Category: Community

What are you fixing for the big game? My daughter e-mailed me to let me know I was going to miss her seafood gumbo, buffalo wings, onion/vegetable dip and brownies. I’ll be eating MRE’s or rather the French version RCIR, Ration de Combat Individuelle Rechauffable.

Each RCIR contains

Each box includes: Main meals x2, Hors d’oeuvre, Soup, Cheese or a Crème dessert, Salted and Sweet crackers x16, Chocolate bar, Package of caramels, Gum, “Breakfast package” (Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, Milk powder, Sugar, etc), Nougat bar, Fruit gelee, Sugar cubes, Paper towels x10, Heating kit with fuel, disposable stove, waste bag and water purification tablets x6, etc.

There are pork and no pork versions and they come with cute little stove but, alas, no wine. We have managed to find a source for wine, beer and other alcohol. The RCIR’s are quite “valuable” in the world of barter when living in less than civilized conditions like war zones and disaster areas.

Anyway, I digress. I offer up my famously HOT, in more ways than one, recipe for Buffalo Wings and Blue Cheese Dip.

What are you cooking? Feel free to share recipes, ideas for solo viewing or for a crowd.

Muse in the Morning

Face Time

Continuation inside…

now cross posted at Wild Wild Left (warts and all…lol)

OTW =  Off the Wall .. my series, the first of which is here, having to do with multi-cultural and diversity topics.

NOTE: I decided to make this Part One because I had entirely too much fun googling related topics & pics, and I got a little lost sidetracked. Lol. I have a certain direction I want to take this, but it may take me another week to actually get there! So there will be a Part Two (at least). Thanks for your patience. Heh.

In 1960, when the first wave of Cuban refugees arrived in droves in Miami Florida, I was about 4 years old. So were a number of Cuban children who would become my classmates, age-mates, rivals and friends. I was just a regular ol’, you know, American. My WASP Dad was from Ohio and my Irish Mom, western Massachusetts. Miami was, at the time, a blend of New England transplants, retired New York Jews (Miami Beach), and more. I was considered a bit of a rarity in that I was actually born there, a “native”. The huge intake of hundreds of thousands of Cubans in such a short period of time had quite an impact on the city. Since I was only 4 at the time, what do I know? But trust me, it did.

Muse in the Morning

Streaks

Then I thought that needed some oomph and achieved what is inside…

GMA – Elizabeth Edwards on Oprah

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

She is an eloquent speaker, an expressive author.  Elizabeth Edwards is effervescent, effusive, and has an excellent mind.  She understands profound policy issues as easily as she prepares a sandwich.   Her memoir appeared on The New York Times bestseller list.  Few think of Elizabeth Edwards as every woman.  Other daughters of Eve might say Edwards is exceptional; surely, she is not as I am.  Yet, life experiences might have taught Elizabeth Edwards otherwise.  Just as other ladies, she is brilliant, beautiful, and not nearly equal to a man.

Muse in the Morning

Shaped

Maybe another graphic inside…

By Kathy Kelly

February 2, 2010

Here in Colorado Springs, student and community organizers recently invited me to try and help promote their campaign against a proposed “No Camping” ordinance, a law to ban the homeless from sleeping on sidewalks or public lands within the city limits.  The organizers insist it’s wrongful to criminalize the most desperate and endangered among us, that it instead seems quite criminal to persecute people already in need of far more care and compassion than we’ve been willing to offer, especially during these bitterly cold winter months.  But others in the area are intent on eliminating the tent encampments near the Monument Creek and Shooks Run trails, complaining that the encampments mar natural beauty, deter tourists, create fire hazards, and degrade the environment by strewing heaps of trash and debris near the creek and even in it.  

Muse in the Morning

Mitosis

Another graphic inside…

One thing I am always impressed about on Docudharma is how we not only talk about how to change the political system that currently exists but how to upend it using disruptive politics, technologies and techniques.

We talk about restoring the centrality of community to our lives.  It is this concept of community which, many of us feel, will provide a needed bulwark against the depredation of corporate feudalists and looters.

The social aspect of community, and what Americans are lacking in that regard, is well established and has been for a long time.

It’s not my favorite genre of music, but the best example of exactly what I think of as wrong in terms of American community or lack thereof goes like this:

And, if you think about it this way, the fact that our culture is sick and overrun with parasitism begins to make sense if you think about it in an organic way.

For decades, we have had a monoculture of American expectations .. what Americans are supposed to do, how Americans are supposed to live.

But one thing you learn about in Biology 101, is that monocultures die out.  Why do they die out?  Because they are far more vulnerable to predation by parasites.  Any given parasite can more easily infect and destroy a population if that population is the same than if there are many different and varied populations.

Muse in the Morning

Ephemeral

Another graphic inside…