favorite summer meal

home made multigrain sourdough toast with mayo mustard basil red onion.

 Barbara Ehrenreich No. 48

November 2019

The Humanoid Stain

Art lessons from our cave-dwelling ancestors

How to Work With Someone You Can't Stand

 How to work with someone you can’t stand

It’s a problem most of us encounter at some point in our careers—and working remotely can exacerbate the issue.

By Stephanie Vozza

You can pick your friends, but you can’t usually pick your coworkers. Chances are you’ll work with someone you don’t like during your career, and there may even be someone on your team right now that you can’t stand.

While working remotely limits the amount of interactions you have to have with the person, it can also limit information and make the situation worse, says Carlos Valdes-Dapena, author of Virtual Teams: Holding the Center When You Can’t Meet Face-to-Face.

“When you’re collaborating virtually, you can always turn off your camera, so you don’t have to look at them,” he says. “But working remotely also takes arrows out of your quiver. You don’t pick up on body language or could miss subtle cues, such as facial expressions and intonation of voice. You may be more vulnerable to misunderstandings that can further your negative feelings.”

Like it or not, your job and reputation can rely on an ability to get along with others. Valdes-Dapena says there are steps you can take to make the situation more bearable.

Recognize that It’s Your Problem

The fact that you don’t like someone else is not their problem; it’s yours, says Valdes-Dapena. “If I find you distasteful in some way, it’s because of judgments I’m making and reactions I’m having,” he says. “You have to own that they’re your feelings. The foundation begins with personal responsibility.”

It’s important to note, however, that dislike is different from distrust. “You can work with anybody as long as they aren’t crossing boundaries or violating workplace rules,” says Valdes-Dapena.

Reframe your dislike

Dislike is an unhelpful and vague term, and several reasons can be behind it, says Valdes-Dapena. “Maybe it’s a behavior they have, it could be something about the way they speak, or how they deal with other people,” he says. “The idea is to manage your feelings, but first you have to understand them. Getting specific gives you a chance to do something with it.”

For example, you may discover that your dislike is due to disgust, distaste, resentment, or jealousy. Dig into your emotional reaction so you can manage it better. Valdes-Dapena admits he once had a co-worker he didn’t like, and he realized it was because she had a tendency to boast. “Once I got underneath it, I realized that part of my feelings were jealousy because she had done some pretty impressive stuff,” he says. “I was raised to be modest. I was making her behavior about me. Instead, I had to reframe her behavior as being quirky and off-putting, but not something I couldn’t work through. Reframing the dislike is the hardest part.”

Identify why it’s important to work with the person

To work together successfully, get clear on why the collaboration is important. For example, maybe you’ve been put on a high-profile project together. Or maybe you want to be seen as a team player by your manager. Use the reason to craft a purpose statement, says Valdes-Dapena. It can help to tie it to a mission statement or big picture idea to give it deeper impact. “A purpose statement helps you build an alliance around a shared purpose,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you have to be friends. It helps you get back to the purpose of the collaboration so you can focus on doing the work.”

Devise a plan to go forward

Share the purpose statement with the other person, and clear on your responsibilities as well as what you are doing together. Having a common cause can help you work together more efficiently. “Sit down and have conversation,” says Valdes-Dapena. “Say, ‘Here’s why this is important to me.’ And ask what the other person thinks.”

It can help to share some vulnerability, such as admitting where you may be weak in a project. Chances are, the other person may talk about their own shortcomings, says Valdes-Dapena. “The conversation can humanize the other person and help you reframe your feelings,” he says.

Any time you feel the dislike starting to come up, refer to your purpose statement. You may also want to talk to a trusted friend or manager to seek out other perspectives in case you have blind spots. “Give the person the benefit of the doubt,” says Valdes-Dapena. “Remember, they are trying to do the right thing, and they were hired for a good reason. Take a moment of self-reflection when you need one. You won’t get anywhere if you don’t try. And you may end up with a productive working relationship.”

Jerry Saltz

"To engage with art, we have to be willing to be wrong, venture outside our psychic comfort zones, suspend disbelief, and remember that art explores and alters consciousness simultaneously."

- Jerry Saltz

“Your thorns are the best part of you.” ― Marianne Moore

“Your thorns are the best part of you.”
― Marianne Moore

 

“... we
do not admire what
we cannot understand.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

 

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.”
― Marianne Moore 

 

“The cure for loneliness is solitude.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Prose of Marianne Moore

 

“The hands are the heart's messengers.”
― Marianne Moore 

 

“The heart that gives, gathers. ”
― Marianne Moore 

 

“If we can't be cordial to these creatures' fleece, I think that we deserve to freeze.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

 

“I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

 

“Superior people never make long visits.”
― Marianne Moore

 

“There never was a war that was not inward.”
― Marianne Moore 

 

“Wolf's wool is the best wool, but it cannot be sheared, because the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as with wolves' surliness, the student studies voluntarily, refusing to be less than individual. He "gives his opinion and then rests upon it"; he renders service when there is no reward, and is too reclusive for some things to seem to touch him; not because he has no feeling but because he has so much.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

 

“Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.”
― Marianne Moore 

 

“... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...
... if you demand on one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, then you are interested in poetry.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

 

“Truly as the sun can rot or mend, love can make one bestial or make a beast a man.”
― Marianne Moore, Complete Poems

Marianne Moore

 'Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.'

 — Marianne Moore

Philip Levine

“You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn’t expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, ‘That is truly what I felt.’ That is truly what I saw.”

— Philip Levine

Restaurants Shaped like Animals

https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/retronaut/see-restaurants-shaped-like-animals-barrels-food-and-more/

Boris Karloff

 Vintage snaps

Richard Brautigan

“Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.”
― Richard Brautigan 

 

“Love Poem
ـــــــــ
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.”
― Richard Brautigan

 

“All of us have a place in history. mine is clouds.” 

― Richard Brautigan

 

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”
― Richard Brautigan 

 

“Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.

1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.”
― Richard Brautigan

Hapy Birthday Kim Addonizio

 High Desert, New Mexico

by

Kim Addonizio

Temple of the rattlesnake’s religion.
Deluge and heat-surge. Crèche of the atom’s
rupture. Night blackens like a violin
and bright flour falls from the kitchens of heaven.
This is where the seams begin to loosen,
where you can walk for miles in any direction—
rabbit, lizard, raven, insect drone—
and almost forget the shame of being human.
Smoketree. Sage. Not everything is broken.
Horses appear at this remote cabin
to stand outside and wait for you to come
with a single apple. Abandon
your despair, you who enter here forsaken.
The wind is saying something. Listen.

Kim Addonizio’s latest books are a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress:Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin) and a poetry collection,Mortal Trash (W.W. Norton). She is also the author of two novels, two books of short stories, and two books on writing poetry. She teaches poetry workshops online and in her home in Oakland, CA. Visit her at www.kimadddonizio.com.

Brautigan

 http://www.brautigan.net/trout.html

Inspiration

Preliminary work on the novel actually began the previous year when Brautigan, determined to write prose instead of poetry, experimented with short stories hoping they would lead to a novel. He abandoned the manuscript for The Tower of Babel, a mystery novel, after struggling to write 167 pages. On 16 September 1960, Brautigan began writing an experimental story he called "Trout Fishing in America" in which he imagined trout made from steel and introduced a character called Trout Fishing in America. The results, later incorporated in the first chapter of his most famous novel, were the beginning of a new (for Brautigan) literary form, the prose poem.

As Brautigan sought chapter content for his evolving manuscript he turned first to previously written material. A short story written in fall 1959, about two unemployed artists from New Orleans Brautigan met in Washington Square Park and how they imagined spending a pleasant, and warm, winter in a mental institution became the "A Walden Pond for Winos" chapter. Oddly, this is one of the few chapters in the novel that does not mention trout fishing.

Brautigan developed this penchant for using found materials as the basis for additional chapters, and continued to use the technique throughout his writing career. For example, inspiration came from Brautigan's reading and research at the Mechanics' Institute Library. Located at 57 Post Street, the location of the original building, built in 1855 and destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the library maintained a collection of nearly 160,000 books in 1961. Brautigan included a list of twenty-two classic books about fishing in found in the Mechanics' Library in the "Trout Death by Port Wine" chapter. Four recipes he found in cookbooks at the library were included in the "Another Method of Making Walnut Catsup" chapter. A cut up description of Richard Lawrence Marquette, taken from a poster seeking his arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prompted the "Trout Fishing in America with the FBI" chapter. The signature at the end of the chapter is in Brautigan's handwriting. "The Mayonnaise Chapter" is almost verbatim the text of a letter Brautigan found in a used book store.

Brautigan also incorporated people he knew into his evolving novel. Trout Fishing in America Shorty and the chapters "The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren" and "Footnote Chapter to 'The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren'" were all inspired by a legless man called Shorty who propelled himself around North Beach on roller skate wheels mounted to a board. Brautigan connected this individual to Nelson Algren's fictional character, Railroad Shorty, and proposed shipping him to Algren in Chicago, Illinois, where he might become a museum exhibit.

Pierre Delattre credits Shorty with inspiring Brautigan past the frustration of not being able to capture the magic of "his trout fishing book" on paper. Delattre recalls a fishing trip with Brautigan and how he lamented his writer's block.

"Then one afternoon back in North Beach we went into a hardware store so that he could buy some chickenwire for his bird cage. Suddenly he seized the pen from my pocket, the notebook from my shoulder bag, ran out and over to a park bench, and started to scribble a story about a man who finds a used trout stream in the back of a hardware store. The next day, we stopped to chat with a legless-armless man on a rollerboard who sold pencils. Brautigan called him "Trout Fishing in America Shorty," and wrote a story about him. From then on, trout fishing ceased to be a memory of the past, but the theme of immediate experience and Brautigan's book made him a rich and famous writer" (Delattre 53-54).

Brautigan drew from his childhood memories to create chapters. Memories of Johnnie Hiebert, a childhood friend in Eugene, Oregon, who suffered from a rupture and drank pitchers of Kool-Aid contributed to the chapter and character called "The Kool-Aid Wino."

The acquistion of camping gear—a tent, sleeping bags, pots, and a Coleman gas stove and lantern— provided the basis for the chapter "A Note on the Camping Craze That Is Currently Sweeping America."

Brautigan drafted "The Cover of Trout Fishing in America" in February 1961 in which he described the Benjamin Franklin statue in nearby Washington Square Park (see "The Front Cover," below).

"The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" chapter came from real-life experience according to San Francisco artist Kenn Davis.

"Somewhere in 1958—although my memory is faulty about this date—I rented a rundown cottage on a hill and decided I wanted a bigger window overlooking the city of San Francisco," Davis said. "A mile or so away was the Cleveland Wrecking Company yard [2800 3rd Street; Quint Street], where all kinds of house salvage was stored. I called Dick and told him I was going there and [asked] did he want to come along—so we did; he found the place fascinating, and lo and behold he wrote about it in Trout Fishing in America. Poets can find inspiration anywhere. As it was, I bought a large window and we drove it to my shack, where I installed it to my satisfaction" (Davis, Kenn. Letter to John F. Barber. 9 June 2004.)

William Hjortsberg says Brautigan learned of The Cleveland Wrecking Yard, a demolition business on Quint Street, in San Francisco, that sold dismantled homes in bits and pieces, from Price Dunn. Intrigued by what Dunn said of the place, Brautigan visited it himself, sparked with the idea of selling used trout streams by the foot (Hjortsberg 182).

Learning of Ernest Hemingway's suicide (2 July 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho, forty miles from where he was camping and fishing), Brautigan wrote "The Last Time I Saw Trout Fishing in America" chapter in which he included memories of his step-father Robert "Tex" Porterfield and the winter they spent together in Great Falls, Montana. Porterfield was the first person to tell Brautigan about trout fishing. Hemingway was Brautigan's artistic father, a writer he was often said to emulate, and whose death he certainly did.

The chapter "In the California Bush" evolved from weekend trips to Mill Valley to visit friend Lou Embee and his girlfriend who lived in a remote cabin overlooking San Francisco Bay. Brautigan called Embee "Pard" in the chapter.

By mid-March 1962, Brautigan had completed the manuscript for his first novel.

Phoebe Martone

Self Sown 

 

Bright yellow flowers in my garden,

I have no idea what you are.

Did you come from a mixture?

Towering flutes,

Spreading yourself out above the others.

Were you chosen for the packet?

Or did you insinuate yourself

Into a society of seeds,

Unplanned, but sure that you belong

Among the subtler blooms.

I did not choose you, and there's the surprise,

the mystery of things beyond control.

You remind me of how I make a plan

and it goes awry, but only in my mind.

 

Phoebe Martone 7/31/2021

Daylight is Shrinking

 See the graph below.

 https://sunrise-sunset.org/us/woonsocket-ri

Julie Chiou: Home Made Kimchi

Inspired by this adorable video and recipe I made my first batch of kimchi and it is gorgeous and delicious. I am happy that I could find all of the ingredients within a mile of my house at Tong Dee Asian Market and Price Rite. Woonsocket RI, ROCKS!

https://www.tablefortwoblog.com/how-to-make-homemade-kimchi/

UPDATE 10/16/21: kimchi tastes even better as time goes by. It also shrinks down in the jar. We enjoy eating it with scrambled eggs, accompanying egg salad sandwiches, and also with canned tuna.  

Watch us make homemade kimchee and then make it yourself!

 

 

Thank you so much Chun Ok for showing me and everyone how to make homemade kimchee! This will be a forever treasured gift.

 

 

 

Homemade Kimchi (Kimchee)

 

If you love kimchi/kimchee, then you will want to make this homemade kimchi because it's so much more cost-effective to make at home than to get at the store!

 

 

4.96 from 61 votes

 

Prep Time: 2 hours

Fermentation time: 1 day

Total Time: 1 day 3 hours 40 minutes

 

Servings: 1 gallon

 

Author: Julie Chiou

 

Save Text Print

Ingredients 

 

For the cabbage:

• ▢ 5 pounds napa cabbage, cut into 1-inch, bite-sized pieces
• ▢ ½ cup sea salt
• ▢ 1 cup water

Seasonings for kimchi:

• ▢ ½ medium sweet onion
• ▢ 1 bulb garlic, peeled
• ▢ ¼ cup water
• ▢ ½ cup red pepper powder
• ▢ 1 bundle green onions, julienned

Instructions

• Place cabbage in a very large bowl. Mix together sea salt and water and stir until sea salt has dissolved. Pour over cabbage and mix together with your hands. Let sit for 1.5-2 hours.
• In the meantime, blend together onion and garlic with 1/4 cup water to create a puree. Pour into a medium bowl then mix together with red pepper powder and green onions. If you are making a separate radish kimchi, save a bit of this mixture for the radish kimchi.
• Once the cabbage has significantly wilted, rinse cabbage to get most of the salt water off. Place back into the very large bowl then toss the cabbage with the red pepper seasoning mixture until well-coated.
• Place seasoned kimchi into a large mason jar and using your fist, punch down the cabbage to compress it all in the jar. Keep stuffing the jar until it’s completely full and use another jar, if needed.
• Tightly close the lid on the mason jar(s) and leave out at room temperature overnight. Taste the kimchi the next day and if you prefer to have it more sour, leave out for another day or more. If you think it tastes fine after it has sat out overnight the first night, place in the fridge.
• Kimchi can last for a very long time in the fridge because it’s a fermented dish. I would say probably no more than one year though, but that’s just me haha ;)

Margaret Atwood

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

MARGARET ATWOOD

Hope and Fear

Hope and fear cannot alter the seasons.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPA

Food is Love

Police in Rome dish out love – and spaghetti – to lonely couple

 https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/europe/rome-police-italian-couple/index.html

A Participatory Thing

I try really hard, even if there’s a minor character, to hear their memorable lines. They really do float over your head when you’re writing them, like ghosts or living people. I don’t describe them very much, just broad strokes. You don’t know necessarily how tall they are, because I don’t want to force the reader into seeing what I see. It’s like listening to the radio as a kid. I had to help, as a listener, put in all of the details. It said “blue,” and I had to figure out what shade. Or if they said it was one way, I had to see it. It’s a participatory thing.

TONI MORRISON

Start with the Rubble

Writing a play is like smashing [a glass] ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start – or at least I start – with the rubble.
TOM STOPPARD

Thoughts on Style

The best style is the style you don’t notice.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Style as I understand it is nothing less than the writer’s habits of mind.
JOHN UPDIKE

It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style.
DASHIELL HAMMETT

GARY SHTEYNGART

When I first met Philip Roth he told me not to eat butter. I’m not sure that counts as “writing” advice, but it’s kept me squarely in the 128-132 pound zone, which has made me super-hungry as a writer. That last sentence made no sense. I apologize. I’m in an airport lounge and the person next to me is talking about some kind of green Hawaiian turtle. I hate everything.

GARY SHTEYNGART

Shannon Hale

I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
SHANNON HALE

You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly

I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Managing your depression and anger

Find someone to talk to: Talking to trusted friends or family members can help you better understand what you’re feeling. You may also prefer to talk to people you aren’t close with. There are many support groups available. Your doctor should be able to recommend one.

Add exercise into your daily routine: It can be difficult to feel motivated to exercise when you’re depressed, but exercise can help improve your mood. That’s because exercise helps your body release endorphins, a hormone that makes you temporarily feel good. Exercise can also improve your sleeping patterns.

Get enough sleep every night: Focus on sleeping seven to eight hours a night. Feeling well-rested can help improve your mood and motivation. If you’re having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, talk to your doctor. They may need to adjust your medication or temporarily prescribe something to help you sleep.

Spend time doing things you enjoy: It’s important to make time for yourself. Plan activities that you enjoy, even if it’s something as simple as taking a walk or making time to read a book. Having something enjoyable to look forward to may also improve your mood.

source: https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/depression-and-anger#next-steps

If you have the words

 “If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way.” 

 — Seamus Heaney

Mysterious

  “Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.” 

 — Seamus Heaney

Fortify your INNER LIFE

  “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” 

 — Seamus Heaney

Remembering what I had forgotten

 “Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.”  

— Seamus Heaney

You had to come back

“You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one.”

  — Seamus Heaney

Creeping Privilege

“You carried your own burden and very soon your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.”

  — Seamus Heaney

The next move is always the test.

- Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

 “Walk on air against your better judgement.” 

 — Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

 “The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.”

— Seamus Heaney

Langston Hughes

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

 Langston Hughes

Free Range RAGE Swim

I stayed late at the pool this morning and walked home. I had a lot of anger that needed to get worked out for no particular reason. I just have free range RAGE sometimes, especially in the summer TRANSMIT MODE'S high-energy. Time is flying, allergies are prevalent and my engine is non-stop. I get exhausted and like a three year old, I just speed up. Then I am a crabby monster. When I finally lie down I sleep like a pile of rocks.

Johnson City Tennessee

 History

William Bean, traditionally recognized as Tennessee's first settler, built his cabin along Boone's Creek near Johnson City in 1769.^[14] In the 1780s, Colonel John Tipton (1730–1813) established a farm (now the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site) just outside what is now Johnson City. During the State of Franklin movement, Tipton was a leader of the loyalist faction, residents of the region who wanted to remain part of North Carolina rather than form a separate state. In February 1788, an armed engagement took place at Tipton's farm between Tipton and his men and the forces led by John Sevier, the leader of the Franklin faction.^[15]

Founded in 1856 by Henry Johnson as a railroad station called "Johnson's Depot",^[16] Johnson City became a major rail hub for the Southeast, as three railway lines crossed in the downtown area.^[17] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Johnson City served as headquarters for the narrow gauge East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (the ET&WNC, nicknamed "Tweetsie") and the standard gauge Clinchfield Railroad. Both rail systems featured excursion trips through scenic portions of the Blue Ridge Mountains and were engineering marvels of railway construction. The Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern) also passes through the city.^[18]

During the American Civil War, before it was formally incorporated in 1869, the name of the town was briefly changed to "Haynesville" in honor of Confederate Senator Landon Carter Haynes.^[19] Henry Johnson's name was quickly restored following the war, with Johnson elected as the city's first mayor on January 3, 1870. The town grew rapidly from 1870 until 1890 as railroad and mining interests flourished. However, the national depression of 1893, which caused many railway failures (including the Charleston, Cincinnati and Chicago Railroad or "3-Cs", a predecessor of the Clinchfield) and a resulting financial panic, halted Johnson City's boom town momentum.^[20]

In 1901, the Mountain Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (now the U.S. Veterans Affairs Medical Center and National Cemetery), Mountain Home, Tennessee^[21][22] was created by an act of Congress introduced by Walter P. Brownlow. Construction on this 450-acre (1.8 km²) campus, which was designed to serve disabled Civil War veterans, was completed in 1903 at a cost of $3 million. Before the completion of this facility, the assessed value of the entire town was listed at $750,000. The East Tennessee State Normal School was authorized in 1911 and the new college campus directly across from the National Soldiers Home.^{[citation needed]} Johnson City began growing rapidly and became the fifth-largest city in Tennessee by 1930.^[23]

Together with neighboring Bristol, Johnson City was a hotbed for old-time music. It hosted noteworthy Columbia Records recording sessions in 1928 known as the Johnson City Sessions. Native son "Fiddlin' Charlie" Bowman became a national recording star via these sessions.^[24] The Fountain Square area in downtown featured a host of local and traveling street entertainers including Blind Lemon Jefferson.

During the 1920s and the Prohibition era, Johnson City's ties to the bootlegging activity of the Appalachian Mountains earned the city the nickname of "Little Chicago".^[25] Stories persist that the town was one of several distribution centers for Chicago gang boss Al Capone during Prohibition. Capone had a well-organized distribution network within the southern United States for alcohol smuggling; it shipped his products from the mountain distillers to northern cities. Capone was, according to local lore, a part-time resident of Montrose Court, a luxury apartment complex now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^{[citation needed]}

For many years, the city had a municipal "privilege tax" on carnival shows, in an attempt to dissuade traveling circuses and other transient entertainment businesses from doing business in town.^[26] The use of drums by merchants to draw attention to their goods is prohibited. Title Six, Section 106 of the city's municipal code, the so-called "Barney Fife" ordinance, empowers the city's police force to draft into involuntary service as many of the town's citizens as necessary to aid police in making arrests and in preventing or quelling any riot, unlawful assembly or breach of peace.^[27]

It'll Tickle Yore Innards?

 

How do we convince the neighborhood to Get Jabbed?

Why is Woonsocket so far behind in COVID-19 vaccines?

As of last week, 48.9 percent of Woonsocket residents were considered at least partially vaccinated — the lowest worst rate of any community in Rhode Island

By Dan McGowan Globe Staff,Updated July 28, 2021, 6:00 a.m.

Governor Dan McKee and Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt encourage residents to get vaccinated.State of Rhode Island

How did state health officials know Woonsocket was going to have a problem getting COVID-19 shots in arms of residents?

It was the open appointments.

When Governor Dan McKee announced on April 9 that anyone over the age of 16 in communities hit hardest by the virus were eligible for the vaccine, state health officials watched with amazement as appointments were snapped up almost as quickly as they came open.

But not in Woonsocket.

Woonsocket was the outlier, according to Thomas McCarthy, the executive director of COVID response for the Rhode Island Department of Health.

“People were willing to drive anywhere in the state to get vaccinated, except Woonsocket, and people in Woonsocket weren’t signing up as much as in other communities,” McCarthy recalls.

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The results speak for themselves.

As of last week, 48.9 percent of Woonsocket residents were considered at least partially vaccinated — the lowest rate of any community in the state, and one of the lowest rates of any city or town in Southern New England. (New Bedford, which is slightly larger than Woonsocket, was at 48.3 percent partially vaccinated.)

With the Delta variant causing COVID-19 cases to spike across the country, McCarthy said he is especially concerned about places like Woonsocket, which trails behind most of the state in vaccinating the most vulnerable population (people age 65 and over) and has the lowest vaccination rate in Rhode Island for people age 24 and younger.

“At this point, we’re considering everything,” McCarthy told me when I asked if stronger mandates (like a vaccination requirement) or some kind of incentive program would help places like Woonsocket.

Figuring out why Woonsocket residents appear more reluctant to get vaccinated is appears to be a bigger challenge, especially when other densely populated cities and towns have had more success. In Central Falls, nearly 63 percent of residents are partially vaccinated. Providence is at 56.8 percent.

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Related: For Central Falls, Rhode Island’s COVID-19 hot spot, some hope after a long, dark year

Woonsocket Emergency Management Agency Director Timothy Walsh said the city has been working with various partners — including the National Guard, Thundermist Health Center, and Landmark hospital — to accelerate vaccinations. He said officials have also met with religious leaders to promote the vaccine.

“We’re trying our hardest,” Walsh said. “I think we’re going in the right direction.”

But the city’s vaccination campaign doesn’t appear as comprehensive as it has been in other hard-hit communities. In Central Falls, for example, Mayor Maria Rivera went door to door to urge people to get the shot. She also made frequent appearances on the news, and had an aggressive social media campaign.

By comparison, a quick review of the Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s Facebook page shows two posts about the vaccine since April 1. The city’s website isn’t all that helpful, either. When I asked to speak with Baldelli-Hunt this week, she had Walsh call me instead.

Councilman John Ward acknowledged that he has no specific explanation why Woonsocket’s vaccination rate is worse than every other community in the state, but he said that anti-vaccination sentiment and cultural fear and mistrust of the government could be contributing factors. Ward suggested that people living in the country illegally are likely to be more fearful of the government than others.

Alex Kithes, a former councilman and frequent critic of the city’s political leadership, put it more bluntly: “The general sentiment in Woonsocket is that we shouldn’t really pay attention to what’s happening because the government is dysfunctional.”

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Kithes said city officials should have known sooner that it would be difficult to reach residents, and they should have mounted a campaign the way Central Falls and Providence have.

McCarthy said there’s no singular answer for why Woonsocket is lagging behind the rest of the state, but he was quick say that residents need to understand that having already had the virus is not a good excuse for not getting the vaccine.

As with other hard-to-reach communities, McCarthy said it’s better for residents to hear from “someone they know and someone they trust” as opposed to a more heavy-handed approach from state leaders.

McCarthy might not be interested in pointing fingers, but I will.

It’s July 2021. The vaccine is widely available. COVID-19 infection rates are surging. The sixth-largest city in Rhode Island needs to do better — and not just for the sake of its residents. At this point, what Woonsocket does, or doesn’t do, affects all of us.

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Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @danmcgowan.

Outsider Art

Whenever I get depressed about the art world I look at self-taught artists and immediately get inspired again. Aren't we all self taught?

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), Dixie Café, 1948, ink on paper, 17 x 22 1/4 in., National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Margaret and Michael Asch,

Squeak Squeak

I love the sound of my clothesline squeaking. We recently replaced the rope. We've had the pulley for 26 years!  I forgot how much joy I feel hanging my sheets and towels pants and dresses on the line. I hang my underwear indoors on a wooden clothes rack in the sun.

Stanley Kunitz

 from the Writer's Almanac today:

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It's the birthday of poet Stanley Kunitz (books by this author), born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1905). His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father committed suicide in a public park before Kunitz was born and his mother, Yetta, erased all traces of Stanley's father from the house and refused to speak about him. She opened up a dry-goods store and sewed clothes in the back room, working overtime to pay off the debts that her husband had left behind, even though legally she was not obligated to pay them.

One thing his mother did not destroy were the books his father had left behind, books by Tolstoy and Dickens. One of Kunitz's favorite books was the dictionary. He said:

"I used to sit in that green Morris chair and open the heavy dictionary on my lap, and find a new word every day. It was a big word, a word like eleemosynary or phantasmagoria â€” some word that, on the tongue, sounded great to me, and I would go out into the fields and I would shout those words, because it was so important that they sounded so great to me. And then eventually I began incorporating them into verses, into poems. But certainly my thought in the beginning was that there was so much joy playing with language that I couldn't consider living without it."

His first job as a boy was riding his horse down the streets of Worcester and lighting the gas lamps at night. He became a reporter for the Worcester Telegram, went to Harvard, and stayed for his master's degree. He wanted to pursue his Ph.D., but the head of the English department at Harvard told him that Anglo-Saxon students would resent being taught by a Jew.

So he moved to a big farm in Connecticut, and worked as a reporter and farmer. He sold fresh herbs to markets in Hartford. Kunitz was drafted into World War II, and when he came back he was offered a teaching position at Bennington College. In 1949 the college tried to expel one of his students — Groucho Marx's daughter Miriam — right before her graduation because she had violated a curfew. Kunitz helped organize a protest of the decision and the president of Bennington showed up at his house and told him to stop immediately. Kunitz took the plant that he was potting and threw it in the president's face, then quit.

He published two books, but both were barely noticed. He was so unknown that his third book, Selected Poems (1958), was rejected by eight publishers — three of them refused to even read it. When it was finally published it won the Pulitzer Prize. When someone asked W.H. Auden why nobody knew about Stanley Kunitz, Auden said: "It's strange, but give him time. A hundred years or so. He's a patient man."

It was more than 10 years before he published his next book, The Testing Tree (1971), and slowly but surely, people began to take notice. He was appointed the poet laureate when he was 95 years old. He died at the age of 100.

He said, "It is out of the dailiness of life that one is driven into the deepest recesses of the self."

Anthony Bourdain

 "As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt." – Anthony Bourdain

"Might it follow then that we shouldn’t aspire to live always by sensible choices? That what is good for us in the short term is not always the 'best' way? To live always by what's right now in front of our faces and the imperatives of keeping things running smoothly for me and mine, good business, no problems  —  that’s the kind of shopkeeper mentality that got the world into a whole lot of shit back in the day. So, maybe, just maybe, fuck sensible." – Anthony Bourdain Medium 

"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."

"Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund." – Anthony Bourdain Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

"I’d say, just be open. Don’t be afraid. If it’s appropriate to drink alcohol, drink heavily. Be smart, but be open to the world." – Bon Appetit Anthony Bourdain

"[When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted, and advantages squandered."

– Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

"It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom … is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go."

"I love Detroiters. You got to have a sense of humor to live in a city so relentlessly fucked. You've got to be tough and occasionally even devious. Detroiters are funny, tough, and supreme improvisers. They are also among the best and most fun drinkers in the country." –Anthony Bourdain Tumblr

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

At Least Eat their Food

 “If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food. It's a plus for everybody."

Anthony Bourdain

Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield

We believe business is among the most powerful entities in society. We believe that companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good. Over the years, we’ve also come to believe that there is a spiritual aspect to business, just as there is to the lives of individuals. As you give, you receive. We hope that for Ben & Jerry’s, that is at the heart of the business. To us, that’s what this decision represents, and that is why we are proud that 43 years after starting an ice cream shop in a dilapidated gas station in Burlington, Vt., our names are still on the package.

Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings in 1978.

David Rakoff

The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.
DAVID RAKOFF

Elizabeth Hardwick

Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a style is to lose all flexibility. If you have only one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. Lots of styles permit you to walk in and out of books. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.

ELIZABETH HARDWICK

Rescue Curtains

Our  house foyer came with 40 year old curtains. We never touched them but they slowly began to rot away in the sun. The front shrubs hid them from view but I could see them every day and it drove me nuts. Today we finally tore them down, hardware and all.  I vacuumed up the dust. I felt naked with no curtains on the 2 gigantic windows. I ran upstairs and found two old top sheets in the attic. We bought two curtain rods the large expandable kind used for shower curtains, at JOBLOT. For the moment I have the 2 sheets draped over the 2 rods while we work on finding two sets of thermal white tab curtains. I used a plant mister to "iron" out the wrinkles. They look fine for now, and they're a million times better than the rotted ones. They smelled of time in the attic so I washed them and hung them out to dry and rehung them and sprayed them again to get out the wrinkles. They look nice.

Make Drapes from an old pair of Top Sheets

Here

100 friends with 2

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/28/best-friend-neighbor-100-2/

Soft Day

 "A soft day” is a phrase you will hear frequently in Ireland. In the west of the country it is usually followed with a gracious salutation, of “thank God.” These soft days occur regularly where Atlantic mists envelope the mountains along Ireland’s rocky coastline.

A soft day is a description of the weather, and is probably very unique to the Emerald Isle. It is a day when the precipitation is a cross between mist and drizzle and is sometimes referred to as “mizzle”. The rain does not fall to the ground in heavy droplets, but seems to hover and linger in the air."

source https://www.irishamericanmom.com/a-soft-day-thank-god/

Buttermilk Coleslaw

 Whisk mayo buttermilk and spices and pour over carrots and cabbage. Refrigerate. The buttermilk accelerates the fermenting wilting process which is what you want! Enjoy with kidney beans or your favorite sandwich. Even peanut butter sandwiches go well with this.

• 1/2 to 3/4 cup Hellman's mayonnaise
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup real cultured lowfat buttermilk purchased or homemade
• 1Tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp prepared mustard (optional)
  
• 3-4 tablespoons Italian red wine vinegar
  
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (optional)
  
• 1 head of green cabbage cored and thinly sliced or coarsely shredded, about 8 cups
• red cabbage is an option too!
  
• 3 large carrots peeled and cut into very thin matchsticks or coarsely shredded, about 2 cups
• raisins 1/2 cup (optional)
  
• big red or yellow onion sliced thin 
• pickles chopped and added (optional)
  

Bee Here Now!

 Why Beekeeping Is Booming in New York: ‘A Hive Is a Box of Calm’

By Hillary Richard

July 27, 2021

“If you want local food, you really need local bees,” said Guillermo Fernandez, the founder and executive director of the Bee Conservancy. “For many bees, an area of a couple hundred feet might be their entire world, so small things can add up to a lot,” said Mr. Fernandez, who finds the chaos of the hive relaxing. “A hive is a box of calm in a frantic city,” he said. “The buzz and gentleness is quite soothing.”

Since February, Brooklyn Woods graduates have created over 350 bee houses. Christine Baerga, 31, who lives in Jamaica, Queens, has had some part in crafting most of them so far. Ms. Baerga’s life changed for the better during the pandemic, when she moved out of a homeless shelter and became a celebrated bee house artisan.

“Bees are master craftsmen and builders,” Ms. Baerga said. “They’re one of the more important creatures in the world. Without them, there is no us.”

Simone Biles said she got the ‘twisties.’ Gymnasts immediately understood.

 By Emily Giambalvo

Today at 6:11 a.m. EDT

TOKYO — Imagine flying through the air, springing off a piece of equipment as you prepare to flip on one axis while twisting on another. It all happens fast, so there’s little time to adjust. You rely on muscle memory, trusting that it’ll work out, because with so much practice, it usually does

But then suddenly, you’re upside down in midair and your brain feels disconnected from your body. Your limbs that usually control how much you spin have stopped listening, and you feel lost. You hope all the years you’ve spent in this sport will guide your body to a safe landing position.

When Simone Biles pushed off the vaulting table Tuesday, she entered that terrifying world of uncertainty. In the Olympic team final, Biles planned to perform a 2½-twisting vault, but her mind chose to stall after just 1½ twists instead.

“I had no idea where I was in the air,” Biles said. “I could have hurt myself.”

Biles, who subsequently withdrew from the team competition and then the all-around final a day later, described what went wrong during that vault as “having a little bit of the twisties.”

The cute-sounding term, well-known in the gymnastics community, describes a frightening predicament. When gymnasts have the “twisties,” they lose control of their bodies as they spin through the air. Sometimes they twist when they hadn’t planned to. Other times they stop midway through, as Biles did. And after experiencing the twisties once, it’s very difficult to forget. Instinct gets replaced by thought. Thought quickly leads to worry. Worry is difficult to escape.

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“Simply, your life is in danger when you’re doing gymnastics,” said Sean Melton, a former elite gymnast who dealt with the twisties through his entire career. “And then, when you add this unknown of not being able to control your body while doing these extremely dangerous skills, it adds an extreme level of stress. And it’s terrifying, honestly, because you have no idea what is going to happen.”

The twisties are essentially like the yips in other sports. But in gymnastics, the phenomenon affects the athletes when they’re in the air, so the mind-body disconnect can be dangerous, even for someone of Biles’s caliber.

After Tuesday’s team final, Biles described mental health challenges that went well beyond gymnastics, with roots in the overwhelming pressure to perform as one of the faces of these Olympics and in the stresses of the pandemic year. Her experience with the twisties is impossible to separate from those broader issues, and regardless, it’s irrelevant to the dangers posed by them.

Biles had started to have trouble with some skills leading up to these Games. Fellow Olympic team member Jordan Chiles, who trains with Biles in Spring, Tex., said Biles had been “giving us a little heart attack.”

Simone Biles withdraws from women’s gymnastics all-around final

Biles performs some of the world’s hardest skills, including a double-twisting double tuck dismount off beam and a triple-twisting double tuck on floor. To execute those elements safely, Biles said, “you have to be there 100 percent or 120 percent, because if you’re not the slightest bit, you can get hurt.” As a 24-year-old veteran, Biles realized she might not have been able to regain that mental fortitude.

When Biles mentioned that she had struggled with the twisties, former gymnasts flooded social media with empathy. Some detailed injuries they suffered after getting lost midway through a skill. One person called the twisties the “the scariest, most uncontrollable sensation.”

“It’s like a nonserious stroke,” 1988 Olympian Missy Marlowe tweeted.

Ariana Guerra, a former U.S. elite gymnast, dealt with the twisties multiple times during her career. At one point, she trained a double layout on floor and that same skill with a full twist during the second flip. She needed to warm up the double layout first and would worry that she would twist accidentally. The trouble spiraled, and soon, she couldn’t perform a simple back tuck without twisting. She worried about how the twisties could spread to skills on other apparatuses.

Guerra would go to the trampoline and tell herself: “Just a back handspring. Just a back handspring.” At the last second, she’d pick up her hands so they didn’t touch the ground. That was the only route toward performing a flip without her body adding an unintentional twist. After practice, she would do backward rolls — a skill that preschoolers learn — in hopes of regaining that feeling of only rotating without spinning.

“That's how mental it was,” Guerra said.

It took about two weeks to overcome, Guerra said, and she was in the midst of her preparation for an important competition. She thinks the twisties are more likely to surface during moments of stress.

Barry Svrluga: Simone Biles and the price of being a GOAT

Melton had the same issue in which his “body, for some reason, just automatically starts twisting and you just have no control over it.” Then, rather than focusing on technique, he’d start thinking about the twisties, which would lead to more trouble. At one competition, when Melton saluted the judges and looked down the runway, he couldn’t remember which direction he twisted on his new vault.

For Melton, the twisties turned into a recurring problem. He eventually tailored his routines to include skills that didn’t lead to getting lost in the air. “There was no point in trying to fight the twisties at that point in my life,” said Melton, who recently retired from the sport.

Earlier in his career, Melton’s coaches would have him progress through basic elements — first a back tuck, then a back layout, a half twist and a full. But doing so took time. And at his gym, Melton could use the pits to eliminate the risk of injury while he focused on working through the issue.

“But when you’re at the Olympic Games, you don’t have that luxury of training in a facility where you can take a day to do basics, re-control your gymnastics and go into pits,” Melton said. “It’s tough when you’re at a competition and you’re dealing with it, because the stress of the competition’s weighing on you.”

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