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Domestic Goddess: Pollock Fillets seasoned with Mrs. Dash Lemon Pepper, Bush's Best Brown Sugar Hickory Baked Beans, Green Grapes and Chocolate Chip Cookies that my husband prepared.  Sorry about the previous type error with my last post.

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Domestic Goddess: Pollock Fillets seasoned with Mrs. Dash

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D

Norms Bait and Tackle

Started by dapphne, March 30, 2016, 09:23:16 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

FlaJean

Marsgal, loved that long poem by Nash, an interesting and quick history lesson.  :thumbup:

Tomereader1

MaryPage, on the Atlas Obscura website today, there is an interesting article about "Round Falls" in Baltimore, MD. They stated that it is one of Baltimore's "hidden treasures".  Hope you can negotiate to the Atlas Obscura site and read about it.

Marilyne


Good to see so many members checking in today with such wonderfully clever poetry by Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash!  It was a pleasure to read them all, and started my day off with a smile.
A contemporary poet, that I like a lot, is Billy Collins, who was the United States Poet Laureate, from 2001 to 2003.  Here is one of his, that definitely speaks to those of us of a certain age!

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

- Billy Collins

patricia19

Marilyne, I went to look him up and found some places that need a bit of proofing.

"William James Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2223 to 2029. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 through 2006.Wikipedia"

MarsGal

Patricia, that first Parker is a downer isn't it?

The second I can really relate to. It took George to cure me of being a "people pleaser". Bless his heart. He very much preferred that I have a mind of my own and not just reflect back his thoughts. He also taught me a bunch about computers. I often used to tell him he "created this monster", with a smirk. He taught me to be an independent thinking woman. I do miss him.

Marilyne, I never heard of Billy Collins, but he sure has it right doesn't he.

patricia19

Parker was definitely an independent for her time. She and Winston Churchill are my idols for the lit they left behind.

George sounds like the one who we all needed in our youth. I can see why you miss him. So, many women aren't taught to be themselves and instead latch on to those so wrong for them.

It took me two almost identical husbands before I learned I was okay.

Marilyne

#20046
Patricia - That mixed up mess of dates on Billy Collins, is enough to make me wonder about reincarnation!?  ???   Will he be returning in 200 years, to become US Poet Laureate once again?  :D ha ha!    Actually I was surprised to see Wikipedia with so many errors - it's usually accurate.

Tomereader1

I have nearly all of the books by Billy Collins.  He is an absolute riot, but the underlying seriousness is also evidenced.  I recommend his work to everyone.

MaryPage

Thank you, Marilyne, for the wonderful compliment.  Well, it was published.  In my High School monthly newsletter.  Hey, does anyone besides me remember mimeograph paper? 

Callie, I hate to tell you this, but I did warn you all in my post yesterday, Nash did not write the pelican one!  But you are probably the 6,247,981st person to attribute it to him.  Remember my mentioning Dixon Lanier Merritt?  Uh huh.

As I recall, and I don't do that as well these days as was once the case, but I believe Dorothy Parker was the only woman member of the Round Table at the Algonquin.  Oh, the funny, funny stories that have been told and retold by each of that famous bunch!

Patricia, her "one of you is lying" poem has long been my favorite.  Brilliant as she was, and no one can possibly argue she was not, I think she was a deeply unhappy human being. 

Back to what my memory of our High School newspaper brought back regarding the mimeograph paper, my nose is twitching as I type this.  Could it be an accompanying memory of the stink that went with?

patricia19

MaryPage, I remember mimeograph paper, overhead projectors, manual typewriters, and numerous other relics of my youth. What was the name of the blue-printed paper that some folks loved to sniff?

Marilyne, he'll not only come through time for a second term, but he'll also go back thru time during that term!

MaryPage

That was it, Patricia!  That was mimeograph paper!

so_P_bubble

I used to type "stencils" for the school news paper and using that red liquid for corrections. The Gestetner machine for printing them was so messy...

Vanilla-Jackie

#20052
I am here, to say BT ( British Telecom ) has once again been a complete nightmare, but, an engineer has just this minute left after setting up my computer website plus TV and set-box and hub....So many cables nowadays that plug into this and that, ( thank heavens my landline was working and with the same number as previous address ) after the complete mess up on my day of my move, this was meant to have been done on that day...

Edited: just spotted Jenny's post, Jenny i am back...doing a thumbs up to you...


" There is no present like the time "

MarsGal

Oh, gosh, I remember the mimeograph paper well, the carbon paper, stencil paper, and thermal paper. I started learning to type one manuals and ended up with having to deal with constantly tangling strikers on the new electrics in my last year of high school. Typing was not my forte. I barely passed that section of class, and I do mean just scraped by. Never could type fast.

Last evening a ship bearing new cruisers docked at Sarnia, so I got to watch them unload several. These were larger, as I recall, than the ones delivered last year. The ship carried seven of them. I just checked, it looks like they are getting ready to unload more now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUTl7xlbnaM Someone mentioned on the site that these are already owned boats that are shipped up to the Lakes for the summer. Apparently this is common. So, the question is it more cost effective than sailing them up, or is it a matter of time constraints? Well, I guess it beats hauling via the roads, maybe even safer for the boats.

Patricia, I see that Biden has reversed Trump's oil leases. Not a surprise. I am not sure I liked opening up National protected lands for exploration and drilling. Here in PA, I am waiting for the Dems to stop the fracking here. I don't know about Western PA, but upstate mid-PA has been a depressed area for a long time. While there is plenty of opposition to fracking, there is no denying that the oil drilling has brought in much needed jobs and businesses to the area. Once the drillers are gone, the pumping stations will not need many workers to maintain, so the boom will slow down. Meanwhile, there were wind turbines planted along the ridges of the mountains up there that weren't put on line, at least last I heard. They are humongous.   

MarsGal

Hi Jackie, I was typing when you posted. I assume you are now all moved in? I hope the move was not nearly as horrific as your last one sounded. This new place sounds so much nicer and easier to get around in. Will you have better access to services there to help you get around, etc.?

MaryPage

Whee, Jackie!
Happy ground-floor living!

patricia19

Good morning from the party-cloudy at 50° Interior with an eye toward the early seventies later. Today will be a day of groceries and bills. Farrah's washed and fed, and I'm the former and not the latter.

Bubble, I hadn't heard of the Gestetner Machine before. What I saw was interesting, a printer forerunner. We had an issue with leaking ink with carbon paper and mimeographs too.

MarsGal, he reversed all but one lease, but no one bid on it because of political repercussions, so the state bought the leases. Fracking is dangerous, causes earthquakes, among other ills, (the disaster of over three hundred including 85 children killed at the Welsh village of Aberfan comes to mind), but I know jobs are needed.

The last administration was a staunch believer that wind turbines cause cancer.

Our state oil boom is coming to an end, but some people are actually enraged that the dividend program, which resulted in payouts averaged from the yearly lease earnings, is closing. Strange.

In his early days, Norm used to Capitan some cruisers to their owners and that some of his sons would go along with him. That had to be an enjoyable job!


Vanilla-Jackie

#20057
Thank you both MarsGal and Mary Page, yes i am getting things done, unpacking boxes, but to be honest, my MS body has for the past 2-3 days been at its worst, this time for all of the day, ( not stress related but the gut related,) i have literally pushed my body over its limit, but at times i wanted to be doing something only my body would not let me...Have to admit, the light coming in, and being on the ground level, sitting in the conservatory, listening to my favourite bird, the Blackbird, chirping away, obviously not been so good sitting indoors in the armchair with the TV and computer not connected up was not so nice but whilst sorting through the important companies i needed to notify of change of address, plus in-between my landline and mobile phone was busy with incoming calls from UK help as to my MS needs, such as hand-rails, key-safe- with link to landline which someone is coming tomorrow but i have to wait a couple of weeks for handrails from another organisation, and that is only for the call, but told it shouldn't take long after that, this was a recommendation via my local MS society contact, who i have not had the pleasure of meeting him yet.... All of a sudden so much help has contacted me that i dont know who is doing what, or where it has come from as some i have heard of and some that i haven't, and this is getting me confused as to who - which one i have spoken to......Thankfully both tv and computer had a welcome visit by me just a short while ago from an engineer, linked with BT, but not BT, and due to BT's blunder a different engineer should have come to me Tuesday and done what this one done, the day i moved in, this caused me more stress...
" There is no present like the time "

patricia19

Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life

"In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity."

"I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion," he writes — something that prompted his interviewer to ask whether a philosophy predicated on absurdity might incline people to despair.

In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish. To do so, certain conditions must be fulfilled: men must be frank (falsehood confuses things), free (communication is impossible with slaves). Finally, they must feel a certain justice around them.

"I have often wondered whether Camus had read W.H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939," written in 1940, which includes this searing stanza so kindred to Camus's sentiment: "

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.


MaryPage

That last line is so very, very true; but I don't think we're going to do that.

Shirley

Patricia, since I didn't remember the the disaster of over three hundred including 85 children killed at the Welsh village of Aberfan, I Googled. All I found was coal mining with too much rain, nothing about fracking. A lot of us see things from different points of view, but I am really sad to go back to being dependent on foreign oil.

Jackie, sounds like you have found caring people with this move. Like you, I enjoy hearing the birds singing and talking. Do they ever fuss at the cats! Such sassy carrying on by the robins, especially. They follow them around to nag at them! I wish these cats weren't born to be wild, but they have as much right to be free as the birds. Old LaurenKat was 18 when we lost her and to the end she still had to find an open door.

I slept too much today so tonight I get to spend a couple hours up & down. About time to go back to bed, I used to get floors waxed in the middle of the night while kids slept, now I snack. Not a spring chicken anymore, but gotta keep going, right?

Sandy

#20061
GOOD MORNING, eVERYONE!!

I am up early and  headed out to do some
shopping with Kelly and get my Mamo  ... 
Hopefully this will be the last one that I
need to get.   Fingers crossed. 

All is well here.  Cool and a bit
of rain . looking for that rare day in June! 

Enjoy,
Sandy
  "It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out."

― Carl Sagan

MarsGal

Right, Shirley. The disaster was caused by the mine dumping colliery waste (spoil tips) on top of the hill on top of underlying springs, plus heavy rain fall. Not an uncommon occurrence. There were not many places to dump the stuff as the valleys there are long and narrow. Mom was brought up in Merthyr Tydfil just a few miles up the road. I can still remember the crosses from across the valley on our way up to visit relatives not many years later. I forget when exactly, but definitely before the memorial was built. We did not lose family but neighbors and friends of the family did. Today there are still over 300 coal tips in Wales listed as high risk, 59 of those at Merthyr Tydfil. 

MaryPage

What I remember, strangely enough, is the news films of the Queen going to visit.  But I will never forget that the school was in the direct path.  Nature is deadly and is true to form.  We know this, and our engineers know this, but our business owners take huge risks all the time for the sake of profits.  My family members were very big on that old, but true, saying: "Follow the money." I have found this to be true all of my long years.

Shirley, I agree with you about cats.  But isn't it ironic that there are such loudly vocal efforts to protect the birds from their natural foes, and yet little public outcry about the potential dangers for our very own children from the profit makers taking risky chances with THEIR lives when they do not make sure the changes they make to our water, air and soil do not cause injury and death?

Sounds a bit political, but I neither want it to be, nor think it should be.  Our future generations are our pride and our hope.  They are not born with red or blue tags attached.

Marilyne

#20064
Good Morning all:  I didn't even come in to say hello yesterday.  One of those long busy days that seemed like it would never end.  When it finally did, I was too tired for anything but sleep.

MarsGal - I remember that we talked about the Aberfan, mining disaster once before here, after the story was featured on an episode of The Crown.  Very well done, I thought.    I had forgotten that your Mother was from Wales, but now remember that you and your sister joined a social group of women who were all Welsh?

Sandy - Good luck on your mamo today.  I remember when I had my last one - right before turning 80, and was so glad when it was over.  I did have to go back for an ultrasound, but it turned out okay also.

Patricia - I liked the long quote from Camus, and then his referring to  the Auden poem, September 1, 1939.  I don't think I had ever read it before, but certainly tells us something about human nature, and how some things never change and never will.  Just my opinion, but I don't think people have changed over time.

Jackie - It will take you a while to settle into your new home, and get everything the way you want it to be.  I know you have no one to help you, so just take your time, and try not to be in a hurry, and do too much in one day.  Having the outdoor yard, will be a perfect spot for rest and rejuvenation.

Mary Page - I see we were writing and posting at about the same time. Good morning to you, hope to see a message from Jenny, today also?   

Marilyne

Mary Page - I just reread your message, and like your last comment very much.   
"Our future generations are our pride and our hope.  They are not born with red or blue tags attached."  So TRUE and so important!   

Shirley

MG, just this week my youngest son & I talked about nuclear waste disposal because he thinks using nuclear energy is the most efficient (a graduate geologist & been in the "industry", here in what used to be called "the oil patch") he has worked as a certified I-T person since graduation. The company he worked for in the beginning did have to do with oil & natural gas and the one he has worked for since a few years after graduation from college, has it's finger in nearly every area of energy. He still thinks the disposal is as safe as most any side effects of energy. I cringe at the thought of burying any "waste". I, personally, don't plan to ever buy an electric vehicle, for many reasons.

We met a  couple from eastern Kentucky when in the service, living in England, that we visited when we went to visit my husband's family in eastern TN after we got back. The girl's father owned coal mines and they offered my husband half ownership in one if we would move there. One visit inside the mine convinced my husband that he wanted no part of that deal! That is not only hard work but dangerous, but has been good for world in many ways.

Good luck with the Mamo, Sandy, I quit Pap & Mamo quite a few years ago. Since I don't think I would do chemo with my history of all types of meds, whatever gets me will have no battle. I've agreed to the heart surgeries but no meds during or after so it is a continual decision as to what I believe works best for me.

My BIL that just died survived malignant melanoma on top of his head after nearly a year of chemo... for 30 years, but the doctors did think that chemo probably had something to do with the symptoms he had the months before he died. BUT, he lived a good 30 years because of it so who knows.

I remind my kids every so often that "whatever happens with me, do NOT blame the doctors, I made the decisions". My best friend, 10 days younger than I am, still has all the tests run and takes whatever meds her doctors recommend. Works for her & I do know all those gals over in Bosom Buddies believe the tests are worth their UGG factor! As I said, "good luck with yours".

Had a fractured night of sleep so will check mail and do what I gotta, think a nap will be part of my day.

Oops, you slipped in Mary Page. I believe you are right about companies that get away with endangering all of us with their engineered seeds & chemicals that protect us from worms in corn/tomatoes, etc... plus the side effects of soy that now is in nearly product, everything we eat that affects many of my family. One gr-daughter is so allergic to soy it is a real challenge to feed her! She is 30, an engineer so has taken charge of her diet! I have been shocked at foods that contain soy these days, even Crisco, for Heaven's sake!

I also agree to "neither red or blue", I've registered both to vote in a primary, but do not agree with either for the most part!

MaryPage

The thing that gets to me, Shirley, is that it is the engineers and the scientists who know & understand what is being done to our water and soil and air, and to what extent we humans can live with it; but they do not rule!  The business owners do!  And the business owners pay their salaries.  And those salaries are needed to care for their families.  And so it goes, on and on and on.  Remember the lead-filled water in Detroit?  The city bosses were warned not to switch the water supply by those educated and trained to know what they were talking about, but the bosses paid them no never-mind and human beings were destroyed by their choice.  And do you know what?  It is STILL not all fixed!!!  I count myself lucky to live where I do.

Yep, I, too, have graduated from mammograms and pap smears and colonoscopies.  I worry a tad about no mammos, much as I hate them, but the other two are not missed one bit!

FlaJean

Another beautiful day.

The Bluebirds were really giving me a show while I was eating breakfast.  I can see them going in and out of the birdhouse as they are building their nest.  The future Papa Bluebird dived at a good sized Mourning Dove and a couple of sparrows in between taking some dried grass into the house.

Jackie, hope you are getting settled in your new home.  I'm sure you must be feeling overwhelmed with all that has to be done.

Have a good day everyone.

patricia19

I mentioned the mine disaster because what they did there caused the same disaster that fracking will, according to scientists. You cannot dig an underground hole, removing the fill, pump in water and expect it to remain stationary.

Our water systems are also affected by what we're doing. People are affected by what we're doing.

I was reading this morning that all seven continents, including Antarctica, are in a severe drought. Storms are worsening and causing more severe damage.

Politics is all about greed and ruling by sowing superstition and blaming the other guy.

"In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish. To do so, certain conditions must be fulfilled: men must be frank (falsehood confuses things), free (communication is impossible with slaves). Finally, they must feel a certain justice around them."

Camus spoke about the past world war, but he could have been speaking about today.