Sunday, August 31, 2025
Matunuck:The Catskills of Rhode Island!
Last night we performed at the light parade at Matunuck. It was great. The Catskills of Rhode Island!
Today is a gorgeous day but boy oh boy are we tired and sore and feeling a bit old.
This morning I made bran muffins using the waffle iron (3 minutes!)
This afternoon I made Tzatziki Greek Cucumber salad to go with leftover grilled buttermilk marinated chicken and corn on the cob.
A day of rest.
Ryan Daigler - Exposing Narcissistic Abuse: No contact is considered the only right option with a narcissist because of the way narcissistic abuse works. Narcissists don’t engage in relationships the way healthy people do — for them, it’s not about connection, empathy, or mutual respect. It’s about control, supply, and power.
Here’s why no contact becomes the only safe boundary:
1. Narcissists don’t change because they don’t see a problem. Therapy, apologies, or promises usually don’t lead to lasting change. They don’t see their behavior as wrong — they see your reaction as the problem.
2. Every interaction is an opportunity for manipulation. Even if you think you can keep it "low contact," they will try to guilt-trip, gaslight, love-bomb, or provoke you. Any access gives them a doorway back into your mind and emotions.
3. They feed on your responses. Anger, tears, explanations — even silence — can be “supply” to them. No contact starves them of that fuel and keeps you from being emotionally drained.
4. You can’t heal in the same environment you were harmed in. If they’re still in your life, your nervous system never fully calms down. No contact gives you space to rebuild your identity and self-worth outside their distortion field.
5. Boundaries don’t work with people who don’t respect them. A healthy person respects “please don’t do that.” A narcissist sees a boundary as a challenge — something to test, push, or break.
6. Contact keeps you in the trauma cycle. Abuse isn’t always constant. It’s a cycle: idealization → devaluation → discard → hoovering. No contact breaks the cycle for good. No contact is not about punishment — it’s about protection. It’s the only way to take back your peace, your energy, and your life.
Bobby Agrippino, who runs the North End Boston Food Tour and is Mirabella’s lifelong friend, said, “I bring my people from the food tour, and I introduce them to a lot of the stands. ... And I definitely introduce them to Ricky, because he’s the King of Calamari.”
North End natives are familiar with the sights, sounds, and tastes of the Italian festivals. Michael Coppola, 77, grew up in the North End, so he knows “every nook and cranny” of the area. He now lives in Florida, but almost every summer, he comes back to be with family.
As a kid, he used to sell corn on the cob with his cousin during the festivals. He recalls hollering, “Get your corn on the cob!” outside his house.“The more noise you make, the more corn you sell,” Coppola said.
But on Friday evening, he wasn’t making much noise, or selling any corn. Under an empty tent, he settled into a chair, transported back to his childhood, as he watched the crowds drift by.
source Jessica Ma BOSTON GLOBE
Maya Angelou: Tell the truth and not the facts.
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.” And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.
Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.
Tell the truth and not the facts.
If you are going to write autobiography, don't expect that it will clear anything up. It makes it more clear to you, but it doesn't alleviate anything.
The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.
I see a yellow pad, and my knees get weak, and I salivate.
Poetry is the strongest language we have.
Maya Angelou
Saturday, August 30, 2025
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Writing a novel is like living in a house full of ghosts — even when you ignore them, they’re still there, waiting to talk to you. They have all the time in the world. No matter how much you avoid them, the time comes when you have to confront them. Hear them out. See what they have to say. Over time, their features become clearer, their voices stronger, their histories richer, their lives fuller. Laila Lalami
Friday, August 29, 2025
The interview with Anne Carson. In the full version of this interview, the great poet, essayist and translator reflects on her approach to writing and on the importance of doubt and hesitance. She highlights one of Descartes’s misquoted line “Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) and corrects as : “I doubt therefore I think, therefore I am,” she tells Norwegian writer Linn Ullmann.
I can depend on that feeling of donning my swimsuit, sinking into the water, washing everything away, and beginning again.
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/water-activities/cold-water-swimming-mindfulness/
What Cold-Water Swimming Taught Me About Mindfulness
It’s not just a momentary mood booster, but a reminder of what we’re capable of
It’s another gray Pacific Northwest winter morning. The kind where the water and sky blend together into one, imbued with a raw, wet cold that seeps into your bones. I could be sitting inside drinking coffee, but instead I am getting ready for a swim.
At the edge of the bay, my wool tights come off, neoprene booties on. I pull off my bulky wool sweater and toss it on the barnacle-covered rocks, leaving me standing in only my red swimsuit and hand-knit wool hat. I shiver in the morning air, just slightly above freezing. I didn’t bother bringing a thermometer for the water. I don’t need a number to tell me that it’s cold.
This moment is the hardest: standing and waiting, looking out over the saltwater, wondering how I will ever get in. For a brief moment I consider going back inside where the coffee is. This hesitation could be all consuming if I let it.
Every part of my brain is telling me not to get into this water. I lean into the physicality of the exercise instead. Breathe, step forward. Knowing I can push past my resistance gives me a boost of confidence.
I step in, up to my ankles, and then my calves. I walk further, submerging my thighs, and then the really hard part: my belly button. My face contorts with the spike of cold. I know that the sooner I can get my shoulders under the water, the easier the whole endeavor will be. Yet there’s a part of me that likes to stand here for a few seconds, with half of my body exposed to the winter air, half of it submerged. There’s an intensity to this “before” moment, as if I am hardening myself to the task ahead. I’m feeling the cold, I’m paying attention. I hear the wings of a seagull fly over me.
I know it’s now or never. I put my palms together and breathe out. I push my whole body into the saltwater and focus on my breath, swimming through those first 30 seconds of intense chill. I keep my head above the water and move my arms and legs in a breaststroke. The water feels prickly, an incessant sting. Eventually the sensation softens and an overall layer of cold surrounds my body, like a shield. Every inhale keeps me aware of where I am, every exhale another moment of overcoming the temperature.
I keep breathing.
Last winter I got into a cold swimming habit, taking daily dips in the Puget Sound near my home on a small peninsula west of Tacoma. For the past couple of years I had a tradition of going into the water on the first of the month every month, but last winter, what had been a monthly tradition became a daily ritual. I would go to the water, often in the dark of the morning, before diving to work. I have never considered myself a swimmer, but I have always wanted to be in the water, and there was something about the cold that kept me returning. As a writer and an artist, I quickly realized that these daily dips were becoming a part of my creative process too. They made me more present, more aware, and they often provided much-needed clarity.
I wasn’t the only one who embraced cold-water swimming last year. Winter is always a darker, slower cycle, but this one came hand-in-hand with the uncertainty of a global pandemic. Many of us craved something that would push our worries aside, make us feel like we had a little bit more command over our lives.
“This last year, people have had no control,” says Gilly McArthur, a climber and cold-water swimmer based in England’s Lakes District. “Restrictions made people seek other avenues to get a little control back.”
I walk further, submerging my thighs, and then the really hard part: my belly button.
For me, that meant dipping into the saltwater by my house throughout the entire winter. I started reading essays about other people doing the same. There were roundups of the health benefits cold water could provide, films about people for whom cold water had become a lifeline, a story about a woman treating her depression with weekly swims.
My Instagram feed morphed into mostly a collection of other wool-covered heads bobbing in the water. I read the book Wintering by Katherine May and found myself nodding at her description of her body post-swim: “… the blood tingles in my veins for hours afterwards, as though I’ve been infused with some magnificent serum.” What I read confirmed what my body already knew: this challenge of getting into cold water made me feel good, mentally and physically. It was making me more mindful, more present.
My regular dips and swims had also serendipitously made me part of a winter swimming group: the Outdoor Swimming Society’s Zeno Swim Club. Launched in the winter of 2019, the virtual swim club was named after Zeno of Elea, the founding father of Stoicism, a philosophy rooted in pushing through pain and hardship. To be a member required a personal commitment to swimming at least once a month through winter, and an embrace of discomfort. “In a year that has presented perpetual challenges, one thing is clear: we’re all Stoics now,” I read on the OSS website. “Maybe not all in cold water—yet—but we have all mustered fortitude in the face of adversity.”
Over 35,000 Instagram posts use the hashtag #thestoics alongside images of people around the world taking on the discomfort of cold, winter water and finding fortitude in the process. The cold water clearly gives us something that we can’t find elsewhere.
“Whatever stress or worries you have, you have to leave them once you’re in that water because you’re just about surviving this intense, tactile sensation.”
Katharine Montstream, who founded her own group, is also one of those people. She had been bitten by the cold water bug while swimming in Vermont’s Lake Champlain a few years ago, but in the face of the pandemic, found that last winter the practice served her more than ever. She began going in the lake daily, and others began taking notice of her ritual. “After a while people were like, ‘When are you going? Are you going to do that again?’” She started an email list, dubbed Red Hot Chilly Dippers, which quickly grew from 17 to 150 members. Throughout the winter, they swam together frequently, breaking the ice with sledgehammers on particularly cold days. Once, they swam at night during a full moon. “We get in, and we cannot stop laughing,” says Montstream of their regular sessions.
In a time when many of us are seeking more paths to mindfulness, a plunge becomes the vehicle for bringing a hyper focus to the now. “When you get in water that cold, you have no choice but to just be present in that moment with yourself and the people that you’re there with,” says Puranjot Kaur, an open water marathon swimmer who is a part of the local group Cold Tits Warm Hearts in Maine. “It just kind of wipes away everything else.”
That’s the magic of the cold water, and what keeps many of us coming back. Montstream agrees. “Whatever stress or worries you have, you have to leave them once you’re in that water because you’re just about surviving this intense, tactile sensation,” she says.
Mindfulness is both being aware of the present moment and acknowledging the moment without judgement. Instead of resisting or complaining, you practice acceptance, McArthur explains. To help with that, when she takes people swimming and they ask how cold it will be, she tells them the “C-word” isn’t allowed. “It’s just an experience, it’s a felt sense,” says McArthur. “Just observe what’s going on but try not to label it, and it will pass.”
Overcoming the intensity of cold water also brings an indescribable joy. It’s not just a momentary mood booster, but a reminder of what we’re capable of. This cold water lesson is pertinent to our bodies but also for our minds. “It’s applicable to other places in life where you come to something that seems really difficult,” says Kaur. “Your body remembers that experience of swimming. You’re building resiliency, you’re building grit.”
This year presented more challenges than just the pandemic. In the spring, very close family friends who live on the same body of water that I do, and who I had known my entire life, were murdered. A lot of the year was spent in a fog. While I hadn’t identified that loss as the initial reason for getting into the water, I can see how giving myself a daily reminder of my own resilience had been an essential part of my ongoing healing process.
For a few moments a day, the fog lifted, and submerging myself in the cold water was a way to find myself again. It was what got me through the winter. Whether it’s grief, sadness, frustration, anxiety, or just craving stillness that brings us there, as McArthur says, “all swimming does is just pour us back into ourselves.”
It’s not just a momentary mood booster, but a reminder of what we’re capable of.
The mind-body connection may be why the water calls to us in moments of darkness. Both Kaur and Montstream have noted that many of the swimmers in their communities use the practice as a means of emotional healing. “Everyone has some kind of a challenge or a story that they’re bringing to the water: a lot of trauma survivors, and people who have gone through really intense experiences,” says Kaur.
Montstream has seen the same thing, noting the many people in her group who have struggled with grief and depression. Whether it’s the water, the sense of community offered by gathering together on the cold shores, or a combination of both, their practice has been an opportunity “to help them smile again,” says Montstream.
As the season wore on, I kept getting in. Late winter gradually shifted into early spring. The wool hat came off, and soon thereafter the neoprene booties. Eventually spring turned to summer. Inspired by the camaraderie cultivated in other groups, I asked a few local women if they wanted to swim with me. I figured if we started in summer I could get them hooked enough to keep going in the colder season.
In the Puget Sound, the water is never really that warm, and even with summer air temperature, it was a newfound challenge for some. We’re women of all ages, and we go every Tuesday morning at 7 A.M. Some days the water feels warm, and others it’s on the verge of prickly again, a reminder of that winter adrenaline rush. These days there are brown and orange maple leaves on the beach, rainy clouds on the horizon. Some of us swim out into the bay, some of us tread water and chat. We all laugh. As we towel off and change into our clothes, there are a lot of smiles. We talk about how we’re already looking forward to the following week. This routine has become so cherished, I know that we’ll continue as we cycle back into the darker, slower months.
Over the past year, swimming has been a constant reminder of some inevitable truths: the seasons will shift, the water will change. So will I, so will my emotions. But I can depend on that feeling of donning my swimsuit, sinking into the water, washing everything away, and beginning again.
Love Dahl!
“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
“Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”
“If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.”
Authenticity is being true to oneself with integrity, openness, and non-judgmental values, while snobbery is a belief in one's own superiority based on superficial traits like status or taste, leading to disdain for others. The key difference is that authenticity emphasizes genuine self-expression and acceptance of others, whereas snobbery involves judgment, a need for special treatment, and a dismissive attitude toward those perceived as different or inferior.
Snobbery, said Joseph Epstein, "is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them." source
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story. John Steinbeck
Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · Vance measuring the curtains so publicly is kind of hilarious.
Schooley @schooley.bsky.social
Harvest Season
Dave Littler
Dr. Mark Harper: My fingertips were numb, and I had a suspicious lack of strength in my hands and a reduced sensation of feeling all over my body. My feet were also somewhat uncomfortable from walking over the beach’s uneven pebbles. Yet, I clearly remember thinking, ‘Hmm. That’s funny. I feel really good’.
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Cilantro Pesto French Style
I combined t bunches of cilantro and basil with olive oil salt and cloves of garlic and a splash of red wine vinegar. It's delicious on everything.
We retored our Moka Pot by buying a gasket and trimming it. Now it works fine.
We made espresso! It was delicious with homemade key lime pie.
The Pear Tree of Papineau Street
We visited the pear tree and met the owner. He said "Help yourself!!" Then the neighbor offered me a ladder but I was too shy to use it and I have a fear of heights. We filled a bag and they are delicious.
Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishra’s column
According to a study published in Cell & Bioscience, physical activity stimulates the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain tied to memory, learning, and emotional balance. In simple terms, movement does not just change your body, it reshapes your brain, making it sharper, more adaptable, and better equipped to handle stress.
These molecules act like natural antidepressants, supporting mood, improving focus, and protecting long-term mental health. Exercise becomes more than just a workout, it is one of the most effective ways to keep both your body and your mind alive and thriving.
Every step, every rep, every drop of effort is a message to yourself that you are building more than muscles. You are building clarity, energy, and a mindset that carries into every part of life.
Your muscles are a hidden pharmacy, and the only way to unlock it is to move.
Send this to someone who needs a reason to get moving today.
So... write!
Psychoanalysts in France, structuralists in the United States and France, conservative, liberal and left-wing thinkers in contemporary schools of linguistic philosophy agree about one thing; man became man not by the tool but by the Word. It is not walking upright and using a stick to dig for food or strike a blow that makes a human being, it is speech. And neither intelligent apes nor dolphins whispering marvels in the ocean share with us the ability to transform this direct communication into the written word, which sets up an endless chain of communication and commune between peoples and generations who will never meet.
Nadine Gordimer
Like a mad red brain the involute rhubarb leaf thinks its way up through loam. Jane Kenyon
from her poem, April Chores.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Ryan Daigler - Exposing Narcissistic Abuse Narcissists don’t attack you because you’re weak, they attack you because you’re strong and have all the qualities they don’t
when all you have known is chaos, peace can feel like a threat
If you stop when you are stuck, then you are in trouble!
One of the vital things for a writer who’s writing a book, which is a lengthy project and is going to take about a year, is how to keep the momentum going. It is the same with a young person writing an essay. They have got to write four or five or six pages. But when you are writing it for a year, you go away and you have to come back. I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. To be confronted with a blank page is not very nice. But Hemingway, a great American writer, taught me the finest trick when you are doing a long book, which is, he simply said in his own words, “When you are going good, stop writing.” And that means that if everything’s going well and you know exactly where the end of the chapter’s going to go and you know just what the people are going to do, you don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? And you get up and you walk away and you don’t want to come back because you don’t know where you want to go. But if you stop when you are going good, as Hemingway said…then you know what you are going to say next. You make yourself stop, put your pencil down and everything, and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next and that’s lovely and you have to try and do that. Every time, every day all the way through the year. If you stop when you are stuck, then you are in trouble! Roald Dahl
When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another. Carl R. Rogers
“If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual,” ― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming A Person: A Therapist's View on Psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychology, and the Path to Personal Growth
when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.
“I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives
such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite
appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the
good life, even though the person in this process would experience each
one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more
generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding,
challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am
convinced, a life for the faint-fainthearted. It involves the stretching
and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It
involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the
stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that
when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this
process of becoming.”
He Announced His Intention to Die. The Dinner Invitations Rolled In. Joseph Awuah-Darko
On Instagram, the artist Joseph Awuah-Darko asked the world to invite him to dinner before he ended his life. More than 150 meals later, he is still going.
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Doreen Cote
Doreen L. Cote https://www.edwardsmemorialfuneralhome.com/obituary/Doreen-Cote
Blackstone, Massachusetts
Aug 20, 1955 – Aug 20, 2025
I met Doreen walking my dog on her street and neighborhood for many years. We became fast friends discovering our love of bread baking. She was a lovely woman and I miss her dearly.
I
Skillet Roasted Lemon Chicken RECIPE COURTESY OF INA GARTEN
Skillet Roasted Lemon Chicken RECIPE COURTESY OF INA GARTEN Level: Intermediate Total: 55 min Active: 45 min Yield: 3 to 4 servings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC6VvO5DK-o
Ingredients 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves 1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup good olive oil
1 lemon, halved and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 yellow onion, halved and sliced 1/4-inch thick
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 (4-pound) chicken, backbone removed and butterflied
1/2 cup dry white wine, such as Pinot Grigio
1 fresh rosemary sprig Juice of 1 lemon
Directions
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place the thyme, fennel seeds, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper in a mini food processor and process until ground.
Pour the olive oil into a small glass measuring cup, stir in the herb mixture, and set aside.
Distribute the lemon slices in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet and distribute the onion and garlic on top.
Place the chicken, skin side down, on top of the onion and brush with about half the oil and herb mixture. Turn the chicken skin side up, pat it dry with paper towels (very important!), and brush it all over with the rest of the oil and herb mixture.
Roast the chicken for 30 minutes.
Pour the wine into the pan (not on the chicken!) and roast for another 10 to 15 minutes, until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers 155 to 160 degrees.
Remove the chicken from the oven, sprinkle it with the lemon juice and the leaves of 1 rosemary sprig, cover the skillet tightly with aluminum foil, and allow to rest for 10 to 15 minutes.
Cut the chicken into quarters, and serve hot with the pan juices, cooked lemon, and onion.
Bushel of Peaches from Neighborhood Tree!
The peaches were ripe and abandoned and warm from the sun. We filled two large canvas bags.
“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.”
― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
“You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” ― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Surviving (Narcissistic) Vampire Parents
Nature protected me but now she is peeling the onion, revealing the stories, layer upon layer. How my parents blamed me for everything, even things that were impossible. The are all dead now. It's safe to unpack the stories. They float up into my head on a daily basis.
My parents called me on the phone to yell at me for having a 30th birthday party without them. I hung up and refused contact for nearly a decade.
As kids we never ate dinner with my parents except on Sundays. One night I decided to make dinner for them. I was seventeen. I chose to make wild rice. "Do you know how much this costs?"my step-father yelled when presented with the dish.
The memories continue - scolding me for screaming when a rat ran over my foot at the hotel when we were on vacation. I was a kid.
Calling me fat instead of saying hello when they came to pick me up at summer camp. I was 15.
Accusing me of forcing them to buy a country house! Whaat?
Blaming my brother's car crash on me. How could it be my fault?
Shaming me in front of guests for forgetting to flush the toilet. Age16.
Mother screaming "I made you an artist, because of all those terrible things I did to you!"
The list never ends.
Every family needs a scapegoat.
The Wily Survivor @WilySurvivor · Aug 25 Narcissists don’t pick targets at random. They choose people with empathy, talent, light, and good hearts. If you were targeted, it wasn’t because you lacked anything. It’s because you had something worth exploiting. Survivors are some of the most phenomenal people I’ve met.
I feel most pleased with my language when I don’t understand it completely. When it sustains hope that there’s more to write about, that there’s an open door for me to explore. That’s when the writing gets really fun. I feel like it’s all about waiting for a kind of discovery that takes place on the sentence level—as opposed to having a light-bulb about a character. That’s the thing that drives me from first sentence to last sentence.
AIMEE BENDER
Monday, August 25, 2025
Raymond Chandler: You're not tired and you're no more disappointed than most people are. By all the rules you ought to be the same sort of shallow spoiled promiscuous brat your sister was. By some miracle you're not. You've got all the honesty and a large part of the guts in your family. You don't need anyone to be kind to you.
The Long Goodbye, p359
evanbernick.bsky.social It's worth reiterating that the administration has never wavered from the position that it sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador prison by accident. Everything they've done since is calculated to obscure that and punish him for existing as an example of their own stupidity and callousness.
Pesto is a basil/olive oil/garlic (pine nuts and parmesan cheese) condiment used in Italian cuisine. Pistou, it's lesser known cousin, is a basil/olive oil/garlic (lemon juice) condiment used in French cuisine. The main difference is the pine nuts – which are used in the Italian version and not in the French
Home Made Salad Dressing
Fresh lime juice (or lemon juice)
equal parts olive oil
salt
fresh basil & garlic puree
I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.Temple Grandin, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
BAD MOTHERS a literary history
dr. alicia andrzejewski (she/her)
Sourdough Rye Buttermilk Bran Muffins
2 ½ cups bran
1 1/3 cups rye or whole wheat sourdough starter
2 ½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt or more if Kosher salt
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup corn oil
1/2 cup molasses
This is a relaxed recipe. If batter is too dry add some more buttermilk or molasses or sourdough starter.
The night critters ate my dill weed.
I can only imagine the skunks rats opossums and bunnies having a lavish meal topped off with dill weed in my garden. I hope they enjoyed it.
Magritte's Pie
Depression Era Apple Pe made using zucchini
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a61100125/mock-apple-pie-recipe/
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Tanya Hvilivitzky
Any activity in nature helps your mind and creates endorphins that fight irritability, stress, and depression. Getting out of the house and into the outdoors will increase your oxygen intake, and at the same time, give you a fresh perspective. If you absolutely need an excuse to get outside, ask to take your neighbor’s dog for a walk or enlist an accountability buddy with similar health goals. A simple walk around the block can do wonders to boost your mood, too, especially if you don’t bring your phone along and just pay attention to all the sights and sounds around you instead. And if you make your walk a daily habit, even better.
Saturday, August 23, 2025
“Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.”
The Sea by John Banville
“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
― The Sea
― The Sea
― The Sea
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All of Family Life is organized around the most DANGEROUS person in it.
The dangerous narcissist is still controlling the family from the grave and will be for generations. Perhaps this is why I am still not interested in any of the people involved.
George Saunders: My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it’s like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Kate Riley: Paris Review
In marriage Miriam changed name and laundry day. She hadn’t anticipated the shock, or the shame, of mixing her own dirty clothes with Alan’s; it seemed to imply more intimacy than did the sex act itself.
The first Tuesday she collected their combined laundry, she hid it in the trolley beneath her family supper basket: cold cuts, sesame buns, red-wax cheese, and bread-and-butter pickles the color of snot. This she wheeled directly home. She put their laundry away, pointlessly folding and stacking his underwear; then, realizing that Alan would be at work half an hour yet, she returned to the closet. She chose a button-down shirt, slacks, socks, and his brown walking shoes, then laid them out on the sofa in human form.
She was in the kitchen repurposing some elderly green beans when Alan found her. He paused in the doorframe, squinting, still carrying his nylon briefcase, and Miriam thought: My husband.
“You did that?” he asked, tilting his head toward the living room. She looked down at the counter and nodded.
“You’re a weird one, Mom,” he said from the hallway.
There was a pall over the whole decade; the eighties felt like late afternoon in late fall, ominously dark too soon.
Miriam crocheted the first five squares of an afghan in the dark, watching a special about the AIDS crisis that one of the brothers had taped to VHS. She was pregnant, and would presently tell Alan.
“You have to get out of your own way.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/entertainment/henry-winkler-acting-ron-howard
“My mission is that you taste something different than you did when you started your rehearsal to bring the scene here,” Winkler said before the real-life class started, also noting that teaching the craft is one of his “favorite things to do.”
It’s no surprise that it’s one of his preferred activities, since he’s had considerable experience. “It is a shock that I have been doing this here in Hollywood for 50 years, so you learn a few things,” he said.
Chief among those things was a tenet he kept coming back to throughout the class, as well as the interview with CNN that followed: “You have to get out of your own way.”
“It took me a long time to finally get out of my own way. You’re constantly working on getting out of your own way. And when you do, it’s like nirvana,” Winkler shared in the class. “You know it in your every fiber of your being. It’s amazing. So you never stop trying.”
From an acting perspective, he recounted how there were times earlier on in his career when he would find himself reading a scene with a famous celebrity, and how it would trip him up.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m in a scene with a star!’ as opposed to being in the scene,” he quipped.
But the ‘get out of your own way’ mantra could also be applied to life in general for the celebrated actor, who is now almost 80.
“When I did ‘Barry,’ I was 72. When I did The Fonz, I was 27. I knew what I wanted at 27 – it took me til I was 72 to put it together,” he said. “You’re constantly working on breaking yourself down, getting out of your own way.”
And how do you do that, exactly? The answers seem simple, easy even. Be present. Listen. Listening especially was another common theme that showed up in Winkler’s instruction and approach at the festival.
But if it were that easy, everyone would do it. Sometimes, it also just comes down to the chemistry an actor shares with his scene partner.
A scene partner like Ron Howard, who cut his teeth alongside Winkler as Richie Cunningham on “Happy Days” before going on to become an Oscar-winning film director and producer.
“Sometimes when you’re working with somebody who is really good, there is no language at all (needed to connect on a performance level). Ron Howard and I, in the very beginning of my career here in Hollywood, we had like an imaginary thread between us,” Winkler recalled of those early, happy days. “There was no talking. We took a 3-page scene, we would memorize it, rehearse it, improvise it and shoot it three times in 20 minutes.”
“That was our connection,” he added, calling it “uncanny.”
More recently, Winkler was as thrilled as the rest of us when Howard stepped in front of the camera again for a guest part in the first season of Apple TV’s “The Studio.” And he was even more excited when is friend scored his first Emmy acting nomination for the role.
“I called him when he got nominated, he was so excited,” Winkler shared, calling Howard “just an animated, wisdom-filled fellow.”
The wisdom is clearly abundant in both “Happy Days” alums. A day after the acting class, Winkler was on hand at Televerse as an inductee into the Television Hall of Fame alongside Viola Davis, Ryan Murphy and Conan O’Brien.
And what about coming back as the Fonz again now in a “Happy Days” reboot or continuation series, since everything from “Tron” to “Clueless” is getting the sequel treatment?
“I would do the Fonz retired, absolutely,” Winkler said of his most beloved character from that 1970s-era show, before dropping into his famed Fonz voice and adding, “grandchildren… lot of fun, very difficult, but you get to give ‘em back!”