Let it Snow!

Big fat flakes falling. February is my favorite month. The light is creeping back but it's not warm or bright yet. Perfect.

Joseph Brodsky

The way to develop good taste in literature is to read poetry. If you think that I am speaking out of professional partisanship, that I am trying to advance my own guild interests, you are badly mistaken. For, being the supreme form of human locution, poetry is not only the most concise, the most condensed way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation — especially one on paper.

The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction. Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed and laconic intensity of poetic diction. A child of epitaph and epigram, conceived indeed as a short cut to any conceivable subject matter, poetry to prose is a great disciplinarian. It teaches the latter not only the value of each word but also the mercurial mental patterns of the species, alternatives to linear composition, the knack of omitting the self-evident, emphasis on detail, the technique of anticlimax. Above all, poetry develops in prose that appetite for metaphysics that distinguishes a work of art from mere belles-lettres. It must be admitted, however, that in this particular regard, prose has proven to be a rather lazy pupil.
- Joseph Brodsky
Source

Embalm + Botox

With the rise of Botox, people are already embalmed and will look just as good in death.

em·balm
əmˈbä(l)m/
verb
past tense: embalmed; past participle: embalmed

1.
preserve (a corpse) from decay, originally with spices and now usually by arterial injection of a preservative.
"the Egyptian method of embalming"
synonyms: preserve, mummify, lay out
"his body had been embalmed"
preserve (someone or something) in an unaltered state.
"the band was all about revitalizing pop greats and embalming their legacy"
synonyms: preserve, conserve, enshrine, immortalize
"the poem ought to embalm his memory"
2.
archaic
give a pleasant fragrance to.
"the sweetness of the linden trees embalmed all the air"

Authentic Selves

I've watched more than a few artist friends go through de-clutter frenzy and it is sad. Their de-cluttered homes now resemble House and Garden and lack the personality and character that was so marvelous and quirky. It's like tearing down the village green to put up a Wal-Mart. It's like having botox!

Sarah Lazarovic describes the year she spent painting pictures of things instead of buying them.

It’s hard to resist the de-cluttering fever. I, too, spend my weekends filling bags with cookbooks, toys and vintage dresses, and then hauling them away. For the first time in years, I can lay my hands on any one of my sweaters.

But the more stuff I shed, the more I realize that we de-clutterers feel besieged by more than just our possessions. We’re also overwhelmed by the intangible detritus of 21st-century life: unreturned emails; unprinted family photos; the ceaseless ticker of other people’s lives on Facebook; the heightened demands of parenting; and the suspicion that we’ll be checking our phones every 15 minutes, forever. I can sit in an empty room, and still get nothing done.

It’s consoling to think that, beneath all these distractions, we’ll discover our shining, authentic selves, or even achieve a state of “mindfulness.” But I doubt it. I’m starting to suspect that the joy of ditching all of our stuff is just as illusory as the joy of acquiring it all was. Less may be more, but it’s still not enough.

Pamela Druckerman is the author of “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting.”
Article

Happy Mardi Gras

Listening to Michelle Wilson's Mardi Gras New Orleans Music on WICN. Fabulous.

Last Night

Last night I made Lisa Chune's Asian dumplings and they were fabulous. We bought dumpling skins at Price Rite. I took a cutting board and minced garlic, chopped celery, grated carrot, chopped scallions, ground lean pork, toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, and I mixed it with my fingers.
We placed a tiny amount in each dumpling skin and sealed it with water by wetting our fingers. Then we placed the little 'mouse pillows' in our greased metal steamer over a pot of boiling water covered and steamed each batch for six minutes. We dipped them in a blend of soy and rooster sauce. So good. My husband slipped a bottle of white wine in the snow bank to cool.
We listened to Tom Shaker's fabulous Monday night show: SOUL SERENADE on WICN. Excellent show!

Excludes the Poor

During the Great Recession, assistance to the poorest briefly expanded but has since fallen back, he said, and there is no indication that the long-run trend is shifting.
Article

David Carr

David Carr’s Last Word on Journalism, Aimed at Students

With DAVID CARR FEB. 15, 2015

David Carr was known at The New York Times as a supreme talent scout, a mentor to young reporters and a blunt critic of those who didn’t measure up. He was a natural teacher, and right up until the day he died last week, he was bent on minting the next generation of journalists. Last fall, David joined the faculty at Boston University’s communications school. While David did not write his curriculum as a column, it has all the essential ingredients of one. So here it serves as the final Media Equation under David’s byline.

“I love the current future of journalism we are living through and care desperately about getting my students ready to prosper in this new place,” read the quotation below David’s portrait in a photo gallery at B.U., where David served as the first Andrew R. Lack professor.

The class he taught offered a window into the future he was trying to shape. His course, called Press Play, focused on the cutting edge of media and was about “making and distributing content in the present future we are living through.” David cared deeply about nurturing reporters-to-be — college students who felt the calling and were looking for a spiritual guide to help them navigate the rapidly shifting media landscape.

A collection of memories and reactions to the death of Mr. Carr, who The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, called “the finest media reporter of his generation.”

The syllabus for Press Play, published on the blogging platform Medium, is perhaps David’s most succinct prescription for how to thrive in the digital age. It is also David in his purest form — at once blunt, funny, haughty, humble, demanding, endearing and unique.

David was interested in people, not their résumés. He didn’t care where someone went to college or who their parents were. So instead of giving his students a standard biographical blurb (graduate of the University of Minnesota, editor of The Washington City Paper, media columnist at The Times since 2005), David told them this, under the heading “Not need to know, but nice to know”:

“Your professor is a terrible singer and a decent dancer. He is a movie crier but stone-faced in real life. He never laughs even when he is actually amused. He hates suck-ups, people who treat waitresses and cab drivers poorly and anybody who thinks diversity is just an academic conceit. He is a big sucker for the hard worker and is rarely dazzled by brilliance. He has little patience for people who pretend to ask questions when all they really want to do is make a speech.

“He has a lot of ideas about a lot of things, some of which are good. We will figure out which is which together. He likes being challenged. He is an idiosyncratic speaker, often beginning in the middle of a story, and is used to being told that people have no idea what he is talking about. It’s fine to be one of those people. In Press Play, he will strive to be a lucid, linear communicator.

“Your professor is fair, fundamentally friendly, a little odd, but not very mysterious. If you want to know where you stand, just ask.”

He encouraged teamwork. “While writing, shooting, and editing are often solitary activities, great work emerges in the spaces between people,” David wrote, adding, “Evaluations will be based not just on your efforts, but on your ability to bring excellence out of the people around you.”

David warned there would be a heavy reading list. “I’m not sliming you with a bunch of textbooks, so please know I am dead serious about these readings,” he wrote. “Skip or skim at your peril.”

Amazing Norma Torres

Dangers Propelled Norma Torres to Move to U.S., Then to Politics
Article
By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN FEB. 15, 2015
WASHINGTON — For Representative Norma J. Torres, a freshman Democrat from California’s 35th District, the debate over immigration policy is intensely personal.
Born in Guatemala, Ms. Torres, 49, moved to the United States with her uncle when she was 5, leaving behind a country riven by civil war and a mother who would die from heart disease a year later. Her interest in politics grew from a searing experience as a 911 dispatcher, when one night a girl was murdered after being placed on hold while waiting for a Spanish-speaking operator. Ms. Torres decided to seek elective office and became mayor of Pomona, Calif., before serving in California’s Legislature.

I Have Superpowers

I love to wash dishes and I love dish soap. Recently my thumb split and bled and it was painful. "Time to use dish gloves," my husband said. I dreaded the idea. Part of why I love to wash dishes is the feel of the water, a swimming pool for my hands. How can people use those, I thought. At the market I spotted a package for a buck. When I opened them there were 6 yellow gloves inside. What am I, a fly? I put on a pair and ran the water very hot and I didn't feel a thing. I was superwoman. This is a wet suit for my hands. I have superpowers.

I Had to Shovel

The snow is light and fluffy and the wind is howling. I had to go out and shovel all the paths for me and my dog and the oil man and the mailman and Anne the plumber. My tea tasted really good when I came back inside so I went back out and shoveled more. I do love it. We are so lucky it is fluffy. I am trying not to think of all the damage that will be caused when it melts.

Breathing Love

Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
― Maya Angelou

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
― Gloria Steinem

Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.
― Naomi Wolf

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
― Sophia Loren

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)
― Eve Ensler, I am an Emotional Creature

As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
― George Orwell

The Shovel Lodge

Some people go on skiing vacations this time of year. We're laughing because we're having the same experience but we're shoveling instead of skiing and we get to stay home. Weight lifting is a sport and if I entered a contest for my age group (54 with silver hair) I bet I'd do okay.

Brazilian Blizzard, Stay warm with Samba

I am hypnotized by the horizontal snow and Brazilian music playing on the radio. I was too tired to bake cookies last night but I am ready today. I've decided not to shovel until the storm is over, tomorrow!

The Tyranny of the Forced Smile

in the Magic Kingdom, they are all expected to perform as if they love their work.
Article

When I was a child my mother always wore the smile-mask. It was so ridiculous that it began to haunt. I still remember a vivid dream I had when I was 11, about a family vacation in our station wagon. We got out and found a rubber smile resting on a plant in the jungle. We were told by a tour guide that it was a cast off from a face lift.
Back then The Stepford wives was my favorite movie. I have since come to love The Ice Storm. There's something sinister about wealth and the deprivation woven into it. The privileged suburbs shaped my terrifying view of humanity until I ran away and found real people in the real world.

I Love this Winter Snow

Even with daily shoveling perhaps because of daily shoveling I love this winter snow. Yesterday my husband and I spent the afternoon shoveling the two car garage roof. Then I cooked spicy garlic ginger green beans and baked a pot of brown rice in the red heart shaped iron pot friends gave us for our 20th anniversary 10 years ago. When I get a hot flash I plunk my face into the snow! It feels great.

In years past I always wished storms would last a few days rather than only a few hours. I wished the snow was light and fluffy and dry like it is. I wanted to sink into the storm rather than immediately start cleaning it up. A two or three day storm is great when it is light and fluffy. If we step out everyone is on foot. We talk to our neighbors and the world is peaceful and quiet for a moment. This is peace on earth.

Calf Love

I love baby cows and my dog is a baby cow in size and resemblance. I call her my cowie.

Puppy love has been around since the mid-1600s. Its meaning has remained unchanged since that time, though in the 1800s calf love was a popular alternative way to refer to the same concept. Both phrases describe the intense admiration young people feel when they form romantic attachments.

Linzer Hearts

Linzer Tarts

3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
12 ounces seedless raspberry preserves
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, approximate

Directions:
1
Cream butter, add sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
2
Add dry ingredients and blend thoroughly.
3
Chill for about 1/2 an hour.
4
Roll out dough between 1/8 and 1/4 inch on a lightly floured surface.
5
Cut half of the dough with flower cookie cutter, and the other half with the same cutter, but with centers removed.
6
Bake each batch 6-10 minutes at 400 degrees, or until just golden brown.
7
Spread preserves on whole cookies (bottoms), and top with cutouts.
8
Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar until covered.

Two People, Two Hours, Two Feet

We shoveled the flat double-garage roof.

Shoveling the Roof

We're shoveling the flat roof to make way for another foot of snow.

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
1122 AM EST SAT FEB 14 2015

.SYNOPSIS...
A POWERFUL AND VERY DANGEROUS OFFSHORE STORM DEVELOPING SATURDAY
NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY. BLIZZARD CONDITIONS FOR COASTAL COMMUNITIES.
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS WINDS WITH HURRICANE FORCE WIND GUSTS FOR THE
OUTER-CAPE AND NANTUCKET. EXCEPTIONALLY COLD AIR...THE COLDEST OF
THE SEASON...FOLLOWS LATE SUNDAY INTO TUESDAY MORNING. ANOTHER
STORM SYSTEM IS EXPECTED BY MIDWEEK.