If you like, mix the cooked noodles in with the hot meat mixture and sprinkle with about 2/3 cup of cheese, cheddar, parmesan- whatever you have and your family will like.
Serve.
You can make a very different dish, only instead of gravy, use 1 1/2 cups canned tomatoes (stewed, crushed, whole, chopped, whatever).
Stir this well, mashing down the tomatoes if you need to , and continue to heat.
Turkey Walnut Salad
This is a cold salad, lovely for a brunch, and perhaps better suited for warmer months, but we like it:
3 cups cooked brown rice
2 cups cooked turkey, diced
1/2 cup celery, diagonally sliced
1/4 cup pineapple chunks, drained
1/4 cup mandarin oranges, drained
1/4 cup water chestnuts, drained and thinly sliced (optional)
1/4 cup scallions, thinly sliced (we usually just use green onions)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup lowfat lemon yogurt (we've used plain yogurt with a splash of lemon juice and we never buy low fat yogurt. Bleah)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (you can use low fat, but I don't see why)
1 tsp. lemon rind, grated
1/2 tsp. curry powder
6 cups of leafy greens- any sort of lettuce, spinach, sprouts, etc.
Directions: Combine the first 8 ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together next 4 ingredients. Add the dressing to the salad mixture and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate. To serve, spoon 1 cup of salad over 1 cup of the lettuce leaves. Because this recipe serves 6 we doubled the above ingredients (except the lettuce) when making it for our family.
Turkey With Winter Vegetables makes use of things that are more in season after Thanksgiving. This recipe adapted from Mom's Best One-Dish Suppers: 101 Easy Homemade Favorites, as Comforting Now as They Were then by Andrea Chessman
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 rutabaga, peeled and diced
2 Tablespoons oil
3 cups diced cooked turkey
2 leeks, sliced
2 carrots, diced
2 minced cloves garlic
2 cups broth
1/2 t. dried thyme
1 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water
chopped fresh parsley
Combine the potatoes and rutabaga, put in saucepan with enough water to cover, bring to a boil just until tender, drain and set aside.
Combine the cooked turkey, leeks, carrots, and garlic and saute in warm oil for thre eminutes, add the potatoes, rutabaga, broth, adn thyme, simmer for a few minutes.
Add the cornstarch mixture and smmer for five minutes more, just until thickened. Season to taste. Sprinkle with parsley.
Turkey Empanadas
Filling:
Equal amounts of chopped up cooked chicken or turkey and grated cheddar or jack cheese (or combination)
2 or 3 cans of diced green chiles, or to taste.
Pocket:
Combine:
5 cups flour
1 1/4 cup cornmeal
2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
Cut in 1 1/3 cups plus 3 tablespoons of shortening. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup of water. Stir this with a fork until a dough forms. Roll the dough out, cut in large circles (I use a tart pan as a template and trace it with a knife. Spoon some filling on one side of the circle, fold over the other half and seal all around the edge with a fork edge. Put them on a pan, brush with milk, sprinkle with cornmeal for added crunch.
Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or unti golden brown.
I believe this makes enough to feed four people, depending on appetites. I generally triple it.
Stuffing Dumplings
Combine:
two cups of stuffing
3 lightly beaten eggs
sage or other herbs, chopped (a couple teaspoons fresh, one teaspoon dried)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Combine in bowl, mixing well (you may want to use a plastic bag over your hands and knead it. Shape into balls and drop into simmering soup (or put a greased steamer basket on top of soup and drop gently into basket)- cover with a lid and cook until dumplings are hot through center.
Or:
Mix stuffing with diced apples and nuts, then use it to stuff acorn squash, bake as usual.
AND:
Use leftover cranberry sauce in cranberry bread, muffins, on toast, combine with cream cheese and spread on toast or roll up in pancakes.
Leftover rolls:
Reposted at The Common Kitchen
I posted several recipes we use with leftover turkey (or chicken) over at Frugal Hacks this weekend. Here are a few more dishes to make using Thanksgiving leftovers, and not just the turkey:
Shepherd's Pie
Put a layer of leftover meat in the bottom of a pan- the size pan you use will be determined by things like how many mouths you have to feed and how many leftovers you have, especially mashed potatoes. I have used leftover poultry, leftover ground beef, meat loaf, and even leftover chopsuey
Spread a layer of leftover cooked vegetables over the top of this- green beans, corn, mixed vegetables such as peas and carrots, peppers and diced onions, whatever you have that goes well with your meat.
Top this with a generous layer of leftover mashed potatoes. You can stir in more milk and melted butter if you like (sour cream is also yummy), or you can dot the mashed potatoes with butter for a golden color when it all comes out. Season to taste.
Put this in the oven and bake at around 400 until it's hot all the way through and the edges of the potatoes are lightly golden.
Turkey Tetrazzini-
Basically, you cook up a batch of spaghetti (or linguini) noodles. Meanwhile reheat your turkey gravy, thinning it out a bit with some milk, and add some Parmesan cheese.
Dice leftover turkey and stir it into the gravy/sauce. When the noodles are done, drain them and stir the sauce into the spaghetti.
You want measurements? Can't do it, and it doesn't much matter, but if you have about twice as much turkey as you do parmesan cheese, and more gravy/sauce than you do turkey, that's good. But it's pretty forgiving no matter what you do.
Homemade Turkey Helper
First some preaching- it makes me gnash my teeth in frustration when I am reading an article or website about living frugally and I see people recommend Hamburger Helper (the boxed convenience food). This is NOT a frugal meal. It's a convenience food, and there's nothing wrong with that (in moderation), but it hurts me to see spending more money than necessary recommended as a way to save money. You can make a very similar dish and twice as much of it for the same price or less.
For instance:
I adapted from the More With Less Cookbook. It serves 8
Heat together
2-4 cups of diced cooked turkey (or saute 1 1/2 pound ground beef)
2 t. salt
1 t. pepper
2 T. onion, very finely diced
Add to the meat mixture 1/2 to 1 cup of canned or frozen vegetables your family likes- this can be peas, mushrooms, cooked potatoes, corn, cooked turnips or parsnips- whatever your people will eat and you have on hand. Use the leftovers from Thanksgiving.
1 1/2 2 cups leftover gravy (thinned if need be)
Meanwhile, cook 2 cups of dry noodles, or use four cups of cooked noodles you have on hand from a previous meal (leftover macaroni and cheese sounds nasty, but actually, it's quite good in this).
If you like, mix the cooked noodles in with the hot meat mixture and sprinkle with about 2/3 cup of cheese, cheddar, parmesan- whatever you have and your family will like.
Serve.
You can make a very different dish, only instead of gravy, use 1 1/2 cups canned tomatoes (stewed, crushed, whole, chopped, whatever).
Stir this well, mashing down the tomatoes if you need to , and continue to heat.
Turkey Walnut Salad
This is a cold salad, lovely for a brunch, and perhaps better suited for warmer months, but we like it:
3 cups cooked brown rice
2 cups cooked turkey, diced
1/2 cup celery, diagonally sliced
1/4 cup pineapple chunks, drained
1/4 cup mandarin oranges, drained
1/4 cup water chestnuts, drained and thinly sliced (optional)
1/4 cup scallions, thinly sliced (we usually just use green onions)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup lowfat lemon yogurt (we've used plain yogurt with a splash of lemon juice and we never buy low fat yogurt. Bleah)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (you can use low fat, but I don't see why)
1 tsp. lemon rind, grated
1/2 tsp. curry powder
6 cups of leafy greens- any sort of lettuce, spinach, sprouts, etc.
Directions: Combine the first 8 ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together next 4 ingredients. Add the dressing to the salad mixture and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate. To serve, spoon 1 cup of salad over 1 cup of the lettuce leaves. Because this recipe serves 6 we doubled the above ingredients (except the lettuce) when making it for our family.
Turkey With Winter Vegetables makes use of things that are more in season after Thanksgiving. This recipe adapted from Mom's Best One-Dish Suppers: 101 Easy Homemade Favorites, as Comforting Now as They Were then by Andrea Chessman
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 rutabaga, peeled and diced
2 Tablespoons oil
3 cups diced cooked turkey
2 leeks, sliced
2 carrots, diced
2 minced cloves garlic
2 cups broth
1/2 t. dried thyme
1 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water
chopped fresh parsley
Combine the potatoes and rutabaga, put in saucepan with enough water to cover, bring to a boil just until tender, drain and set aside.
Combine the cooked turkey, leeks, carrots, and garlic and saute in warm oil for thre eminutes, add the potatoes, rutabaga, broth, adn thyme, simmer for a few minutes.
Add the cornstarch mixture and smmer for five minutes more, just until thickened. Season to taste. Sprinkle with parsley.
Turkey Empanadas
Filling:
Equal amounts of chopped up cooked chicken or turkey and grated cheddar or jack cheese (or combination)
2 or 3 cans of diced green chiles, or to taste.
Pocket:
Combine:
5 cups flour
1 1/4 cup cornmeal
2 1/2 teaspoons of salt
Cut in 1 1/3 cups plus 3 tablespoons of shortening. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup of water. Stir this with a fork until a dough forms. Roll the dough out, cut in large circles (I use a tart pan as a template and trace it with a knife. Spoon some filling on one side of the circle, fold over the other half and seal all around the edge with a fork edge. Put them on a pan, brush with milk, sprinkle with cornmeal for added crunch.
Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, or unti golden brown.
I believe this makes enough to feed four people, depending on appetites. I generally triple it.
Stuffing Dumplings
Combine:
two cups of stuffing
3 lightly beaten eggs
sage or other herbs, chopped (a couple teaspoons fresh, one teaspoon dried)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Combine in bowl, mixing well (you may want to use a plastic bag over your hands and knead it. Shape into balls and drop into simmering soup (or put a greased steamer basket on top of soup and drop gently into basket)- cover with a lid and cook until dumplings are hot through center.
Or:
Mix stuffing with diced apples and nuts, then use it to stuff acorn squash, bake as usual.
AND:
Use leftover cranberry sauce in cranberry bread, muffins, on toast, combine with cream cheese and spread on toast or roll up in pancakes.
Leftover rolls:
Use leftover bread/buns/rolls for apple charlotte- scroll down for the recipe, or bread strata for a main dish (just dice it up, and you could stretch it out with added leftover stuffing as well)
You could also make basic bread pudding with leftover rolls.
Or just save them in your freezer and use them when you next make a receipe that calls for bread crumbs. For seasoned bread crumbs, grate the bread into crumbs and then brown it in the skillet with a bit of oil and seasonings.
Reposted at The Common Kitchen
For the Families of the Slain Police Officers
The Other McCain has information on where to send donations, as well as details and links to other posts about the horrible incident in Tacoma.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday Hymn Post
More about Jesus would I know,
More of His grace to others show;
More of His saving fullness see,
More of His love Who died for me.
Refrain
More, more about Jesus,
More, more about Jesus;
More of His saving fullness see,
More of His love Who died for me.
More about Jesus let me learn,
More of His holy will discern;
Spirit of God, my teacher be,
Showing the things of Christ to me.
Refrain
More about Jesus; in His Word,
Holding communion with my Lord;
Hearing His voice in every line,
Making each faithful saying mine.
Refrain
More about Jesus; on His throne,
Riches in glory all His own;
More of His kingdom’s sure increase;
More of His coming, Prince of Peace.
Refrain
Saturday, November 28, 2009
CRU Admits Their Work CANNOT EVER Be Replicated
(my apologies if you think you've seen this before but now can't find it- I accidentally [and not the first time, either] posted a gobbledy gook of a post of collected links and quotes from various stories before I was finished. I gather all this stuff into one post, usually, and then work on it, editing it, cutting it up into several posts sometimes, and otherwise revising my writing for publication. And sometimes I accidentally post the rough drafts).
In the 14th comment to this post at the NYT DotEarth, where Andy Revkin quotes Judith Curry at length, one Mike Curry objects:
Eventually in the comments (Nov. 28th, 2:51 PM) over at that post at the NYT DotEarth, Andy Revkin said something that tacitly contradicted Mike's claim:
And this was REALLY interesting (I cannot wait to read Revkin's promised article), because of what I learned todayFrom Climate Audit Pielke's Climate Science blog:
The data was dumped in the 1980s, so the dump is not the fault of Phil Jones, but refusing to admit that there was no available data at all prior to the 80s certainly is his fault.
And so is lying about it, which somebody else certainly has done:
November 28th statement to the UK Telegraph (that's, um, less than 24 hours before they admitted to the Times Online that they did not have the data)
And this from Phil Jones is rather breathtakingly dishonest:
Dishonest not just because he knew the data was gone, but also because
The NASA data and CRU data are certainly NOT independent as Phil Jones certainly knows-
If the science is so settled, why the need for more lies upon lies?)
In the 14th comment to this post at the NYT DotEarth, where Andy Revkin quotes Judith Curry at length, one Mike Curry objects:
1. Curry implies that climate scientists work in secret, and do not release certain data, codes, or methodology. This contradicts the statements of other climate scientists, who say that they spend more time than they like willlingly responding to requests for this information. It also contradicts the transparent nature of Web published IPCC supporting data and the vast body of published papers on climate change. I would be interested in learning from Dr. Curry or someone else which pieces of research or code are being withheld from interested parties. And I agree that if this is the case, release them publicly.That may sound reasonable enough, except that when challenged, in several subsequent comments Mike rudely and brusquely refused, with accompanying derogatory sneers, those who asked to back up his claim. He could not, it seems, be bothered with actually pointing out where this information was so readily available, and it became painfully obvious this was because he really didn't know.
Eventually in the comments (Nov. 28th, 2:51 PM) over at that post at the NYT DotEarth, Andy Revkin said something that tacitly contradicted Mike's claim:
I've made a series of inquiries about the property-rights issues related to paleo-climate data and will try to write something on this shortly. It is weird, for sure, that such data are not a global asset at this stage, but a lot of countries seem dead-set on keeping them locked up and even selling access (former Soviet-bloc states, particularly).
And this was REALLY interesting (I cannot wait to read Revkin's promised article), because of what I learned today
There is a news release in the Sunday Times by Jonathan Leake titled “Climate change data dumped”. This startling disclosure means that climate scientists will be unable to assess the mathematical methodology that CRU has used to convert the raw temperature data to the adjusted temperature data that were reported (at least up to the 1980s) in the 2007 IPCC assessment.
The article includes the text
“SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. “
My comment to Revkin in response to the information about the article he planned to write (which had not yet been published several hours later, but it is, after all, a Saturday. Oh, updated to add, a Saturday where Revkin is still posting comments to defend himself):
Andy, you tacitly admit (contrary to most other defenders of CRU here) that CRU has NOT made their data public and readily available. You say it's 'weird' that it hasn't, but lay the responsibility for that at the feet of "a lot of countries [which] seem dead-set on keeping them locked up."
Two points- CRU has also refused to release even a list of names of those countries or groups with whom it has confidentiality agreements so that scientists who wish to replicate or reproduce the science can contact them and make arrangements with them. What would be the reason for that= if they have nothing to hide?
And, unfortunately for the credibility of the claim (and of anybody who passed it on, or who insisted the data was available), today CRU admitted that they do not have it. They 'dumped' it several years ago- so NOBODY can EVER reproduce CRU's results using the same data.
(link)
The UK Times article also explains that the only reason they admitted this was because they were (finally) forced to respond honestly to a legitimate FOIA request.
So it appears that CRU lied when they said the data couldn't be released due to confidentiality agreements, and those who believed them were dupes."
The data was dumped in the 1980s, so the dump is not the fault of Phil Jones, but refusing to admit that there was no available data at all prior to the 80s certainly is his fault.
And so is lying about it, which somebody else certainly has done:
November 28th statement to the UK Telegraph (that's, um, less than 24 hours before they admitted to the Times Online that they did not have the data)
Professor Trevor Davies, the university's Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement, said yesterday: "CRU's full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
And this from Phil Jones is rather breathtakingly dishonest:
"Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."
Dishonest not just because he knew the data was gone, but also because
The NASA data and CRU data are certainly NOT independent as Phil Jones certainly knows-
If the science is so settled, why the need for more lies upon lies?)
In Which Shasta Yet Again Entertains
The other day it occurred to The Equuschick that on the rare occasions when The Pirate is put down at all, he is put down on his back and people are chatting to him so why on earth would he ever think to practice rolling over if there were no inducement to do so? So The Equuschick has been putting him on his tummy here and there just to see what he does, and he's getting a bit more coordinated but he still it finds it frustrating.
This morning she had him on his tummy on the bed while Shasta was getting ready for work and after she'd let The Pirate try for a bit (she does try not to pick him up instantly if he's just frustrated because you never learn to do anything if you never learn to fight through a little frustration) she picked him up and assured him that it was ok, Mommy and Daddy didn't know how to roll over when they were little either.
"Don't worry," said Shasta with a very deep and meaningful look at the bed where he'd been all but crowded out the night before, "Your mommy still doesn't know how to roll over."
Oh, hahhaha. Yes dear, very funny.
(Really, it was though.)
Incidentally, The Equuschick is most blessed in all of her family members. If you have a horse and a baby, it is very important to have family members both willing and able to take the baby while you ride the horse.
Tata, The Equuschick is hungry.
This morning she had him on his tummy on the bed while Shasta was getting ready for work and after she'd let The Pirate try for a bit (she does try not to pick him up instantly if he's just frustrated because you never learn to do anything if you never learn to fight through a little frustration) she picked him up and assured him that it was ok, Mommy and Daddy didn't know how to roll over when they were little either.
"Don't worry," said Shasta with a very deep and meaningful look at the bed where he'd been all but crowded out the night before, "Your mommy still doesn't know how to roll over."
Oh, hahhaha. Yes dear, very funny.
(Really, it was though.)
Incidentally, The Equuschick is most blessed in all of her family members. If you have a horse and a baby, it is very important to have family members both willing and able to take the baby while you ride the horse.
Tata, The Equuschick is hungry.
Andy Revkin Decides to Let His Readers In ON Some of the Facts
It's a pretty decent effort, especially this portion:
The last part is the weakest, because it's not just about whether they tried to prevent publications of papers, but also attempted (successfully) to remove editors and destroy the reputations of peer review publications with whom they disagreed, while peer reviewing each other's papers and keeping a list of yes men.Officials at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain say the disclosed material was copied from computers there in a “criminal breach.” (Some e-mail exchanges involved or described this reporter and other journalists).
On Friday, scientists at the university said the school was preparing to announce an inquiry, led by an independent panel, into the theft and related issues.
The most serious criticisms leveled at the authors of the e-mail messages revolve around three issues.
One is whether the correspondence reveals efforts by scientists to shield raw data, gleaned from tree rings and other indirect indicators of climate conditions, preventing it from being examined by independent researchers. Among those who say it does is Stephen McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining consultant who has a popular skeptics’ blog, climateaudit.org. A second issue is whether disclosed documents, said to be from the stolen cache, prove that the data underlying climate scientists’ conclusions about warming are murkier than the scientists have said. The documents include files of raw computer code and a computer programmer’s years-long log documenting his frustrations over data gathered from countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
Finally, questions have been raised about whether the e-mail messages indicated that climate scientists tried to prevent the publication of papers written by climate skeptics, which were described by the scientists in the e-mail messages as “garbage” and “fraud.
Eisenhower on the Technological Revolution
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address
delivered 17 January 1961
Farewell Address
delivered 17 January 1961
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Acorn Stuffage
Updated to fix the misleading link below and add a couple of other fun links:
ACORN:
Addendum:
Remember when Acorn promised an internal investigation? Mr. Harshbarger was going to do that investigation:
ACORN:
- On October 1, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry announced that he was going to do a little look-see inside ACORN’s hull to determine if their San Diego office was as innocent as Bertha Lewis, David Lagstein and the Mange Stream Media screamed them to be.
- “Coincidently,” just a few days prior to when AG Brown was slated to pay them a howdy-doo, low and behold, on October 9, ACORN San Diego decided to do a bit of midnight spring cleaning and dump all their docs in a public dumpster to spruce up the joint before the AG’s arrival.
- Unfortunately for poor ACORN, PI Derrick Roach was parked outside waiting for them to do something stupid like dump 20,000 plus pages of their corporate papyrus and their clients’ personal records in a trash bin behind their slim shady facilities.
Addendum:
Remember when Acorn promised an internal investigation? Mr. Harshbarger was going to do that investigation:
Mr. Harshbarger promised to release preliminary findings of his review at the end of October. Monday is the end of November and his preliminary findings don’t seem any closer to release.Still, ACORN has recently filed suit against the federal government to restore its federal funding. And just this week, Eric Holder’s Justice Department issued a ruling saying federal agencies could ignore Congressional bans on funding and could continue to pay ACORN for existing contracts.
Big Government asks a very interesting question about that.
About those documents ACORN threw in the garbage shortly after they found out the state was coming to 'investigate...
Former Governor Jerry Brown is criticizing... not ACORN, but the trash picking DA, citing a 1960s law. Except....
And ACORN didn't exactly fire the San Diego employee caught offering to help smuggle girls in, but they did put him in 'leave' due to ....
And....
Other documents provided to BigGovernment.com show that in the wake of the national scandal involving underage prostitution and human smuggling, ACORN employees were communicating with media, law enforcement and internally among ACORN offices as to how to develop a storyline that could explain....
For the conclusion to these stories, click through and read.=)
Obama's Climate Czar:
...is or was a board member of one of the leading carbon offset trading companies, APX.
William Teach passed on that Carol is a board member of a leading carbon offset trading company. Mrs. Browner joined the board in March of 2008...
That's Carol Browner who insists the science is settled.
From Gateway Pundit
Readworthy News
Good stuff here (just start reading at the stop and keep scrolling down), and likewise, here.
This article about five Aussie politicians who walked out rather than sign a cap and trade type bill is very good, but probably too optimistic. Likewise, this Wall Street Journal article.
Whoa. The CRU emails were leaked a month ago to a BBC reporter. Who sat on them. (via Ace)
Obama's Climate Czar says she's sticking with the 2500 scientists who say the science is settled (wonder how many of them got their data or funding through the Cru-tape letters group? Wonder if any of them are going to recant?)
The walls are cracking- Eduardo Zorita, a scientist and contributing author on the IPCC report says Mann, Jones, and Rahmstorff should be banned from the IPCC process:
The Telegraph is starting to ask some hard questions of the CRU 'team,' and reports:
And here's more on what the CRU emails reveal about the troubling state of the peer review process:
And yet, these are the people the media interviews while ignoring the skeptics.
This article about five Aussie politicians who walked out rather than sign a cap and trade type bill is very good, but probably too optimistic. Likewise, this Wall Street Journal article.
Whoa. The CRU emails were leaked a month ago to a BBC reporter. Who sat on them. (via Ace)
Obama's Climate Czar says she's sticking with the 2500 scientists who say the science is settled (wonder how many of them got their data or funding through the Cru-tape letters group? Wonder if any of them are going to recant?)
The walls are cracking- Eduardo Zorita, a scientist and contributing author on the IPCC report says Mann, Jones, and Rahmstorff should be banned from the IPCC process:
Hat tip to AJ Strata, who also posted:By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication. My area of research happens to be the climate of the past millennia, where I think I am appreciated by other climate-research 'soldiers'. And it happens that some of my mail exchange with Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn can be found in the CRU-files made public recently on the internet.
To the question of legality or ethicalness of reading those files I will write a couple of words later.
I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. They depict a realistic, I would say even harmless, picture of what the real research in the area of the climate of the past millennium has been in the last years. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.
These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.
Mark Steyn explains what the CRU emails reveal about the peer reviewed process:The Ecologist has come out publicly and denounced the alarmist scientist and what they were doing to the profession of science:
The alarmist camp is still in the earliest stages of shock and denial, but they are well meaning people who were led down the wrong path by scandalous zealots. The data will come out, the error budgets will be defined so that maximum accuracy will be establishedEcologist Editor Mark Anslow explores the fallout from the leaked email exchanges between climate scientists
Make no mistake: the emails from the University of East Anglia climate scientists which were obtained from a hacked server and posted onto the internet in November paint a shocking picture.
The emails reveal the private conversations of scientists who commanded universal respect amongst environmentalists, politicians and journalists. And they are not pretty…
Judith Curry, a global warming true believer, is also troubled with the attitudes and behavior shown in the CRU documents. She makes many good points, including this one:Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review". When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."
So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review," climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the "peer-reviewed" "consensus." And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.
Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.Michael Mann has just released another paper. He uses INVERTED DATA, again, and the CRU emails reveal that the CRU propagandists knew it was inverted.
The Telegraph is starting to ask some hard questions of the CRU 'team,' and reports:
Prof Jones, whose department has for years refused to release its raw data on temperatures, wrote another email in which he said sceptics "have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send it to anyone". By chance, he now admits he has "accidentally" deleted some of the raw data.By 'chance?' I find that hard to believe.
What the Telegraph does not make clear is that this 'message' was part of the coding documents- this was a message the programmer wrote to himself when trying to fix the programming code.
Another message said the CRU's method of collating data "renders the station counts totally meaningless... so, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"
And here's more on what the CRU emails reveal about the troubling state of the peer review process:
Peer review is the practice of subjecting scientific papers to review by other scientists with relevant expertise before they can be published in professional journals. The idea is to weed out research with obvious flaws or weak arguments, but there is a clear danger that such a process will simply reinforce groupthink. If it is corrupted, peer review can be a mechanism for an entrenched establishment to exclude legitimate challenges by simply refusing to give critics a hearing.And that is precisely what we find.
In response to an article challenging global warming that was published in the journal Climate Research, CRU head Phil Jones complains that the journal needs to "rid themselves of this troublesome editor"-hopefully not through the same means used by Henry II's knights. Michael Mann replies:
I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
Note the circular logic employed here. Skepticism about global warming is wrong because it is not supported by scientific articles in "legitimate peer-reviewed journals." But if a journal actually publishes such an article, then it is by definition not "legitimate."
You can also see from these e-mails the scientists' panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, "It's one thing to lose Climate Research. We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there."
Not content to block out all dissent from scientific journals, the CRU scientists also conspired to secure friendly reviewers who could be counted on to rubber-stamp their own work. Phil Jones suggests such a list to Kevin Trenberth, with the assurance that "All of them know the sorts of things to say...without any prompting."
So it's no surprise when another e-mail refers to an attempt to keep inconvenient scientific findings out of a UN report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow-even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Think of all of this the next time you hear someone invoke the authority of peer review-or of the UN's IPCC reports-as backing for claims about global warming.
This scandal goes beyond scientific journals and into other media used to promote the global warming dogma. For example, RealClimate.org has been billed as an objective website at which global warming activists and skeptics can engage in an impartial debate. But in the CRU e-mails, the global warming establishment boasts that RealClimate is in their pocket.
I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use RC in any way you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about what comments we screen through.... We can hold comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd like us to include.
[T]hink of RC as a resource that is at your disposal.... We'll use our best discretion to make sure the skeptics don't get to use the RC comments as a megaphone.
And yet, these are the people the media interviews while ignoring the skeptics.
Memory Lessons; Book Review
Memory Lessons by Jerry Winakur is both a memoir and memorial of Winakur's father and his decline into dementia, and a memoir of the author's medical career. These two parts are intertwined through-out the book, like a climbing rose vine wrapped around a wrought iron fence, each supporting and enhancing the other.
In the biographical section we learn of Jerald Winakur's father, who was the son of Jewish immigrants. His father died when he was 7 years old, and at 16 he and his older sister worked to rebuild the family's pawnshop business to support their mother and ten siblings. His family weathered the Great Depression with difficulty, and he served five years in the Army Air Corps during WWII, and returned to the family business after the war. He kept it running successfully for years, until, when he was in his fifties, it was wantonly destroyed in the Baltimore Riot of 1968 (this was his second store, the first had been taken by the city in an act of eminent domain, ironically, taking his store for the new location of a medical school). Having lost everything, and too depressed to attempt to rebuilt another business, he takes solace in his art, a talent he had set aside to support his family, and in his bird watching. His relationships with others are difficult, he has not always gotten along well with his sons, but they are a close family. He develops cancer, and then dementia, and his family struggle over his last few years to find the best ways to take care of him while still respecting his own personhood as much as possible. Because Winakur is a geriatric specialist, he is also able to share other decisions other families have made in similarly painful circumstances, showing us that one size does not fit all. We also see how for some families painful past relationships with parents plays into decisions made out of guilt, or resentment, and how compex the questions of dealing with a family member with dementia can be, and how very human caregivers and the medical professionals are.
Winakur has also been the primary care physician for an aging community of nuns, and he shares his experiences there, as well as his studies of research by others. What he had to say about the importance of faith and community was extremely intriguing. Faith, optimism, early language skills, community- all these things play a part in fending off dementia. He refers here to the nun studies done in a community in Wisconsin- they began in 1986 and are on-going. The nuns donate their brains to science when they die so the research can continue.Aging With Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives tells us more about this study.
In the medical section we learn about Winakur's struggles with medical school techniques which depersonalize and dehumanize the doctor-patient relationship, the way big pharma companies enriched themselves often at the expense of good doctor-patient relationships, and his frustration with the way Medicare, insurance companies, lobbying groups, and government programs (Medicare, he says, is the most egregious of these) have focused on bells and whistles, gimmicks, procedures, and technology and, by reimbursing those procedures at disproportionately higher rates have squeezed out basic, good doctoring, the sort of doctoring that comes from a compassionate, knowledgeable individual taken time to apply his knowledge and insight of a patient's personal background and medical history into working out the best care for each patient on an individual basis.
He points out that insurance companies generally follow Medicare's lead in determining what programs to cover and at what rates. Medicare's determinations are based largely on the recommendations of an AMA committee, the "secretive and subspecialist-stacked: 'Resource-based Relative Value Scale Udpdate Committee (RUC).' Twenty-three of the thirty members are appointed by medical specialty societies, and the meetings are closed and proprietary. 'seventeen of the permanent seats on the RUC are assigned to ... specialty societies... that account for a very small portion of all professional Medicare billing, such as neurosurgery, plastic surgery, pathology, and otolaryngology.' And over 90 percent of this committee's recommendations are enacted by Medicare."
He would like to see more front-line, basic, primary care physicians consulted on issues of health care and government policy- something he said did NOT happen with any previous such debates (and I suspect not with the current ones, either).
Winakur's writing is poetic, lyrical, and personal. He writes as a physician and as the loving and sometimes conflicted son of elderly parents, one with dementia, the other, his mother, nearly blind and wearing herself out as the primary caregiver. He writes of the decline of personal medical care, and the slow decline of his father, and most dementia patients, whose family members often do not connect the dots and recognize dementia until something dramatic happens. He also writes of heroes, heroes in medicine and on the home-front, who maintain their loved ones in great difficulties. He writes of the need for improvements in how care for our oldest old, and he offers suggestions. He also offers understanding and compassion.
This was a moving book, especially to my family as we work out these issues with our own difficult father and husband, gently sliding down the hill of dementia. It was affirming to read of some of the same experiences, questions, and difficulties that others in similar circumstances have gone through.
In the biographical section we learn of Jerald Winakur's father, who was the son of Jewish immigrants. His father died when he was 7 years old, and at 16 he and his older sister worked to rebuild the family's pawnshop business to support their mother and ten siblings. His family weathered the Great Depression with difficulty, and he served five years in the Army Air Corps during WWII, and returned to the family business after the war. He kept it running successfully for years, until, when he was in his fifties, it was wantonly destroyed in the Baltimore Riot of 1968 (this was his second store, the first had been taken by the city in an act of eminent domain, ironically, taking his store for the new location of a medical school). Having lost everything, and too depressed to attempt to rebuilt another business, he takes solace in his art, a talent he had set aside to support his family, and in his bird watching. His relationships with others are difficult, he has not always gotten along well with his sons, but they are a close family. He develops cancer, and then dementia, and his family struggle over his last few years to find the best ways to take care of him while still respecting his own personhood as much as possible. Because Winakur is a geriatric specialist, he is also able to share other decisions other families have made in similarly painful circumstances, showing us that one size does not fit all. We also see how for some families painful past relationships with parents plays into decisions made out of guilt, or resentment, and how compex the questions of dealing with a family member with dementia can be, and how very human caregivers and the medical professionals are.
Winakur has also been the primary care physician for an aging community of nuns, and he shares his experiences there, as well as his studies of research by others. What he had to say about the importance of faith and community was extremely intriguing. Faith, optimism, early language skills, community- all these things play a part in fending off dementia. He refers here to the nun studies done in a community in Wisconsin- they began in 1986 and are on-going. The nuns donate their brains to science when they die so the research can continue.Aging With Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives tells us more about this study.
In the medical section we learn about Winakur's struggles with medical school techniques which depersonalize and dehumanize the doctor-patient relationship, the way big pharma companies enriched themselves often at the expense of good doctor-patient relationships, and his frustration with the way Medicare, insurance companies, lobbying groups, and government programs (Medicare, he says, is the most egregious of these) have focused on bells and whistles, gimmicks, procedures, and technology and, by reimbursing those procedures at disproportionately higher rates have squeezed out basic, good doctoring, the sort of doctoring that comes from a compassionate, knowledgeable individual taken time to apply his knowledge and insight of a patient's personal background and medical history into working out the best care for each patient on an individual basis.
He points out that insurance companies generally follow Medicare's lead in determining what programs to cover and at what rates. Medicare's determinations are based largely on the recommendations of an AMA committee, the "secretive and subspecialist-stacked: 'Resource-based Relative Value Scale Udpdate Committee (RUC).' Twenty-three of the thirty members are appointed by medical specialty societies, and the meetings are closed and proprietary. 'seventeen of the permanent seats on the RUC are assigned to ... specialty societies... that account for a very small portion of all professional Medicare billing, such as neurosurgery, plastic surgery, pathology, and otolaryngology.' And over 90 percent of this committee's recommendations are enacted by Medicare."
He would like to see more front-line, basic, primary care physicians consulted on issues of health care and government policy- something he said did NOT happen with any previous such debates (and I suspect not with the current ones, either).
Winakur's writing is poetic, lyrical, and personal. He writes as a physician and as the loving and sometimes conflicted son of elderly parents, one with dementia, the other, his mother, nearly blind and wearing herself out as the primary caregiver. He writes of the decline of personal medical care, and the slow decline of his father, and most dementia patients, whose family members often do not connect the dots and recognize dementia until something dramatic happens. He also writes of heroes, heroes in medicine and on the home-front, who maintain their loved ones in great difficulties. He writes of the need for improvements in how care for our oldest old, and he offers suggestions. He also offers understanding and compassion.
This was a moving book, especially to my family as we work out these issues with our own difficult father and husband, gently sliding down the hill of dementia. It was affirming to read of some of the same experiences, questions, and difficulties that others in similar circumstances have gone through.
And What Did YOU Have for Thanksgiving Dinner?
For our Thanksgiving, we had the flu. And you should probably just stop reading right here, because there's nothing edifying in the rest of this post.
Blynken and Nod arrived Tuesday night and we found out after they got here that Blyken had been, well, there is just no elegant and yet also clear way of putting this, throwing up, Tuesday morning.
Jenny fell ill Thursday morning and took to her bed.
The FYG, clingier than usual and more than ordinarily a Mama's girl, dropped out just as we were to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner at Granny Tea's, so I fixed a plate and brought her home and we both snuggled up in my bed. I had a head-ache, so I took a long nap with her, a nap punctuated by further bouts of throwing up. She says, "I did not throw up. I spewed."
Pippin was next, and she came home and took to her bed.
I am not feeling at my best, but we won't go into further details. As of this writing, I do not know who will be after me, but can only hope it won't be the Cherub. At least, I hope she'll hold off until her father is home from work or somebody old enough to take care of her is well.
Poor Blynken and Nod, much to their distress (especially Blynken's) went home early instead of staying over until Sunday night as expected. We told their mother they were welcome to stay on if she stayed with them, but nobody here was going to be well enough to take care of them, so they all went home. It was quite sad to see poor little Blynken's face, and when they left I was nearly in tears (there's a lot I am not saying here. Please pray for them, and for me. Sometimes I find myself in frustratingly hopeless corners here).
We have three other houseguests who have decided to be fatalists about it, although they are leaving later today. They did nearly all our dishes yesterday and we are so grateful.
The Equuschick is quite ruffled, concerned that the little Pirate will get it (so are we) and she has avoided contact with us. We just hope we were not too contagious before she started shunning us.
Usually at Thanksgiving we have some point in the day where we all share something special we are thankful for. I did not get to do that yesterday, but let me tell you something I thought about much of the day yesterday and well into the night.
I am so thankful we no longer live in a house with only one bathroom. I rejoice in the possession of four bathrooms (and two of the bathrooms have double sinks, luxury indeed) and indoor plumbing. I never have taken these things for granted, and I never will.
Blynken and Nod arrived Tuesday night and we found out after they got here that Blyken had been, well, there is just no elegant and yet also clear way of putting this, throwing up, Tuesday morning.
Jenny fell ill Thursday morning and took to her bed.
The FYG, clingier than usual and more than ordinarily a Mama's girl, dropped out just as we were to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner at Granny Tea's, so I fixed a plate and brought her home and we both snuggled up in my bed. I had a head-ache, so I took a long nap with her, a nap punctuated by further bouts of throwing up. She says, "I did not throw up. I spewed."
Pippin was next, and she came home and took to her bed.
I am not feeling at my best, but we won't go into further details. As of this writing, I do not know who will be after me, but can only hope it won't be the Cherub. At least, I hope she'll hold off until her father is home from work or somebody old enough to take care of her is well.
Poor Blynken and Nod, much to their distress (especially Blynken's) went home early instead of staying over until Sunday night as expected. We told their mother they were welcome to stay on if she stayed with them, but nobody here was going to be well enough to take care of them, so they all went home. It was quite sad to see poor little Blynken's face, and when they left I was nearly in tears (there's a lot I am not saying here. Please pray for them, and for me. Sometimes I find myself in frustratingly hopeless corners here).
We have three other houseguests who have decided to be fatalists about it, although they are leaving later today. They did nearly all our dishes yesterday and we are so grateful.
The Equuschick is quite ruffled, concerned that the little Pirate will get it (so are we) and she has avoided contact with us. We just hope we were not too contagious before she started shunning us.
Usually at Thanksgiving we have some point in the day where we all share something special we are thankful for. I did not get to do that yesterday, but let me tell you something I thought about much of the day yesterday and well into the night.
I am so thankful we no longer live in a house with only one bathroom. I rejoice in the possession of four bathrooms (and two of the bathrooms have double sinks, luxury indeed) and indoor plumbing. I never have taken these things for granted, and I never will.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Twilight of Thanksgiving
The Twilight of Thanksgiving
The day has lengthened into eve,
And over all the meadows
The Twilight's silent shuttles weave
Their sombre web of shadows;
With northern lights the cloudless skies
Are faintly phosphorescent,
And just above yon wooded rise
The new moon shows her crescent.
Before the evening lamps are lit,
While day and night commingle,
The sire and matron come and sit
Beside the cozy ingle;
And softly speak of the delight
Within their bosoms swelling,
Because beneath their roof to-night
Their dear ones all are dwelling.
And when around the cheerful blaze
The young folks take their places,
What blissful dreams of other days
Light up their aged faces!
The past returns with all its joys,
And they again are living
The years in which, as girls and boys,
Their children kept Thanksgiving.
The stalwart son recalls the time
When, urged to the endeavor,
He tried the well-greased pole to climb,
And failed of fame forever.
The daughter tells of her emprise
When, as a new beginner,
She helped her mother make the pies
For the Thanksgiving dinner.
And thus with laugh and jest and song,
And tender recollections,
Love speeds the happy hours along,
And fosters fond affections;
While Fancy, listening to the mirth,
And dreaming pleasant fictions,
Imagines through the winds on earth
That heaven breathes benedictions.
~William D. Kelley (1814-1890)
The day has lengthened into eve,
And over all the meadows
The Twilight's silent shuttles weave
Their sombre web of shadows;
With northern lights the cloudless skies
Are faintly phosphorescent,
And just above yon wooded rise
The new moon shows her crescent.
Before the evening lamps are lit,
While day and night commingle,
The sire and matron come and sit
Beside the cozy ingle;
And softly speak of the delight
Within their bosoms swelling,
Because beneath their roof to-night
Their dear ones all are dwelling.
And when around the cheerful blaze
The young folks take their places,
What blissful dreams of other days
Light up their aged faces!
The past returns with all its joys,
And they again are living
The years in which, as girls and boys,
Their children kept Thanksgiving.
The stalwart son recalls the time
When, urged to the endeavor,
He tried the well-greased pole to climb,
And failed of fame forever.
The daughter tells of her emprise
When, as a new beginner,
She helped her mother make the pies
For the Thanksgiving dinner.
And thus with laugh and jest and song,
And tender recollections,
Love speeds the happy hours along,
And fosters fond affections;
While Fancy, listening to the mirth,
And dreaming pleasant fictions,
Imagines through the winds on earth
That heaven breathes benedictions.
~William D. Kelley (1814-1890)
Thanksgiving Poem
Thanksgiving Comes But Once a Year
Thornton W. Burgess
Thanksgiving comes but once a year,
But when it comes it brings good cheer.
For in my storehouse on this day
Are piles of good things hid away.
Each day I've worked from early morn
To gather acorns, nuts, and corn,
Till now I've plenty and to spare
Without a worry or a care.
So light of heart the whole day long,
I'll sing a glad Thanksgiving song."
Thornton W. Burgess
Thanksgiving comes but once a year,
But when it comes it brings good cheer.
For in my storehouse on this day
Are piles of good things hid away.
Each day I've worked from early morn
To gather acorns, nuts, and corn,
Till now I've plenty and to spare
Without a worry or a care.
So light of heart the whole day long,
I'll sing a glad Thanksgiving song."
The Corn Song
The Corn Song
John Greenleaf Whittier
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.
Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our plows their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.
We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain,
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and
fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come;
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
Then shame on all the proud and vain
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn!
Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly;
But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us, for his golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God!
John Greenleaf Whittier
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.
Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our plows their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.
We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain,
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and
fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come;
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
Then shame on all the proud and vain
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn!
Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly;
But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us, for his golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God!
Over the River and Through the Woods
THANKSGIVING DAY
by LYDIA MARIA CHILD
Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow.
Over the river and through the wood —
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and through the wood,
To have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring,
"Ting-a-ling-dingl"
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!
Over the river and through the wood
Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting-hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river and through the wood,
And straight through the barn-yard gate.
We seem to go
Extremely slow,—
It is so hard to wait!
Over the river and through the wood —
Now grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun!
Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin-pie!
In reading several collections of old Thanksgiving tales, I came across several references to an old and charming Thanksgiving practice- that of fixing up a Thanksgiving Day plate to take to elderly shut-ins and neighbors. Heres's one example- I especially like the old fashioned version of 'snow-boots:'
When Ann Mary went to carry the plate of Thanksgiving dinner to Sarah Bean, she wore a pair of her grandfather's blue woollen socks drawn over her shoes to keep out the snow. The snow was rather deep for easy walking, but she did not mind that. She carried the dinner with great care; there was a large plate well filled, and a tin dish was turned over it to keep it warm. Sarah Bean was an old woman who lived alone. Her house was about a quarter of a mile from the Littles'.
When Ann Mary reached the house, she found the old woman making a cup of tea. There did not seem to be much of anything but tea and bread-and-butter for her dinner. She was very deaf and infirm, all her joints shook when she tried to use them, and her voice quavered when she talked. She took the plate, and her hands trembled so that the tin dish played on the plate like a clapper. " Why," said she, overjoyed, " this looks just like Thanksgiving Day, tell your grandma! "
" Why, it is Thanksgiving Day," declared Ann Mary, with some wonder.
"What?" asked Sarah Bean.
"It is Thanksgiving Day, you know." But it was of no use, the old woman could not hear a word. Ann Mary's voice was too low.
Ann Mary could not walk very fast on account of the snow. She was absent some three-quarters of an hour; her grandmother had told her that dinner would be all on the table when she returned. She was enjoying the nice things in anticipation all the day; when she came near the house, she could smell roasted turkey, and there was also a sweet spicy odor in the air.
The cat and mouse at Thanksgiving
A THANKSGIVING FABLE
OLIVER HERFORD
It was a hungry pussy cat, upon Thanksgiving morn,
And she watched a thankful little mouse, that ate an ear of corn.
"HI ate that thankful little mouse, how thankful he should be,
When he has made a meal himself, to make a meal for me!
" Then with his thanks for having fed, and his thanks for feeding me,
With all his thankfulness inside, how thankful I shall be!"
Thus mused the hungry pussy cat, upon Thanksgiving Day;
But the little mouse had overheard and declined (with thanks) to stay.
Five Kernels of Corn
Read the short story Five Kernels of Corn by Susan Rosser.
Then read:
Five Kernels of Corn
by Hezekiah Butterworth
'Twas the year of the famine in Plymouth of old,
The ice and the snow from the thatched roofs had rolled;
Through the warm purple skies steered the geese o'er the seas,
And the woodpeckers tapped in the clocks of the trees;
And the boughs on the slopes to the south winds lay bare,
and dreaming of summer, the buds swelled in the air.
The pale Pilgrims welcomed each reddening morn;
There were left but for rations Five Kernels of Corn.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
But to Bradford a feast were Five Kernels of Corn!
"Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye people, be glad for Five Kernels of Corn!"
So Bradford cried out on bleak Burial Hill,
And the thin women stood in their doors, white and still.
"Lo, the harbor of Plymouth rolls bright in the Spring,
The maples grow red, and the wood robins sing,
The west wind is blowing, and fading the snow,
And the pleasant pines sing, and arbutuses blow.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
To each one be given Five Kernels of Corn!"
O Bradford of Austerfield hast on thy way,
The west winds are blowing o'er Provincetown Bay,
The white avens bloom, but the pine domes are chill,
And new graves have furrowed Precisioners' Hill!
"Give thanks, all ye people, the warm skies have come,
The hilltops are sunny, and green grows the holm,
And the trumpets of winds, and the white March is gone,
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye have for Thanksgiving Five Kernels of Corn!
"The raven's gift eat and be humble and pray,
A new light is breaking and Truth leads your way;
One taper a thousand shall kindle; rejoice
That to you has been given the wilderness voice!"
O Bradford of Austerfield, daring the wave,
And safe through the sounding blasts leading the brave,
Of deeds such as thine was the free nation born,
And the festal world sings the "Five Kernels of Corn."
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
The nation gives thanks for Five Kernels of Corn!
To the Thanksgiving Feast bring Five Kernels of Corn!
Then read:
Five Kernels of Corn
by Hezekiah Butterworth
'Twas the year of the famine in Plymouth of old,
The ice and the snow from the thatched roofs had rolled;
Through the warm purple skies steered the geese o'er the seas,
And the woodpeckers tapped in the clocks of the trees;
And the boughs on the slopes to the south winds lay bare,
and dreaming of summer, the buds swelled in the air.
The pale Pilgrims welcomed each reddening morn;
There were left but for rations Five Kernels of Corn.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
But to Bradford a feast were Five Kernels of Corn!
"Five Kernels of Corn! Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye people, be glad for Five Kernels of Corn!"
So Bradford cried out on bleak Burial Hill,
And the thin women stood in their doors, white and still.
"Lo, the harbor of Plymouth rolls bright in the Spring,
The maples grow red, and the wood robins sing,
The west wind is blowing, and fading the snow,
And the pleasant pines sing, and arbutuses blow.
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
To each one be given Five Kernels of Corn!"
O Bradford of Austerfield hast on thy way,
The west winds are blowing o'er Provincetown Bay,
The white avens bloom, but the pine domes are chill,
And new graves have furrowed Precisioners' Hill!
"Give thanks, all ye people, the warm skies have come,
The hilltops are sunny, and green grows the holm,
And the trumpets of winds, and the white March is gone,
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
Ye have for Thanksgiving Five Kernels of Corn!
"The raven's gift eat and be humble and pray,
A new light is breaking and Truth leads your way;
One taper a thousand shall kindle; rejoice
That to you has been given the wilderness voice!"
O Bradford of Austerfield, daring the wave,
And safe through the sounding blasts leading the brave,
Of deeds such as thine was the free nation born,
And the festal world sings the "Five Kernels of Corn."
Five Kernels of Corn!
Five Kernels of Corn!
The nation gives thanks for Five Kernels of Corn!
To the Thanksgiving Feast bring Five Kernels of Corn!
November 26th, Z
Zooplankton!
From foraminfera:
To the Portuguese Man-O-War:
I am delighted to live in a world with so much variety, so many amazing things to know, and so many beautiful things to see.
From foraminfera:
To the Portuguese Man-O-War:
I am delighted to live in a world with so much variety, so many amazing things to know, and so many beautiful things to see.
Grandther Baldwin's Thanksgiving, a poetry reading
GRAND'THER BALDWIN'S THANKSGIVING
UNDERNEATH protected branches, from the highway just aloof;
Stands the house of Grand'ther Baldwin, with its gently sloping roof.
Square of shape and solid-timbered, it was standing, I have heard,
In the days of Whig and Tory, under royal George the Third.
Many a time, I well remember, I have gazed with Childish awe
At the bullet-hole remaining in the sturdy oaken door,
Turning round half-apprehensive (recking not how time had fled)
Of the lurking, savage foeman from whose musket it was sped..
Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn's harvest spoils,
Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies--the guerdon of his toils;
Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green,
While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet, drowsy mien.
Deep and spacious are the grain-bins, brimming o'er with nature's gold;
Here are piles of yellow pumpkins on the barn-floor loosely rolled.
Just below in deep recesses, safe from wintry frost chill,
There are heaps of ruddy apples from the orchard the hill.
Many a year has Grand'ther Baldwin in the old house dwelt in peace,
As his hair each year grew whiter, he has seen his herds increase.
Sturdy sons and comely daughters, growing up from childish plays,
One by one have met life's duties, and gone forth their several ways.
Hushed the voice of childish laughter, hushed is childhood's merry tone,
the fireside Grand'ther Baldwin and his good wife sit alone.
Turning round half-apprehensive (recking not how time had fled)
Of the lurking savage foeman from whose musket it was sped.
Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn harvest spoils,
Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies--the guerdon of his toils;
Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green,
While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet drowsy mien.
Deep and spacious are the grain-bins, brimming o'er with nature's gold;
Here are piles of yellow pumpkins on the barn-floor loosely rolled.
Just below in deep recesses, safe from wintry frost and chill,
There are heaps of ruddy apples from the orchard on the hill.
Many a year has Grand'ther Baldwin in the old house dwelt in peace,
As his hair each year grew whiter, he has seen his herds increase.
Sturdy sons and comely daughters, growing up from childish plays,
One by one have met life's duties, and gone forth their several ways.
Hushed the voice of childish laughter, hushed is childhood's merry tone,
By the fireside Grand'ther Baldwin and his good wife sit alone.
Yet once within the twelvemonth, when the days are short and drear,
And chill winds chant the requiem of the slowly fading year,
When the autumn work is over, and the harvest gathered in,
Once again the old house echoes to a long unwonted din.
Logs of hickory blaze and crackle in the fireplace huge anti high,
Curling wreaths of smoke mount upward to the gray November sky.
Ruddy lads and smiling lasses, just let loose from schooldom's cares,
Patter, patter, race and clatter, up and down the great hall stairs.
All the boys shall hold high revel; all the girls shall have their way,-
That's the law at Grand'ther Baldwin's upon each Thanksgiving Day.
From from the parlor's sacred precincts, hark! a madder uproar yet;
Roguish Charlie's playing stage-coach, and the stage-coach has upset!
Joe, black-eyed and laughter-loving, Grand'ther's specs his nose across,
Gravely winks at brother Willie, who is gayly playing horse.
Grandma's face is fairly radiant; Grand'ther knows not how to frown,
though the children, in their frolic, turn the old house upside down.
For the boys may hold high revel, and the girls must have their way;
That's the law at Grand'ther Baldwin's upon each Thanksgiving Day.
But the dinner--ah! the dinner--words are feeble to portray
What a culinary triumph is achieved Thanksgiving Day!
Fairly groans the board with dainties, but the turkey rules the roast,
Aldermanic at the outset, at the last a fleshless ghost.
Then the richness of the pudding, and the flavor of the pie,
When you've dined at Grandma Baldwin's you will know as well as I.
When, at length, the feast was ended, Grand'ther Baldwin bent his head,
And, amid the solemn silence, with a reverent voice, he said:--
"Now unto God, the Gracious One, we thanks and homage pay,
Who guardeth us, and guideth us, and loveth us always!
"He scatters blessings in our paths, He giveth us increase,
He crowns us with His kindnesses, and granteth us His peace.
"Unto himself, our wandering feet, we pray that He may draw,
And may we strive, with faithful hearts, to keep His holy law!"
His simple words in silence died: a moment's hush. And then
From all the listening hearts there rose a solemn-voiced Amen !
From Ballads, by Horatio Alger
UNDERNEATH protected branches, from the highway just aloof;
Stands the house of Grand'ther Baldwin, with its gently sloping roof.
Square of shape and solid-timbered, it was standing, I have heard,
In the days of Whig and Tory, under royal George the Third.
Many a time, I well remember, I have gazed with Childish awe
At the bullet-hole remaining in the sturdy oaken door,
Turning round half-apprehensive (recking not how time had fled)
Of the lurking, savage foeman from whose musket it was sped..
Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn's harvest spoils,
Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies--the guerdon of his toils;
Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green,
While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet, drowsy mien.
Deep and spacious are the grain-bins, brimming o'er with nature's gold;
Here are piles of yellow pumpkins on the barn-floor loosely rolled.
Just below in deep recesses, safe from wintry frost chill,
There are heaps of ruddy apples from the orchard the hill.
Many a year has Grand'ther Baldwin in the old house dwelt in peace,
As his hair each year grew whiter, he has seen his herds increase.
Sturdy sons and comely daughters, growing up from childish plays,
One by one have met life's duties, and gone forth their several ways.
Hushed the voice of childish laughter, hushed is childhood's merry tone,
the fireside Grand'ther Baldwin and his good wife sit alone.
Turning round half-apprehensive (recking not how time had fled)
Of the lurking savage foeman from whose musket it was sped.
Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn harvest spoils,
Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies--the guerdon of his toils;
Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green,
While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet drowsy mien.
Deep and spacious are the grain-bins, brimming o'er with nature's gold;
Here are piles of yellow pumpkins on the barn-floor loosely rolled.
Just below in deep recesses, safe from wintry frost and chill,
There are heaps of ruddy apples from the orchard on the hill.
Many a year has Grand'ther Baldwin in the old house dwelt in peace,
As his hair each year grew whiter, he has seen his herds increase.
Sturdy sons and comely daughters, growing up from childish plays,
One by one have met life's duties, and gone forth their several ways.
Hushed the voice of childish laughter, hushed is childhood's merry tone,
By the fireside Grand'ther Baldwin and his good wife sit alone.
Yet once within the twelvemonth, when the days are short and drear,
And chill winds chant the requiem of the slowly fading year,
When the autumn work is over, and the harvest gathered in,
Once again the old house echoes to a long unwonted din.
Logs of hickory blaze and crackle in the fireplace huge anti high,
Curling wreaths of smoke mount upward to the gray November sky.
Ruddy lads and smiling lasses, just let loose from schooldom's cares,
Patter, patter, race and clatter, up and down the great hall stairs.
All the boys shall hold high revel; all the girls shall have their way,-
That's the law at Grand'ther Baldwin's upon each Thanksgiving Day.
From from the parlor's sacred precincts, hark! a madder uproar yet;
Roguish Charlie's playing stage-coach, and the stage-coach has upset!
Joe, black-eyed and laughter-loving, Grand'ther's specs his nose across,
Gravely winks at brother Willie, who is gayly playing horse.
Grandma's face is fairly radiant; Grand'ther knows not how to frown,
though the children, in their frolic, turn the old house upside down.
For the boys may hold high revel, and the girls must have their way;
That's the law at Grand'ther Baldwin's upon each Thanksgiving Day.
But the dinner--ah! the dinner--words are feeble to portray
What a culinary triumph is achieved Thanksgiving Day!
Fairly groans the board with dainties, but the turkey rules the roast,
Aldermanic at the outset, at the last a fleshless ghost.
Then the richness of the pudding, and the flavor of the pie,
When you've dined at Grandma Baldwin's you will know as well as I.
When, at length, the feast was ended, Grand'ther Baldwin bent his head,
And, amid the solemn silence, with a reverent voice, he said:--
"Now unto God, the Gracious One, we thanks and homage pay,
Who guardeth us, and guideth us, and loveth us always!
"He scatters blessings in our paths, He giveth us increase,
He crowns us with His kindnesses, and granteth us His peace.
"Unto himself, our wandering feet, we pray that He may draw,
And may we strive, with faithful hearts, to keep His holy law!"
His simple words in silence died: a moment's hush. And then
From all the listening hearts there rose a solemn-voiced Amen !
From Ballads, by Horatio Alger
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