| I note with ironic interest that "New CEO Scott Flanders says the idea [of having Marge Simpson on the cover of Playbore (additional irony intended) is to attract readers in their 20s to a magazine where the average reader's age is 35."
I would point out that "readers in their 20s" are too young to remember when Marge was introduced to the public on Fox's Tracy Ullman (one 'l' or two; I can't remember) Show, as "bumpers" to meet FCC requirements about how many ads could be broadcast consecutively. Those readers "of a certain age" remember when the FCC was allowed to regulate such things as the number of ads broadcast consecutively.
Anyway, that was the last show I watched regularly on Fox and I miss it. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, & has passed on. Leukemia at 72.
When I was in high school, they led the way in the "folk movement". There may have been many before her, but their influence didn't get to East Greenbush, NY. Her group and Pete (still alive and performing at 90) were a formative influence.
As Jim Carroll (also now among the missing) wrote: "Those are people who died."
With Patrick Swayze, the trifecta is now completed.
Shit.
That is all. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Since yesterday, I have published the complete works of Dashiell Hammett. Then discovered that his work is not out of copyright. So, it will not appear on the Grendel Hall Press website.
However, Philo Grubb, Correspondence School Detective, by Ellis Parker Butler, is out of copyright, has been published, and has been uploaded to the Grendel Hall Press website.
This is one of a series of "deteckativin'" books which became fashionable shortly after the advent of Sherlock Holmes and Co. A number of people, including George Barr McCutcheon (whose Anderson Barr books are delightful), decided that producing send-ups of the genre was worth their time.
I think that reading and publishing such send-ups is worth my time. I hope you do, too. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I learned today that, according to professional HR surveys, my salary at my most recent employer was very generous indeed.
I was making 135% of the average of people doing about the same job in my region. Since "my region" includes New York metropolitan, that is actually pretty up-and-walking-good. I don't have the expenses people in NY metro have.
Although I miss the job, and -- more importantly -- the great people I worked with, I guess I really don't have complaints. Even though the severance was only two weeks' pay. Oh, yeah, they agreed to pay me the vacation I had earned.
Actually, I can't figure out whether I have complaints or not. I know that the people who depended on me to help them get their jobs done miss me a lot. A. LOT.
And that means a lot to me. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Since yesterday afternoon, the Kitchen of Grendel Hall @ The Woods has produced
Light French Bread, one loaf
Swedish Limpa Rye Bread, one loaf
Plum Jam, 2 pints, 2 half-pints
Curried Wheat, 4 cups
Garlic-Onion-Chilli Wheat, 3 cups
The wheats are snacks for tomorrow's party at Saratoga. If you're there, stop by; the party area just downstream from the final turn. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| In an earlier post today, I said that next up was elderberries.
On her way home today, SJ found a place that had plums for $0.99 a pound. So, next will be plum jam.
While seeking a plum jam recipe, I found a recipe for Corn Cob Jelly. Wait, what? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| On Monday, SJ and I went foraging for blackberries. After 45 minutes of pleasant walking, we returned with about a quart of raw berries.
This morning, I preserved 2 pints, 4 half-pints of jam. There were also two glasses (old-fashioned size) filled with the overflow, as I had not sterilized sufficient canning jars.
Oh, rats! Now, I'm going to have eat the jam for the next week or two. My, my.
Next up: Elderberries, made with the still-green apples growing near them to supply the pectin. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Today has been a pretty good day as far as the Job Search is concerned.
1) I was able to spot one typo, a misspelling, and a factual error in a want ad for an editor. This is what editors do. So, in the cover letter accompanying my résumé, I told them about these items. We'll see. I don't drive, so there's no way they can see my pretty face 50 miles away, with no public transportation.
2) My former boss asked ME for a recommendation on Linked-In.
3) A friend from a professional mailing list has recommended me for a job with a University Press, which pays little, but maybe better than unemployment.
So it has been a pretty good day. Not to mention harvesting about 2 pounds of blackberries. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Beer:30 - Heat, Rev. Horton | | Subject: | Lesson Learned | | Time: | 10:01 pm |
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| | Put down your Gimlet when you feel a sneeze coming on. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Introduction - Dick Cavett - Marx, Groucho | | Subject: | From Madame U | | Time: | 04:56 pm |
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| 1. What time did you get up this morning? -- 8:30 AM
2. How do you like your steak? -- Warm. With A-1.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? -- "Up" in 3-D/
4. What is your favorite TV show? -- Yankees baseball, because my cable carrier doesn't carry the channel for White Sox games.
5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? -- Where I am.
6. What did you have for breakfast? -- Hebrew National Frank, with mustard and relish. At 10 after noon.
7. What is your favorite cuisine? -- New England seafood, fruitarian creations.
8. What foods do you dislike? -- Turnips, rutabaga.
9. Favorite place to eat? -- There's a marvelous gourmet restaurant in Valatie, with the doubly deceiving name of the Kinderhook Diner. (Kinderhook is about five miles away; but the place does have a format of a diner.)
10. Favorite salad dressing? -- Balsamic vinaigrette.
11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? -- I don't drive.
12. What are your favorite clothes? -- Kilts and a t-shirt.
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? -- London, Scotland, St. Petersburg, Stockholm.
14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? -- Doesn't matter, I'll empty it soon, anyway.
15. Where would you want to retire? -- Where I am.
16. Favorite time of day? -- Late evening.
17. Where were you born? -- Niskayuna, New York.
18. What is your favorite sport to watch? -- Baseball, football.
19. Ever been flashed? -- Nope.
20. Something you want to do before the summer ends -- Finish Lynda.com's advanced training courses on the Adobe CS4 package.
21. Favorite summer beverage? -- Pomegranate and raspberry juice (just discovered this last week).
22. Bird watcher? -- Yes, they come and perch in the trees which constitute our "back yard". There's a reason it's called Grendel Hall @ The Woods.
23. Are you a morning person or a night person? -- Night.
24. Do you have any pets? -- One aged cat.
25.Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? -- Paid off the mortgage this week.
26. What did you want to be when you were little? -- A chemist.
27. What is your best childhood memory? -- Playing ball with the neighborhood guys at the edge of the woods..
28. Are you a cat or dog person? -- Either. Not a reptile person, though.
29. What is your zodiac sign? -- Scorpio.
30. Always wear your seat belt? -- Always.
31. Been in a car accident? -- Yes.
32. Any pet peeves? -- Being kept waiting.
33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? -- Anchovies, sausage, mushrooms.
34. Favorite Flower? -- Rhododendrons, roses, New Guinea impatiens.
35. Favorite ice cream? -- Black raspberry at Wholly Cow.
36. Favorite fast food restaurant? -- Chick-fil-A, and I have no idea if they even have them up here.
37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? -- Once. It was rumored at the time that there was a policy in Albany against passing 17-year-old males the first time they take the test.
38. From whom did you get your last email? -- Oxford DNB Life of the Day, about Mary Ann McCracken.
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? -- I would not choose to max out my credit card; if I were forced to, I would do it at the Apple Store.
40. Do anything spontaneous lately? -- Went to a local political picnic.
41. Like your job? -- Job? Yeah, it's like that this summer.
42. Like Broccoli? -- Love it, with vinegar. or cheese sauce. or raw, with dip.
43. What was your favorite vacation? -- Toronto, 1998.
44. Last person you went out to dinner with? -- SJ.
45. What are you listening to right now? -- Northern Skyline by Clannad.
46. What is your favorite color? -- Blue.
47. How many tattoos do you have? -- None.
48. How many piercings? -- Zero.
49. What time did you finish this quiz? 4:55PM EDT.
50. Coffee Drinker? -- Yes. Cappaccino, actually. With steamed milk. Made here. Out there, it's too expensive. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| July 17, 2009.
Walter Cronkite has "entered into the nearer presence."
I knew it would happen; it happens to everyone,
But still, what a loss! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own.
H.G. Wells, British Writer [The Salvaging of Civilization] (1866-1946) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| [In my best Tom Waits voice:] Welllll, iit's story time again, boysngurrls.
[In my best Grendel voice:]
My Uncle Tom was one of my favorite relatives. He lives in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, where his father and grandfather had lived. He was a physician, had his office in his house, always had two cars — a Cadillac (because he could afford the comfort) and a Jeep (because he made house calls ... in rural Pennsylvania ... in the winter). Sometimes, he accepted payment in chickens or bushels of corn, which my aunt, who grew up on a sharecropped chicken farm, would preserve.
One day, Tom and his brother Elting, who was also a physician (they were the two physicians in the town), were sitting on the back patio of Tom's house, a Grand Old Lady in the Victorian style, with a cupola, a widow's walk, and a servants' apartment. They were having a few, as was their habit, when Tom said "Shit!", slapped his neck ... and collapsed. Elting reached into his bag, which he always had with him, got a stick (needle) and poked Tom. Tom came back. He had a severe (obviously) allergic reaction to the bee sting.
That's Story 1.
Story 2 is about a girl (woman, actually, but when I was 17 I thought all the people of the opposite sex were girls) I met in orientation for my freshman year in college. BE and I hit it off immediately. We shared values, reading preferences, philosophy — everything that's important to a 17-year-old "intellectual" college freshman. We shared a physical relationship, but did not consummate it, because before we could do that, I found out from a dorm-mate that she was "easy."
I didn't know at the time that she had been repeatedly abused since she was 11 years old.
We kept in touch, kind of, for years.
20-some years later, when I was working at State Ed, I stopped by a colleague's office to make sure her Mac was working well and saw BE. My colleague began to introduce us. BE said, "I know G." I said, "I know B." Our colleague said "Oh-KAY, then." BE and I went to lunch. I learned that upon graduation from college with a Bio degree, she had married a biker, who treated her the way she expected to be treated.. They had a developmentally disabled son. They divorced. She refused alimony and child support because it would have meant the father could see the child.
She had gone back to school, gotten her masters and was working on her PhD. She was at State Ed because she had gotten a National Science Foundation grant (something I tried three times, with no success). She was working with NASA to integrate the agency's findings into the state curriculum.
We kept in somewhat closer touch after that, so I was really happy to learn that she had met an engineer from IBM who treated her right, and wanted to adopt her son after they were married. They did, and he did.
Two years later, I wanted to nominate her to the Advisory Board to the Office of Telecommunication Policy Application and Development (OTPAD), where I was assigned. I sent her an email (this was the early '90s); she didn't respond, so I sent a snail mail (many people didn't check their email often). She didn't respond.
After several weeks, it was important that we get the Advisory Board membership nailed down. I called the school where she worked, identified myself as a State Ed official, and asked for her. The receptionist said, "Oh," in a funny voice, "just a minute, please." I thought I heard her say, hushed "He doesn't know about B, what shall I do." Then I was put on hold.
The person who picked up identified herself as a member of the Guidance staff. She told me that two weeks before my call, B was on the ball field watching her son, now a senior, play soccer. She was stung by a bee and collapsed.
The ambulance was called. It was two blocks away and staffed by full-time paramedic professionals, so all they had to do was jump in the rig and go. No delay, as with a volunteer ambulance. The whole process took maybe three minutes.
Three minutes was too long. BE (now BS) was Dead on Arrival.
This is written as part of the memoirs series I started many years ago.
Just so ya know. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 14. That's how many pints of black raspberry jam I canned this afternoon.
5. That's how many cups of black raspberries are left from the harvest yesterday and the day before.
3.5 That's how many cups of sugar I've got.
5.25 That's how many cups of sugar I need to make another batch.
0 That's how much pectin I've got.
Tomorrow, I go back to the office to clean out my desk, empty my bookcase, and turn in my security card.
2 On a scale of 1 to 15000, that's how much I'm looking forward to it. I really bought that "this company is a family" line.
100 On a scale of 1 to 100, that's my naivete score. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I still got up at 5:12 am. I still went to the computer and did my normal stuff.
What was different was that at 6:30, SJ didn't drive me to my job. I have no job. Tough shit, old man. Do something else.
So I did. I published another book at Grendel Hall Press. This one, Robin Hood with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. Then SJ and I went foraging for black raspberries. We found a few.
Then we went astray. After about 2 miles, we found wild strawberries. After another two miles, we found the Mother Lode of All Black Raspberries. So many that our buckets were filled, and we will have to return tomorrow morning.
On the way back, we discovered that, about five yards from where we turned off, there is another Great Lode of Black Raspberries. Just in case we have space left in the containers.
We gathered 2 quarts today. We'll bring 3 tomorrow.
I love foraging.
I have been blessed in that, whenever I've lost my job, it's been foraging time. I've never gotten laid off in the heart of winter.
We ate more than we needed to. The strawberries from Sunday; the day lilies from Sunday; the black raspberries and wild strawberries from today. It is true that I did not forage the small steak; that was purchased at the grocery story. But everything else, we got ourselves. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| that the trifecta of McMahon, Fawcett, and Jackson does not recognize the contributions of Sky Saxon of The Seeds, one of the seminal influence on Punk Rock?
Talk among yourselves. But
please
do it in comments where I can gain some insight. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| ... this afternoon, the firm informed of their determination that there was not enough work to justify keeping a person of my salary on payroll.
They were very clear that this was not a decision the company is happy with. They are, I know for certain, putting my resume out on several possibilities. They say that they will continue to actively seek opportunities for a person with my skill set, and that they are anxious to bring me back to the company — as a billable employee.
They asked if I could view this as a "layoff rather than a separation." The company is hoping to hear about several large proposals we have on the table. If one of them in particular comes through, I will be called "soonest" to assist with preparing deliverables. The work last summer at [a major NYS agency] has proven my worth in that realm.
Nonetheless, if any of you hear of anything, please keep me in mind. Although I cannot relocate, I am able to perform e-work.
More later. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
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