Wendy

A citizen is a citizen. There should be no "second-class" citizens. It's 2012 folks! I should not be worried that my daughters might have their right to vote taken away from them! I know, that's over-reacting. But it is within my lifetime that I got the right to choose what I was going to do with my body; my grandmother was an adult before women got the right to vote.

I watched something interesting last night on PBS. They've started a new series called "Finding Your Roots", dealing with genealogy of famous people (Yep, like "Who Do You Think You Are"). One of the people they researched was Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, who was heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. He was amazed when they showed him that one of his ancestors, a slave emancipated by the Civil War, had registered to vote in 1867 in Alabama. Why was this so amazing to him? Because it took another hundred years, and the actions of him and many other people before his family could vote again. The Emancipation Proclamation declared:

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Well, it didn't take long for that to fall apart. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed, saying:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

They were having problems. According to Wikipedia, they were also demanding that voters be Christian in some areas.

Actually, I'm going to steal a whole chunk from Wikipedia here:

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865 after the Civil War, abolished and prohibited slavery and secured a minimal degree of citizenship to former slaves. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States,” and included the due process and equal protection clauses. This amendment did not explicitly prohibit vote discrimination on racial grounds.
The 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, provided that, "The right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Additionally under the Amendment, the Congress was given the authority to enforce those rights and regulate the voting process. Soon after the end of Reconstruction, starting in the 1870s, Southern Democratic legislators found other means to deny the vote to blacks, through violence, intimidation, and Jim Crow laws. From 1890 to 1908, 10 Southern states wrote new constitutions with provisions that included literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses that permitted otherwise disqualified voters whose grandfathers voted (thus allowing some white illiterates to vote), some with the aim and effect of re-imposing racially motivated restrictions on the voting process that disfranchised blacks. State provisions applied to all voters and were upheld by the Supreme Court in early litigation, from 1875 (United States v. Cruikshank) through 1904. During the early 20th century, the Supreme Court began to find such provisions unconstitutional in litigation of cases brought by African Americans and poor whites. States reacted rapidly in devising new legislation to continue disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites. Although there were numerous court cases brought to the Supreme Court, through the 1960s, Southern states effectively disfranchised most blacks.

Eventually, they put the boot in with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Of course, we are still having issues with voter disenfranchisement. If they pass the Voter ID issue, statistics suggest that suddenly over 200,000 people in the state of Minnesota will be unable to vote. Citizens of the United States of America, unable to vote. A right of citizenship, taken away.

And some politicians -- more than I would have thought possible a few years ago -- seem to be determined to take away my rights as a woman to choose how I will treat my body. My body is me, more than my religion, more than my citizenship. If I have no rights over my body, then what am I? Am I a slave?

August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment passed into law giving women the right to vote. 92 years ago. The Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade was in 1973, 39 years ago. Unfortunately, there was no law passed there, so while I look at it as a moral victory and a turning point, it has less effect on the world than I would hope. There are women in jail for deciding what to do with their bodies in some places in the United States. But if they destroy the fragile victory gained in 1973, if we are going backwards 39 years, then how soon before we go back 92?

We are all citizens. We all have those rights. Let us all exercise those rights and hope that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Since I haven't posted anything here recently and I've had a few requests for the recipe I mad last night, I thought I'd stick it here too.

Armenian Lamb Stew (Tass Kebab)

from The Frugal Gourmet On Our Immigrant Ancestors by Jeff Smith

2 pounds boneless lean leg of lamb, cut in 1 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons butter
2 medium yellow onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup tomato paste diluted with 1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons dry red wine

Heat a large frying pan and add the lamb and butter. Brown the meat and place it in a 6-quart stove-top casserole, leaving the fat in the frying pan. Saute the onions in the reserved fat and add to the pot, along with the remaining ingredients except the wine. Cover and simmer 45 minutes or until all is tender. Add the wine, cover, and simmer 15 minutes more.

This stew is very thick and rich-tasting. Serve it over rice.
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My notes: I used lamb shoulder which worked just fine. Just do your best to trim the fat off. I added extra water while it was simmering, eyeball it to keep it from burning! Instead of the dry red wine, I used vermouth. Over rice, with green peas on the side, I wished I'd had enough lamb to double the recipe!

This started due to an exchange I had with my sister, who noted that she had found mention that the government, to reduce the apparent inflation rate, had removed food from the statistics they include when announcing it. It didn't surprise me much, because it struck me as the sort of government manipulation of figures that they all do. I don't even know if this is a new thing. But we discussed grocery prices in our respective parts of the country and then went on to other things.

It stuck with me though, so I went looking. And I didn't look far, and I don't have a degree in economics, etc etc etc. But what I did see in a quick look does make me wonder. Take a look at this article from September: http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/15/news/economy/inflation_cpi/index.htm

The Consumer Price Index rose 3.8% in the month compared to a year earlier. That's up from 3.6% in July and is the highest reading since September 2008.

Bleah.

On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.4% in August, twice the rate of increase forecast by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
Consumers have been paying more for a lot of key goods and services. Clothing prices in August were up 4.2% over the year, while new car prices rose 3.8%. Used car prices were up even more, rising 5.4%. And medical care was 3.2% more expensive than a year ago.
Gas prices rose at a slower pace in August than the previous month, but were still 1.9% higher than the July reading. Over the last 12 months, overall energy prices are up 18.1%, while food prices have risen 4.6%.
Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI rose 2.0% annually, at the high end of the range viewed as acceptable by many economists, including those at the Federal Reserve.

Okay, this is the bit that I want to know about. They refer to "key goods and services", such as clothing, cars, and medical care. And they say they drop the "volatile food and energy prices" to figure the "core CPI". But aside from maybe the medical care, the "key goods" are generally optional to the average person. And I understand the volatility in the markets for food and energy can make things harder to track, but food and fuel (gas and electricity for our homes!) are necessities of life. So it sounds to me that while an inflation figure based on the "core" Consumer Price Index is a good tool for looking at trade and the economic health of the nation as a whole, it is pointless to use when trying to figure out the effect of inflation on consumers.

Want the actual Consumer Price Index statistics? Go here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
It's very interesting.

I'd love feedback on this if you have anything constructive to say, because I'm interested in learning. If your commentary is going to be more in the vein of calling me a pinko commie liberal or blaming the current administration because *they* are pinko commie liberals, don't bother.

So I was listening to a podcast the other day. Something was mentioned, sending me off to Safari immediately to check it out. Type in the address and...holy shit. Jessica Harper has written a cookbook!




Okay, maybe I need to explain who Jessica Harper is for some of you. Eons ago, I fell in love with the Brian DePalma masterpiece, "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974), in which Jessica Harper plays Phoenix, the...well, not the heroine. The love interest for William Finley's Winslow Leach/Phantom, as he goes up against Paul Williams' evil Swan. (Yes, *that* Paul Williams. Sadly, he has yet to write a cookbook.) Anyway, that's the first place I ever ran into Jessica Harper. She didn't impress me much. Her acting was okay, her singing was...well, fine, I guess. It's a good song, but it kind of slows things down. And her dancing...well, yeah. Not a high point of the film. Anyway, I didn't think about her much. I guess she was in other things that I haven't seen. "Suspiria" gets mentioned a lot. Then I fell in with "Wiseguy" fandom (Wiseguy, Cannell Productions, (1987-1990) and who should be there screwing over our favorite lightbulb with ears but Jessica Harper?** So that's pretty much where I know Jessica Harper from, one somewhat schlocky cult hit (with the most kick-ass soundtrack this side of "O Lucky Man!"...or possibly better. Don't make me choose.) and two episodes of a tv show from the 80's. I had no idea what she had been doing since then.

Well, apparently she was raising a family and writing a cookbook! It's called The Crabby Cook Cookbook, and she has a website for it [www.thecrabbycook.com]. I've been reading it over the last couple of days and I find it to be an amusing read as well as the home to "135 almost-effortless recipes plus survival tips". I stole that from the front cover. The cover is also home to quotes from Ruth Reichl and Valerie Bertinelli...weird combo, but hey. I've found several recipes I'd like to try for my family, and I feel that she can empathize with my issues in dealing with picky eaters, as she talks about the daughter who would only eat six things. I smiled when I read the words "When the kids got older and would tolerate pasta of different shapes...." Welcome to my world!

I think if you're looking for a family-friendly cookbook, one that isn't complicated and doesn't require you to go out and get anything more exotic than Gruyere cheese (admittedly, that would have been *plenty* exotic when I was growing up!), this one would be a good choice. Check out her website to get your own idea of what it's like.
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*Nothing against Gwyneth Paltrow, but I've heard lots about her book while this one slipped under my radar.

**Maybe if she had done more cooking for Frank I would have been more sympathetic? Nah. She dumps her husband after he compromises his ethics to come up with the money to get a new liver for her? Hmph. Sorry...that was Jenny McPike, not Jessica Harper. Poor Frank....

Thank you for everything you've done for the world. I wish you were here to enjoy it with us.



And a side thank you (and belated happy birthday) to Paul Williams, for the soundtrack to The Muppet Movie. (And Phantom of the Paradise!)

There's a guy who is taking art off the internet and making big bucks off it. Spread the word! This person has details: http://dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com/310212.html

Hi, Sandy. It's been a long time since we last talked -- over a decade! -- but I wanted to drop you a note to let you know I was thinking about you. You are there in my earliest memories of the internet, pre-world wide web. (Geez, are we that old?) I think you were one of the folks who laughed your ass off over how I discovered slash fiction, and may have been the one that pointed out to me that while there were folks in the B7 group that enjoyed it, that we kept it pretty quiet there.

You put me up on one of my visits to Seattle, and then proceeded to introduce me to the joys of Starsky & Hutch fanfiction (including probably my favorite S&H story ever, which I forgot to write down or lost the note on and have never again found a copy, darn it!). You then proceeded to give me instruction on how to vid, while you were working on "You Gotta Be".

I've been out of touch with a lot of fandom over the last decade and a bit, but I've been raising my own fangirls.

(This is two years ago, when Scooby Doo was the current fandom. Last year they were Pokemon trainers, and this year they were Batgirl and Supergirl.)

Right now they are mostly absorbing the media, but they do write and illustrate their own stories. They've been doing crossovers from an early age. Somewhere, I have a picture that Laura, my eldest, did after watching the Doctor Who story 'Pyramids of Mars'. She cast her favorite stuffed animal, Peter Rabbit, as the evil Sutekh.

Some day they might trip over mom's old zine collection, and they might have the same reaction I did. (Over the same zine, even. I still have that copy of 'Fire and Ice' that Denetia Arellanes sold me!) But the fannish world is a different place these days. Who knows? But the time they get to it, slash fandom may no longer raise eyebrows. It has been a long time since I horrified Jean whatserface who did the Man From U.N.C.L.E. zines by mentioning slash.

One of these days we'll sit down at the computer and figure out how to edit video together, and I'll show them Media Cannibals vids as examples, because those are some of my favorites. And I'll be doing my best to dredge out of my memory the things you taught me. Thank you! And thank you for *all* the memories...even the slightly off-key ones from Escapade.

Wendy Comeau (formerly Hyers)

a.k.a. Why my day has been a tightly-wound ball of fuzzy nutso.

For any of you that might follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I thought I should explain.

We have had an annoying buzzing noise on our phone line for a couple of days. We have also been having our internet service experience drop-outs, and that's the same company. Therefore, I set up an appointment to have a Qwest tech stop by and fix it today. Because it was an external issue, I didn't have to be here and they set the appointment for any time during the day.

Today, about 10 am, I hear banging on the door. I'm upstairs, on the floor, and my knees hate me, so it took me a minute to get to the door. No one in sight. I check the other door. There's not a van parked anywhere nearby either. Whatever.

About 11, the girls and I discover that the internet is out. I check the phone -- no dial tone. I look around, no guy and no van. I grab my cell phone and after the gauntlet of buttons to push, reach a live human in another country (sheer speculation on my part, but....) who tells me that the fellow is here. I look some more and realize that I can see about 1 1/2 feet of ladder sticking up over our garage. Oh! Okay, that's why. I thank her, and get the girls ready to go to class. Ten minutes later we're out the door. There's a ladder, a disconnected cable, and two cones blocking our alleyway. No guy, no truck. Whatever. He'll be done by the time I get back. I manage to do a u-turn in the alleyway and take the girls to class.

I then get the van to the dealership for an hour and 45 minutes of sitting and trying to ignore CNN, which proves irresistably bad. The high point was Fred Thompson trying to sell reverse mortgages to elderly people. (Knox Pooley, anyone?) From there I go to the grocery store. About 3 1/2 hours after I left, I get home. No ladder, no dangling cable. So far, so good.

I get in the house and check the phone. No dial tone. WTF???? There's a tag on the front door from Qwest, but with none of the info filled in. I have no clue. I call the 800 number again, same long process. This time they tell me that he hasn't been here yet. I explain that he was, as I HAVE NO DIAL TONE. They explain that the repair guy hasn't come yet. I explain that I'm really annoyed and they are messing up my day. They stick to the script. The guy hasn't been here yet. I hang up my cell phone, and try to use the AT&T connection on my iPad to get to the Qwest rep that I'm pretty sure is on Twitter. AT&T hates me. I'm in Minneapolis, for heaven's sake! But I have no coverage. I call Paul and cry on his shoulder. He gets on Twitter and finds the right place and vents heavily.

At that point, I figure I have to get out of the house (this is where the sane tweeting came from). I go to (relatively) nearby coffeeshop Sister Sludge, and get myself high-calorie treats. These are sane people. Their seats are comfy. Paul calls and lets me know that he has talked to someone in Iowa (same continent, whoo-hoo!) and that things are looking up. I pick up the girls at 4:30 and head home, secure in the knowledge that if the Qwest guy shows up, at least Paul is home and I won't have to deal with it.

Eventually the guy did show up, and was nice, and explained some of what had happened (although I think the previous guy -- yes, there were two of them -- needs some more training). And best of all, it all was fixed. I'm not sure how much of what had to be fixed was what I had originally called about, but.... And the person covering their Twitter account was good, as was the person in Iowa. But it kinda destroyed my productivity and plans for the afternoon.

I think I'm still recovering. I may also be coming down with a sinus infection. But Paul assures me that there is a sidecar waiting for me in the refrigerator and that he will get it for me whenever I want it, which I think will be right after the girls are in bed. Bleah. Long day.

I found this today.

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Title: The Poor Little Penny Dreadful
Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch


The poor little Penny Dreadful has been catching it once more. Once more the British Press has stripped to its massive waist and solemnly squared up to this hardened young offender. It calls this remarkable performance a "Crusade."

I like these Crusades. They remind one of that merry passage in Pickwick (p. 254 in the first edition):--


"Whether Mr. Winkle was seized with a temporary attack of that species of insanity which originates in a sense of injury, or animated by this display of Mr. Weller's valour, is uncertain; but certain it is, that he no sooner saw Mr. Grummer fall, than he made a terrific onslaught on a small boy who stood next to him; whereupon Mr. Snodgrass--"


[Pay attention to Mr. Snodgrass, if you please, and cast your memories back a year or two, to the utterances of a famous Church Congress on the National Vice of Gambling.]


"--whereupon Mr. Snodgrass, in a truly Christian spirit, and in order that he might take no one unawares, announced in a very loud tone that he was going to begin, and proceeded to take off his coat with the utmost deliberation. He was immediately surrounded and secured; and it is but common justice both to him and to Mr. Winkle to say that they did not make the slightest attempt to rescue either themselves or Mr. Weller, who, after a
most vigorous resistance, was overpowered by numbers and taken prisoner. The procession then reformed, the chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced."


"The chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced."
Is it any wonder that Dickens and Labiche have found no fit successors? One can imagine the latter laying down his pen and confessing himself beaten at his own game; for really this periodical "crusade" upon the Penny Dreadful has all the qualities of the very best vaudeville--the same bland exhibition of bourgeois logic, the same wanton appreciation of evidence, the same sententious alacrity in seizing the immediate explanation--the more trivial the better--the same inability to reach the remote cause, the same profound unconsciousness of absurdity.

You remember La Grammaire? Caboussat's cow has eaten a piece of broken glass, with fatal results. Machut, the veterinary, comes:--


Caboussat. "Un morceau de verre ... est-ce drole? Une vache de quatre ans."

Machut. "Ah! monsieur, les vaches ... �a avale du verre à tout �ge. J'en ai connu une qui a mangé une éponge à laver les cabriolets ... à sept ans! Elle en est morte."

Caboussat. "Ce que c'est que notre pauvre humanité!"


Our friends have been occupied with the case of a half-witted boy who consumed Penny Dreadfuls and afterwards went and killed his mother. They infer that he killed his mother because he had read Penny
Dreadfuls (post hoc ergo propter hoc) and they conclude very naturally that Penny Dreadfuls should be suppressed. But before roundly pronouncing the doom of this--to me unattractive--branch of fiction, would it not be well to inquire a trifle more deeply into cause and effect? In the first place matricide is so utterly unnatural
a crime that there must be something abominably peculiar in a form of literature that persuades to it. But a year or two back, on the occasion of a former crusade, I took the pains to study a considerable number of Penny Dreadfuls. My reading embraced all those--I believe I am right in saying all--which were reviewed, a few
days back, in the Daily Chronicle; and some others. I give you my word I could find nothing peculiar about them. They were even rather ostentatiously on the side of virtue. As for the bloodshed in them, it
would not compare with that in many of the five-shilling adventure stories at that time read so eagerly by boys of the middle and upper classes. The style was ridiculous, of course: but a bad style excites nobody but a reviewer, and does not even excite him to deeds of the kind we are now trying to account for. The reviewer in the Daily
Chronicle thinks worse of these books than I do. But he certainly failed to quote anything from them that by the wildest fancy could be interpreted as sanctioning such a crime as matricide.

Let us for a moment turn our attention from the Penny Dreadful to the boy--from the éponge á laver les cabriolets to notre pauvre humanité. Now--to speak quite seriously--it is well known to every
doctor and every schoolmaster (and should be known, if it is not, to every parent), that all boys sooner or later pass through a crisis in growth during which absolutely nothing can be predicted of their behavior. At such times honest boys have given way to lying and theft, gentle boys have developed an unexpected savagery, ordinary boys--"the small apple-eating urchins whom we know"--have fallen into morbid brooding upon unhealthy subjects. In the immense majority of cases the crisis is soon over and the boy is himself again; but while it lasts,
the disease will draw its sustenance from all manner of things--things, it may be, in themselves quite innocent. I avoid particularizing for many reasons; but any observant doctor will confirm what I have said. Now the moderately affluent boy who reads five-shilling stories of adventure has many advantages at this period over the poor boy who reads Penny Dreadfuls. To begin with, the crisis has a tendency to attack him later. Secondly, he meets it fortified by a better training and more definite ideas of the difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice. Thirdly (and this is very important), he is probably under school discipline at the time--which means, that he is to some extent watched and shielded. When I think of these advantages, I frankly confess that the difference in the literature these two boys read seems to me to count for very little. I myself have written "adventure-stories" before now: stories which, I suppose--or, at any rate, hope--would come into the class of "Pure Literature," as the term is understood by those who have been writing on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination
of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous.

For indeed it is not possible to name any book out of which a perverted mind will not draw food for its disease. The whole fallacy lies in supposing literature the cause of the disease. Evil men are not evil because they read bad books: they read bad books because they are evil: and being evil, or diseased, they are quickly able to
extract evil or disease even from very good books. There is talk of disseminating the works of our best authors, at a cheap rate, in the hope that they will drive the Penny Dreadful out of the market. But has good literature at the cheapest driven the middle classes from their false gods? And let it be remembered, to the credit of these
poor boys, that they do buy their books. The middle classes take their poison on hire or exchange.

But perhaps the full enormity of the cant about Penny Dreadfuls can best be perceived by travelling to and fro for a week between London and Paris and observing the books read by those who travel with first-class tickets. I think a fond belief in Ivanhoe-within-the-reach-of-all would not long survive that experiment.

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Penny dreadfuls, comic books, jazz music, video games....

This piece is by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. The original date of publication? October 5, 1895. They never listen....

This is my two cents on the death of Osama bin Laden. I'm going to put it out there, and disable comments where I can. This is solely my opinion, and I don't need trolls or arguments with friends to make me feel bad.

I consider myself to be a liberal (fiscal conservative/social liberal, really), and I frequently vote Democrat. I vote other things too, though rarely Republican. I am proud to live in the United States of America, though I am not always proud of the choices the people in charge make. I'm not religious, but agnostic. I'm not a pacifist -- I do believe that military intervention is sometimes called for. I think that "hate" generally damages the person doing the hating more than the person being hated.

I have very clear memories of September 11, 2001. I was at home with my 8-month-old daughter, in Minneapolis. My husband called...MPR didn't have the news yet, but CNN did. I'd been to New York City twice before, never been to the World Trade Center. But watching CNN from my basement in Minneapolis, it felt like someone had struck at my heart, and the heart of the country. I was shattered. And it took some time for my little world to get back to normal. It was too quiet, lending the world an air of waiting for something to happen. They'd grounded the flights that normally went over our house, and we'd occasionally hear a military plane. But life went on, and my world did get back to normal. Mostly.

That's my life, though. Many other people had their lives much more badly torn apart than I did. And not just those that lost friends and family to the attacks. I know people that changed radically after the attack, who I internally think of as "damaged", as it seems to have pulled them apart and not let them come back together the way they were before.

After the announcement of last night, I heard stories of crowds of people chanting "USA, USA" (something that would usually get me rolling my eyes) and people cheering that Osama bin Laden was dead. I have also heard people saying how horrible this is, to cheer for a death. Tasteless though some of the reactions may be, I'm certainly not going to miss him. And I am hoping beyond hope that this will enable some of the people damaged by the attack on 9/11 to pick up the healing process once again. And I am hoping that this will help our country to heal a little bit more of the great rift that was created after 9/11. To use the inevitable metaphor, a wound with a foreign object in it will not heal properly. If the obstruction is removed, there is hope that the wound will heal correctly and the body can be strong once again. Our country needs this and so do its people.