Who is writing this movie? https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/marco-raduano-escapes-from-italian-prison-with-bedsheet-rope /
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Antoinette Trant
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/woonsocketcall/name/antoinette-trant-obituary?id=48649193
Funeral will be held on Friday, March 3, 2023 with a Mass of Christian Burial at 10AM at Divine Mercy Church, 48 St. Paul Street, Blackstone, MA. Interment will follow at St. Charles Cemetery, Farm St., Blackstone. There are no visiting hours. In lieu of flowers donations to the Metrowest Hospice, 200 Nickerson Road, Marlborough, MA 01752 would be appreciated. In memory of Mom, please bring a stone/rock for her last rock picking.
In Defense of Women
WOONSOCKET, R.I. (WPRI) — The Woonsocket Police Department will train a new generation of fighters.
The department is offering a five-week self-defense course, police said Monday.
Students will meet once a week starting March 1 at Dan’s Martial Arts Center on South Main Street. Sensei Dan Guernon, a fourth-degree black belt, will teach women how to be aware of their surroundings and escape an attacker, according to police.
The class will employ a hands-on approach where participants test their knowledge against their instructor who’s wearing a “tactical padded suit,” police said. They will also learn how to use common objects like keychains, hairspray, sanitizer, pens, or bags for self-defense purposes.
“The confidence a woman can build from self-defense training can be life-changing and empowering,” Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt said. “Not only will self-defense training allow her to better defend herself physically, but it will transcend to defending herself verbally and in every other aspect of her life.”
There are 20 spots available in the course, which is exclusively for women living or working in Woonsocket.
Classes will be held Wednesdays from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The course is free to participants 16 or older and funded through grants, police noted.
To sign up, contact Capt. Ed Cunanan at ecunanan@woonsocketri.org.
It’s more important to show him how to be good to people than how to judge them. Silas House, Southernmost
“Strange, how such a small realization can affect everyone's life forever. In movies there is always a carefully staged moment - a big crescendo of music, close- ups of the actors' faces, the camera slowly pulling away to let all this sink in for the viewer...but, in real life, most all of the extraordinary things happen with no more loudness than a whisper.”
― Eli the Good“Now I had seen the grief of the two strongest people I knew. And somehow, Daddy's and Edie's crying made them seem even stronger to me. It was better to cry than to suck it up and go around conjuring hate in your heart”
― Eli the Good“Maybe all the trees were God.--A Parchment of Leaves”
―“I wondered if we were put on this earth only to destroy every beautiful thing, to make chaos. Or were we meant to overcome this? Did bad things happen so that goodness could show through in people?”
― A Parchment of Leaves“When he was nearly thirty-six, my brother Jem got his heart badly broken when his fourth marriage fell apart, mostly because his wife never could get used to Boo, who lived with them and creeped her out by making little wooden dolls of her and putting them in the hollow tree out front.”
―“I appreciated that Nell was talking to me like a grown-up, but I had no idea what she meant. Still, I could see that the words flowed together like water over a riverbed.”
― Eli the Good“Writing is a supernatural thing.”
―“When they lived in Key West Justin thought the Everything lived in the ocean. Sometimes he thought the ocean was God. But if the Everything lives anywhere, it's in a river. Because the river moves along and touches every little thing on it's way. An he thinks the Everything would be quiet like a river. Event still sometimes. The ocean is always moving and noisy. The sky's always changing. But rivers are always there, even when the water has moved on. You've got to find the Everything wherever you are.”
― Southernmost“Forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world, Justin thinks. All you do is just decide to do it, and then it’s done. Instantly you feel better, like pushing aside a quilt that is too heavy for sleeping. Forgetting is the hard part.”
― Southernmost“I wondered if the trees were God. They were like God in many respects: they stood silent, and most people only noticed them when the need arose.”
― A Parchment of Leaves“It’s more important to show him how to be good to people than how to judge them.”
― Southernmost“Learn how to forgive others, including yourself.”
―“When you have a child, you have to put things aside, though. You have to live for them, if not for yourself. I was aware of this. I knowed that I could not let myself die inside, so I struggled through and made a way for myself. Most important, I tried to find a way to get joy into my life. I made a way for the possibility of joy. I looked for it anywhere I could find it. I got up early and stepped out onto the porch to see day come in.”
― A Parchment of Leaves“Autumn air is good for the lungs.”
― A Parchment of Leaves“When Clay was little, newscasters boasted that the War on Poverty was being waged in those very mountains, but if the government had fought any battles close to Free Creek, no one in the holler heard the guns.”
― Clay's Quilt“Surely there is a light in that boy that will never go out, no matter what he has to face along the way. That's all a father can hope for his child, that a little fire will burn in them to keep them going, to keep them strong.”
― Southernmost“Later in my life I would come to understand that history books are the least reliable witnesses”“Paul told him everything about quilting, things he would never remember, but he savored each word as if they were lost verses of Scripture.”“But in real life, most all of the extraordinary things happen with no more loudness than a whisper.”
― Eli the Good
― Clay's Quilt
Silas House
“I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace a tree possesses. To be like that-to just be-that's the most noble thing of all.”
“Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.”
― Eli the Good“I've never understood why people run to get out of the rain in the summertime... People will drive miles and miles to go jump in a cool swimming hole, but when it rains, they scatter.”
― Eli the Good“Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.”
― Eli the Good“I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.”
―“You are so good. So good, you’re always feeling so much. And sometimes it feels like you’re gonna bust wide open from all the feeling, doesn’t it? People like you are the best in the world, but you sure do suffer for it.”
―“Any two people can set and jaw all day long, but it takes two people right for each other to set together and just be quiet.”
― A Parchment of Leaves“Maybe all the secrets of life were written on the surface of leaves, waiting to be translated. If I touched them long enough, I might be given some information no one else had.”
― A Parchment of Leaves“In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.”
― Same Sun Here“Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.”“Whole scenes of your life slip away forever if you don't put them down in ink.”
― Eli the Good
Beth Kephart "Read far more than you write. Live even more than you read..."
Beth's handmade books!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND
Beth's website http://bethkephartbooks.com/
Krishnamurti
From Public Talk 10, Saanen, 31 July 1966
Only in vast space can there be peace and freedom. Therefore only in that state can man realise, listen to a dimension which he cannot seek, whatever he does. He can only come upon it naturally, darkly, without his wanting. And he may find it – when he comes upon it, that is enough. It may last a second but the second is the vast, timeless state.
School Cancelled Snow Day Sourdough Multigrain Pancakes
I woke up with a storm pressure headache and took generic Excedrin and a decongestant. It worked fast! I shoveled out the driveway and shared areas and visited with my shoveling neighbor Joey. Then I was nauseous from the medicine and half banana so I drank 2 bowls of my chicken soup and made whole wheat sourdough cornmeal buttermilk molasses pancakes. I make them so often I don't measure! I do taste the batter to get the salt sweet balance.
2 eggs, molasses, 1 teasp baking soda salt + 2 Tbsp corn oil. (whisk) add sourdough starter 2 or 3 cups cornmeal and buttermilk (or yogurt). Taste adjust. Can add chopped apples and mushed over ripe banana or canned pumpkin or dried cranberries or none of these things.
Solnit
Feedback is great, from your editor, your agent, your readers, your friends, your classmates, but there are times when you know exactly what you’re doing and why and obeying them means being out of tune with yourself. Listen to your own feedback and remember that you move forward through mistakes and stumbles and flawed but aspiring work, not perfect pirouettes performed in the small space in which you initially stood. Listen to what makes your hair stand on end, your heart melt, and your eyes go wide, what stops you in your tracks and makes you want to live, wherever it comes from, and hope that your writing can do all those things for other people. Write for other people, but don’t listen to them too much.
REBECCA SOLNIT
Quit Lit & Supplemental Dangers
The irony of friends who drink poison and think they are virtuous for insisting on buying organic poison!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/01/19/quit-lit-women-drinking-addiction/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/06/kava-lobelia-supplements-to-avoid/
Monday, February 27, 2023
Amazing soup from leftovers
Apple onion garlic roasted chicken leftovers and made stock in the instant pot. Strained and skimmed the fat. Added black and kidney bean liquid and collard greens Chianti corn. Then added homemade leftover cilantro hummus+ fresh grated ginger sriracha sesame oil soy sauce+ salt. And freshly cut dumpling skins into ribbons. Makes a fabulous breakfast too!
And Chef Michael Smith's recipe for biscotti --I made with whole wheat flour it's KILLER but it will keep you up at night due to the cocoa and chocolate. Dipped in decaf coffee is good.
We added cranberries too. Sooooo goood!
https://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/apple-roast-chicken/
https://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-biscotti/
Go for a walk
“For me, it’s never been about clearing my mind,” Ms. May said. “It’s about undertaking the kind of slower work of processing all of those things that are itching at the back of your brain.” Article
Snowstorm Menu
Tonight on the last day of February it's going to be the only real snow of the winter. So I have to think of a menu since I always bake in storms.
Since I've been on a biscotti bender I might make another batch. I love biscotti because they are not overly sweet and a perfect pairing with tea or coffee.
Perhaps Biscotti de Vino.
Write about the beautiful terror of being human, being alive, having a soul and a heart
When I was in boarding school I had a wonderful English teacher, Isota Epes. She was from Virginia, deeply intelligent and intellectually sophisticated, and she took writing, and reading, very seriously, as things that should provide us with a kind of profound sustenance. She was also glamorous in every way – she had worked for the OSS, and she had written for Vogue. She came to class beautifully dressed and turned out, so she was someone who demonstrated the complexities of what a woman could do. She asked us to investigate literature at the outer limits of our abilities, to search the texts for elegance, for meanings, for complexity. She asked us to incorporate literature in our lives, to use it as a way to read the world. I was deeply indebted to her for that. Years later, when I published my first story in The New Yorker, under my married name, I received a letter from a reader. She said she had never written a letter like this before, but she had so admired the story that she was moved to write to the author. She said she had never read my work before, but she looked forward to reading more of it. She was, of course, Mrs. Epes, and I wrote back to say that she had read my work before – she had given me an A on my paper on Hamlet. It gave me the most enormous sense of satisfaction, that I could give back to her using the same currency in which she had given me such a profound sense of respect for literature.
I write first thing in the morning, before I do anything else, for as long as I can. Sometimes that’s two or three hours, sometimes more. In the beginning of a book it may be only a few hours. Toward the end of a novel I write longer and longer, and by the end of it I will write all day and long into the night as well.
Just write and write and write. Don’t think about publication, and don’t think about externals. Don’t think about literary trends or fashions. Don’t write from the outside in, write from the inside out. Write from emotion. Emotion is the engine of all great fiction; all great books engage the heart as well as the mind. Write about the things that frighten you and tear you apart. Write about the worst things in your life. I don’t mean write memoir, write it as fiction, that way you can change the facts to make your emotional reality precise and true. Write down the things you have found most difficult, the things that wake you up at three in the morning, the things that remind you that we are fragile beings, kept only by a metaphysical rule from falling off the surface of the earth and flying helplessly into black space. Write about the beautiful terror of being human, being alive, having a soul and a heart. Roxanna Robinson
keep looking for the right address.
This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it “to the editor who can appreciate my work” and it has simply come back stamped “Not at this address.” Just keep looking for the right address.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Roxanna Robinson
I wanted to create a narrative that I could explore in my own time and present through my own lens, one that would show only the aspects that I found most powerful, most essential, most deeply important. My version of the snowstorm story would have something to do with weather, but not much. My snowstorm narrative would be about a different kind of weather, the interior sort, the kind that might be predicted but cannot be avoided. The kind that must be lived through, weather that ripples through your heart and mind, turbulent and distressing, violent and heartbreaking, exuberant and joyous. But it would have nothing to do with running to the window and back to my seat. All the weather would take place inside the heart.
Roxanna Robinson
The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably.
It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.
ARUNDHATI ROY
Thoreau
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Joy Snacks
Want to feel happier? Try snacking on joy.
Learning to find the joy in mundane experiences is a way to cultivate a more meaningful life.
Lunch with a co-worker. Walking the dog. Texting with a friend. Watching a favorite show. Eating a favorite meal. Calling your mom. Just hanging out.
New research shows that finding and savoring these nuggets of joy can be a way of consistently cultivating a good, meaningful life.
“It’s not these big things that we sort of create in our heads, but these smaller day-to-day experiences that bring us meaning,” said Joshua Hicks, psychologist at Texas A&M University’s Existential Psychology Collaboratory.
You can also read this story as a comic.
Understanding the science of joySurprisingly, joy has been relatively neglected by scholars.
But recent research suggests that joy is a distinct positive emotion for “when we feel connected, or reunited with something or someone that’s really important to us,” said Philip Watkins, psychologist who studies joy, gratitude and happiness at Eastern Washington University.
Watkins’s research, perhaps unsurprisingly, finds that feeling joy is strongly associated with subjective well-being, which is essential for human flourishing.
Big events like weddings or reunions are well-known smorgasbords for joy. But smaller bites of joy in everyday life matter, too, and are easier to attain if we don’t overlook them.
Previous research has shown we derive meaning in life from three key factors — feeling like our life makes sense, having a purpose driven by goals we care about and feeling like our lives matter.
A February study published in Nature Human Behavior involving more than 3,000 participants across multiple experiments reported that valuing one’s life experiences, or experiential appreciation, is another potent way of making life feel more meaningful.
When asked by researchers to recount their most meaningful experience that occurred in the past week, for most people, it was not about their grand, overarching goals, but something simpler and more mundane that stood out, such as having an enjoyable conversation or being surrounded by nature.
“It’s not just about you creating meaning in your head,” said Hicks, who co-wrote the study. “It’s about detecting meaning that’s already out there.”
Snacking on joy can go beyond focusing on our own experiences. Sharing our joy snacks also helps foster even stronger bonds with those we care about most. Relationship research has found that couples who celebrate small things regularly — not just the anniversaries — had stronger and happier partnerships.
There is also joy to be had when you take the time to reconnect with the person that is always with you: yourself.
Small acts of self-care and setting aside time for simple pleasures and celebrations can be emotional nourishment you gift to yourself.
How to find more joy snacksJoy is a mind-set and something we can orient toward by being on the lookout for it.
“You can’t produce joy, but you can prepare for it,” Watkins said.
Researchers are studying how people can become more receptive to joyful moments. Taking time each day to recount past episodes of joy may be one way to increase your predisposition for joy in the future, though more work is needed on how best to develop a “lifestyle of joy,” Watkins said.
Cultivating gratitude is another way of cultivating joy. In one study, Watkins and colleagues used questionnaire data to measure participants’ gratitude and joyfulness in the moment and over time. They found that the more grateful a person is, the more likely they were to feel joy in the future. The reverse was also true: The more predisposed to joy someone is, the more likely they would feel gratitude as well.
“Joy and gratitude kind of feed on each other,” Watkins said. “We call it a cycle of virtue.”
Gratitude interventions, such as writing down the things we felt grateful for during the day, have been found to improve mood and may foster more gratitude.
It is also important not to fall prey to what some psychologists have called “killjoy thinking,” which actively inhibits enjoyment by neutralizing positive moods. For example, watching a beautiful sunset with a loved one but only focusing on how cold it is about to get is tantamount to stealing a joy snack right out of your own mouth.
“If you’re not able to see the good in your life, you’re always overwhelmed by the bad in your life, you’re probably not going to prepare yourself for experiencing joy,” Watkins said.
One way to increase joy is to try savoring, which means mindfully paying attention, appreciating and accentuating the positive experiences we have.
That cup of coffee. The cuddliness of your pet. A joke whose punchline hits just right.
Focusing on the sensations and emotions you feel in these moments can make the joy snack all the richer.
It can take practice to get better at identifying and appreciating these experiences, but “once you learn to slow down and pay attention to those things, put more weight on those things, your life feels more fulfilled and more meaningful,” Hicks said.
Nature is one powerful source of joy snacks that many people can nosh on, in part because of its power of inducing awe.
Hicks and his colleagues found that just having participants watch the two-minute opener to the nature documentary “Planet Earth” produced appreciation for the experience and, in turn, a greater sense of meaning.
“Nature is all around us, but it’s very easy to ignore it and downplay it,” Hicks said.
Sometimes taking a walk in the park and smelling the roses — by yourself or with others — is simply all you need to do to find some everyday joy.
“No matter who you are, no matter where you are in life, there's something out there that can bring you joy and happiness,” Hicks said.
So, what is your joy snack this week?
Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.
Inspired Life: She’s fed the hungry for decades with ‘throwaway bread’ she leaves on her porch
“Mostly, the people who need this food are the working poor,” says Shauna Devenport, who for three decades has picked up day-old bread and set it on her porch
“I cried all the way home thinking of the waste,” Devenport said.
She went back to the store and requested the loaves that would otherwise be discarded, then set them on the front porch of her small brick bungalow and put the word out that anyone could come by and take whatever they needed. Then she did it again.
“I’d put it out and an hour or so later, it was gone,” she said. “People would show up from all over. I saw there was a real need out there.”
Devenport, a mother of four, asked her neighbors if they’d be willing to help her pick up the store’s leftover bread every day. About a dozen agreed to pitch in.
Three decades on, the “Bread Lady” as Devenport is known, is still going strong.
Now 67, she admits that she’s a bit slower and grayer than when she started her free front porch food pantry around 1992 but she is still determined to help feed anyone in need.
“It’s a labor of love for her,” said Kate Nielsen, Devenport’s daughter who lives around the corner and often pitches in to unload donated food with her two kids — Conner, 16, and Madi, 13.
“My mom has had some health issues over the years, but nothing can keep her from her work on the porch,” added Nielsen, 46. “She now has second and third generations showing up for groceries.”
“It’s heartbreaking that so many need help, but they’re very grateful to my mom,” she said. “Over the years, she has fed thousands and thousands.”
Devenport, a retired airline baggage handler, said that about 40 percent of the U.S. food supply is thrown out every year, while about 1 in 10 Americans live in food-insecure households, according to a 2021 U.S. Department of Agriculture study.
Her grocery runs in the 1990s to pick up expired bread soon expanded to include blemished produce, deli items, canned goods and milk that was set to be thrown away at several markets, she said, noting that one grocer once donated several cases of muscle-building drinks and a box of caviar.
She said grocery stores won’t sell an item that’s beyond its “sell by” date, even though it can be perfectly fine for consumption.
“I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from something they’ve taken from the porch,” she said, noting that people are often waiting to pick up perishables as she unloads them from her van.
Some people would come to her porch to get a package of rolls for dinner, while others would bring a wagon or cart and load up with enough food to last for a week.
“I never questioned them, never asked for names or how much money they made,” Devenport said. “My attitude has always been that anyone is welcome. We see a lot of homeless people, but mostly, the people who need this food are the working poor.”
With the cost of groceries skyrocketing, she said people often tell her they wouldn’t be able to feed their families if they couldn’t come to her porch.
“The need out there is frightening,” Devenport said. “Even people with jobs are having a hard time affording their rent and buying groceries. When we put stuff out on the porch today, there will already be people waiting. Within minutes, it’s gone.”
For the past several years, Devenport hasn’t picked up expired food from local grocery stores because there isn’t as much to go around, she said. Most of the stores she frequented now donate their day-old groceries to the Utah Food Bank instead of to her.
Instead, Devenport said she now stops by several church food pantries and rescue missions a few times each week to pick up surplus and donated bread and produce donated by the public, restaurants and food charities.
“The idea is that nothing should be wasted,” she said. “This is perfectly good food that can feed hundreds of people every month.”
Devenport remembers a time when she and her husband, Jeff Devenport, needed many of the surplus items that they unloaded onto their front porch every week. Besides food, they regularly received donations of shoes, clothing and furniture from neighbors and others who were familiar with their porch as a place people in need would visit.
“My first grandchild was premature and we weren’t in a position at the time to afford diapers,” she said. “My daughter was a teenage mom and we were wondering what to do when the men’s rescue mission called. ‘We’ve received a strange donation of a bunch of diapers,’ they said. ‘Do you know anyone who could use them?’”
Devenport ended up with enough diapers for her grandson and dozens of other families who stopped by her front porch that day in 1996, she said.
“Another time, somebody asked me, ‘Do you happen to have a trundle bed?’” Devenport recalled. “I told them I’d let them know. Five minutes later, my phone rang: ‘Shauna, we have a trundle bed. Do you know of anybody who needs one?’”
“There are blessings on the porch every day,” she said.
Devenport said she occasionally encounters an ornery or angry person, but she has never felt threatened.
“We get some people who are chemically or mentally imbalanced, but I’m not afraid of them,” she said. “I’ll try to talk to them, and most of the time, they’ll calm down. With most people, it’s a matter of trying to understand what they’re going through, so they don’t feel alone.”
She said it doesn’t bother her to have piles of boxes on her porch for a few hours every week, because the food isn’t there for long.
“Sadly, it’s gone immediately,” she said. “That’s how badly people need it.”
One of Devenport’s neighbors, Marren Copeland, said her family of seven has relied on the Bread Lady to get them through the week many times over the years.
“We’ve taken home fresh produce, meat, bread, you name it,” said Copeland, 39. “Shauna also helped outfit all of my children during their first 10 years of life. Clothes, backpacks, sporting goods — she’s helped us with it all.”
Copeland and her kids now regularly volunteer to help Devenport unload her van after grocery pickups from rescue missions and church pantries.
“And when we clean out our house of toys or clothes in good condition, we’ll take them back to the porch,” she said. “It’s nice to know it will go to someone else who can use it.”
Copeland said she is touched to see how Devenport’s front porch changes lives for the better every week.
“You can see the true desperation in the eyes of some of the people who come,” she said. “You know that they’re eating because of the porch. What Shauna does for people is more than a hobby to her. It’s a calling.”
Devenport doesn’t make as many donation pickups as she used to, but she said she hopes to keep going as long as she can. She took time off when she had a hip replacement and shoulder surgery, she said, and part of her goal as she healed was to get back to stocking her porch.
“It started with a few loaves of bread, but it’s now much more than that,” Devenport said. “When somebody tells you, ‘My kitchen cabinets were empty and now I can feed my family,’ that’s life changing. That’s when I know I have to keep going.”
Saturday, February 25, 2023
Winter 2023: New Mental Health Research from Around the World
December 1, 2022, PHILADELPHIA, PA
December 1, 2022, BRUMUNDDAL, Norway
November 1, 2022, PISA, Italy
January 15, 2023, DETROIT, MI
January 1, 2023, AMSTERDAM,
November 1, 2022, LUND, Sweden
Research A physically active lifestyle is associated with lower long-term incidence of bipolar disorder in a population-based, large-scale study
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
Kenneth Patchen, "Street Corner College"
We are the insulted, brother, the desolate boys.
Sleepwalkers in a dark and terrible land,
where solitude is a dirty knife at our throats.
Kenneth Patchen, "Street Corner College"
“The book is a different book for each one,” he said. “The book is an encounter of two silences, and two imaginations. So it’s the silence of the writer, and the silence of the reader.”
“When I wrote the book, I said that it was for helping others,” says Luiz Schwarcz of his memoir. “Then I realized it’s mainly for me.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/24/books/memoir-depression-luiz-schwarcz.html
8 Tablespoons = 1/2 cup
8 Tablespoons= 1/2 cup = 10 coffee machine cups
I make coffee using 6 Tbsp decaf
& 2 Tbsp regular caffeinated coffee
half a cup of dried grounds (1/4 caffeinated)
food is about sharing with the ones you love and mean the most to you.
https://www.shelovesbiscotti.com/cacio-e-uova-meatless-recipe-sundaysupper/
As you can probably guess, I have to thank my paternal grandmother for introducing this cacio e uova meatless recipe to me about half a century ago! In my grandmother’s Italian dialect, this rustic food was referred to as “cace e ova”. My dad’s mom was born in Ripabottoni, in the province of Campobasso, in the Italian region of Molise. I can honestly say that this was not a dish that I was fond of as a kid. This combination of cheese, eggs and stale bread in the shape of lopsided balls would make an occasional appearance on the supper table, and always on a Friday (since we never ate meat on Fridays). Today, I find myself re-visiting this “forgotten” recipe.
Recently, I asked my dad about this dish and he nonchalantly said that when he was growing up in Italy, this was eaten because they could not afford to eat meat. I immediately understood this was not one of his favorite meals. Since they lived on a farm, sheep’s milk cheese and eggs were readily available, and as for the stale bread – he was always so hungry, he would have eaten just about anything! But, in the same breath, he also commented that in retrospect, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that you worked in the fields from dawn to dusk; it didn’t matter that there wasn’t an abundance of food. Life was simple and whatever they had to eat, they shared with family and friends. And those very values are the ones that resonate with me… I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because at the end of the day, I truly believe that food is about sharing with the ones you love and mean the most to you.
Easy Moroccan Vegetable Tagine Recipe
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, more for later
- 2 medium yellow onions, peeled and chopped
- 8-10 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
- 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
- 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
- 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
- Salt
- 1 tbsp Harissa spice blend
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
- 2 cups canned whole peeled tomatoes
- ½ cup heaping chopped dried (unsulphered*) apricots or plums*
- 1 quart low-sodium vegetable broth (or broth of your choice)
- 2 cups cooked chickpeas
- 1 lemon, juice of
- Handful fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
- In a large heavy pot or Dutch Oven, heat olive oil over medium heat until just shimmering. Add onions and increase heat to medium-high. Saute for 5 minutes, tossing regularly.
- Add garlic and all the chopped veggies. Season with salt and spices. Toss to combine.
- Cook for 5 to 7 minutes on medium-high heat, mixing regularly with a wooden spoon.
- Add tomatoes, apricot and broth. Season again with just a small dash of salt.
- Keep the heat on medium-high, and cook for 10 minutes. Then reduce heat, cover and simmer for another 20 to 25 minutes or until veggies are tender.
- Stir in chickpeas and cook another 5 minutes on low heat.
- Stir in lemon juice and fresh parsley. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt or harissa spice blend to your liking.
- Transfer to serving bowls and top each with a generous drizzle of Private Reserve extra virgin olive oil. Serve hot with your favorite bread, couscous, or rice. Enjoy!
https://www.themediterraneandish.com/moroccan-vegetable-tagine-recipe/
WE DON’T HIRE PEOPLE TO BAKE BROWNIES. WE BAKE BROWNIES TO HIRE PEOPLE.
Zen Master Bernie Tetsugen Glassman, while then sensei at Zen Center of Los Angeles, moved to the Bronx, New York City in December 1979. There, he was set on exploring the merging of spiritual training and social action, and in 1980 he incorporated the Zen Community of New York. A departure from the formal Zen training and teaching he himself had received and given until now, he went on to found Greyston Bakery as “…A place of inclusion and opportunity. Bernie recognized that people in the community of Bronx and, later, Southwest Yonkers needed jobs, and so opened his doors to provide employment, no questions asked…Employing individuals regardless of education, work history, or social barriers such as language skills, homelessness or incarceration, and offering the supportive services the community needs to thrive” (from Greyston Bakery’s Website). In 2017, Greyston celebrated 35 years of social innovation, and is being studied by major universities and companies around the world. Bernie has since been recognized with many awards for his groundbreaking work with Greyston.
source https://www.ramdass.org/featured-teacher-bernie-glassman/
further reading:
https://www.greyston.org/about/
https://zenpeacemakers.org/the-three-tenets/
WE DON’T HIRE PEOPLE TO BAKE BROWNIES.
WE BAKE BROWNIES TO HIRE PEOPLE.https://www.greyston.org/bakery/
Europeans – the French in particular – tend to be very active as part of their normal day.
How do French people stay slim if their food is world-renowned for its richness? Eyal Ben-Arie, M.D., a vascular surgeon at Piedmont, sheds some light on the French way of eating well without adding extra inches to your waistline.
“The rates of obesity in France are a third of what they are in the United States,” says Dr. Ben-Arie. “If you look at current statistics, the French have less cardiovascular disease and less cardiovascular-related mortality than we do [in the United States].”
Countries with the lowest rates of heart disease include:
- France
- Australia
- Switzerland
- Japan
- Israel
Ultimately, he says, your weight is determined by how many calories you consume versus how many you burn. Europeans – the French in particular – make physical activity part of their day.
“Americans are often very obsessed with physical activity, but on the other extreme, they’re also almost religiously inactive,” he says. “Europeans – the French in particular – tend to be very active as part of their normal day. They may not run as many marathons or even belong to a gym, but they’re walking to work and to pick up their kids, they don’t take elevators as much.”
The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of moderate activity each day.
“The French are getting that without trying,” he explains.
Try walking during your lunch break or after dinner, and take the stairs whenever you can to squeeze more steps into your routine.
The French tend to eat their largest meal in the middle of the day, rather than late at night, and theoretically could be burning those calories all day long, says Dr. Ben-Arie.
“Maybe that makes them less hungry or less likely to snack the rest of the day,” he suggests.
Many people have the perception that French people frequently indulge in fine foods, like cakes and lavish, butter-drenched meats. The reality is many only eat these foods on occasion, not three times a day.
When they do splurge, the French tend to eat smaller portions.
“We’ve gotten to a point where we [Americans] eat a lot – a lot more than we need to,” he says.
While you don’t have to cut your favorite treats from your diet, indulge only occasionally. And when you do splurge, stick to a smaller portion. source
Friday, February 24, 2023
Whole Wheat Almond Biscotti By Martha Rose Shulman
These are based on the classic biscotti de Prato, but they are much less sweet and made with whole wheat flour and almond flour. Cut them in thin slices on the diagonal and dip them in tea, coffee or wine.
Ingredients
Yield: 5 dozen smaller cookies (cut across the log)
- 250grams (approximately 2 cups) whole wheat flour
- 60grams (approximately ⅔ cup) almond flour
- 5grams (approximately 1 teaspoon) baking powder
- ⅛teaspoon (pinch) of salt
- 125grams (approximately ⅔ cup, tightly packed) organic brown sugar
- 165grams (3 large) eggs
- 5grams (approximately 1 teaspoon) vanilla extract
- 100grams almonds, toasted and chopped (approximately ¾ cup chopped)
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Whisk together the flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with a whisk or electric beater, beat together the sugar and eggs for 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beaters. Add the vanilla and beat for another minute. Turn off the mixer, scrape down the bowl and beaters, and add the flour mixture. Mix in at low speed until combined. The batter will be sticky. Add the almonds and mix until well combined.
Using a spatula or a bowl scraper, scrape out half the batter onto the baking sheet. Moisten your hands so the dough won’t stick, and form a log, about 12 inches long by 2½ inches wide. Repeat with the other half of the batter. The logs can be on the same baking sheet but make sure there is at least two inches of space between them.
Place in the oven and bake 50 minutes, until lightly browned and dry. Remove from the oven and let sit on a rack for 20 minutes (or longer). Place the logs on a cutting board and slice thin, about ⅓ inch, either straight across the logs (for more, but smaller biscotti) or on the diagonal (for more traditionally shaped biscotti).
Place the cookies on baking sheets and return one sheet at a time to the middle rack of the oven. Bake 15 minutes. Flip the cookies over and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until hard and lightly browned. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
Tip
- Advance preparation: You can bake the logs a day ahead and slice and double bake the cookies the next day. Biscotti keep for a couple of weeks in a tin or a jar.
Toasting Almonds and Sunflower Seeds
During the height of the pandemic our JAR Baker's Supply in Lincoln RI was out of almonds so we drove to South Providence nut company warehouse and bought a case. They lived in our freezer. They got weird tasting and my husband the optimist said "They're just stale. If we toast them they will be fine!" Today we tried this and it worked out. We toasted a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet in a preheated 350 degree oven for 7-10 minutes stirring often.
Orange Cocoa Cranberry Chocolate Biscotti
We're trying this again since we ate them all!
But I couldn't resist trying to increase the nutrition in them by using whole wheat flour and 1/2 chips and half cranberries and Tbsp of orange extract along with the homemade vanilla. We also used oil in place of butter.
UPDATE: DELICIOUS!!!! But choc chips caused fault lines and breakage. Next time MELT the chips and mix with the whole wheat flour + maybe some dried cranberries. The orange and cranberry are a great combo.
Whole wheat flour absorbs more liquid than regular all-purpose flour. The resting refrigeration time of 30 minutes is crucial for the bran and germ to become soft and this, in turn, makes the task of shaping the dough easier.
UPDATE: refrigeration for 30 minutes before shaping the whole wheat dough works well. I excluded butter and oil and used 3 eggs (instead of two) and orange liquor; Triple Sec.
Update: For one batch I ground up bittersweet choc chips and added them and cut back on sugar to compensate for the sugar in the chips. I also added toasted almonds+cranberries.
https://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-biscotti/
https://www.myfrugalhome.com/how-to-make-orange-extract/
https://melissaknorris.com/make-mint-extract-5-homemade-extract-recipes/
Charred Cabbage and Lentil Soup By Ali Slagle
Ingredients
Yield: 4 servings
- 1 to 1½pounds green cabbage, sliced 1-inch thick (from 1 medium cabbage)
- 2tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
- Salt and pepper
- 6cups water, or vegetable or chicken stock
- 1cup green or brown lentils
- 1medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped
- 1medium carrot, coarsely chopped
- 3garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2tablespoons soy sauce
- ½teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more for serving
- 2thyme sprigs (or 1 small bay leaf or rosemary sprig, or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)
- 1Parmesan rind, plus grated Parmesan for serving
From her childhood she could remember a million details
“Sometimes it scared her that so much was lost, but she knew it was normal, that most people she knew forgot most of their lives, too. But her childhood—that was always there, safe, neatly arranged, chronological. From her childhood she could remember a million details.”
― Suicide Club
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. “Kindness,” NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
a decision, not a duty
Siblings don't have obligations to each other merely by virtue of being biologically related.
Those obligations arise only from a proper relationship with them.
With deeper ties come expectations.
Because you find your interactions with your siblings unpleasant, you already have one reason not to go on with a relationship.
So far, they haven't asked for your help or point of view.
By limiting your interactions with them, you might feel a lot better.
Whatever assistance you provide will be a decision, not a duty.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/magazine/autism-friend-ethics.html