Do I Have to Spell It Out?

Your Mission...

2011-05-28T09:56:00.000-05:00

…should you choose to accept it, is to help me win the We Blog Better Guest Posting Contest. The gloves are off; a certain blog promotion site owner has entered the contest and is now mass mailing all of his loyal subscribers, asking them to vote and comment on his entry.

Well, Dear Readers, we may be a much smaller group, but I have faith you all.

I’d tell you who it is, but… knowing human nature as I do, you’d just feel compelled to run over and take a peek at the competition, and that would only serve to increase his entry’s views. Then, you might feel the urge to post a quick “Nanny nanny boo boo!!” in his comments, but that would only add to his points, as well. So no peeking. Seriously. Stop now. I know your fingers are itching – don’t do it.

If your clicking fingers need a workout (did you know that you burn five calories for every 100 keystrokes?*), the following online activities might be fun – and they will definitely help me win:

Vote me up! The links below will take you straight to Blokube, Digg,Blog Interact, and Blog Engage entries for each of my contest posts. Just click the links below and vote (or Digg or Share):

Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Plan on Blokube and
Search Engine Optimization? SEO What? on Blokube
Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Plan on Digg
and Search Engine Optimization? SEO What? on Digg
Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Plan on Blog Interact and Search Engine Optimization? SEO What? on Blog Interact
Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Plan on Blog Engage and Search Engine Optimization? SEO What? on Blog Engage (Hit this one hard. Really hard. Did you know that it’s not illegal for minors and pets to vote? It’s a little-known loophole, but yeah – it’s perfectly legal! Go for it. Woof, Fido!!)

If you’ve already done all of these things, this is the LAST time you need to think about it – because you can only vote and Digg an entry ONCE on each site. Done here? Done. Move on to the next paragraph, please!

Comment and Share! You can do these things every day. Several times a day. Go read the contest entry posts (if you haven’t already) and comment, comment, comment!

Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Planand also on Search Engine Optimization? SEO What?

NOTE: Only the first three levels of threaded comments count, so here’s a thought – leave one comment for each point in the post – for example, what did you think of the planning tips? How about theTwitter tips? Facebook tips? And so on. It’s good practice for writing single topic emails later in the day, right?

If you like the posts, please don’t keep them to yourself – hit those Share and Like buttons. Remember: Sharing is caring. Practice those Twitter and Facebook skills!

Got a blog? Inbound links are golden. (If you have a blog, you know this.) Consider linking to one or both of my contest entries, please.

How to Comment When You Don’t Know What to Say

Several people have asked for my help in formulating comments. A couple even said, “I wanted to comment, but you pretty much said it all in your post.” Whoops. I really do value your input here, now more than ever! I may have come across as a know-it-all, but that’s only because I bluff well. Oddly, most of you seem quite capable of being chatty when you want to be – so I can only surmise this is something akin to “stage fright.” What you need to do is imagine all those other bloggers over there wearing nothing but their skivvies…

Scratch that thought. Of course, if you want to imagine my competitor, aka “He Who Must Not Be Named,” dressed in nothing but his Underoos, that’s your business.

A few ideas for comments in general:

Start a new thread, or comment on a first-level comment.
Remember that you do not have to be right, nor do you have to know the first thing about “SEO” or “social media,” although I’m pretty sure you can talk authoritatively about the latter if you’re a Facebook addict like the other 67% of us.
Begin your comment with, “Great post…” but to avoid being labeled a spammer, be sure to give at least one good reason why it was “great,” or “pithy,” or “enlightening,” or “entertaining,” or “information-packed,” or “thought-provoking,” or “hilarious,” or … okay, yeah, you get the idea.
Begin your comment with, “You are SO full of beans! Idjit! You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about…” but again, be sure to elaborate and enumerate the points you take exception to and why.
Ask a question. The question should contain at least 3 key words from the content of the post, no more than 11, and should be creative and original. “Do you feel that SEO – that is, search engine optimization techniques – and good writing will be relevant in the post-Apocalyptic, zombie-run world, or will all brains be sourced locally by illiterates who say ‘Unngggh, bwaiiiins’?” Or, “Which is running hotter on the Zombie forums, according to Google Analytics and Twitter metrics: sporks or bendy straws? Do sporks and bendy straws have their own Facebook pages yet?” Do you see? There’s an art to this – but once you get started, you’ll see just how much fun it can be. (Do try to keep the discussion at least tangentially related to the post, lest you annoy Kiesha and she be forced to step in and stop said fun.)
Tell everyone about my books Trockle and A Puppy, Not a Guppy (Aforementioned competitor’s fans are waxing poetic and gushing about his site, so it’s only fair my fans get equal time, don’t you think?)
Did I mention that We Blog Better uses CommentLuv? Who doesn’t need more Luv?

A few ideas for comments on Failure to Plan, Planning to Fail: Why You Need a Social Media Plan:

What is your business? Do you have a social media plan?
What kind of metrics do you use to measure “success,” personally?
How do you set SMART goals?
What are your own favorite tips for Twitter, Facebook, Empire Avenue, LinkedIN, blogging?
Where do you see yourself in five years? (Gahhh, we all hate that question with a purple passion. Have fun with it here! Let ‘er rip!)
What did you think of the links I provided to more information? Did you hover over each of them? Did you find anything interesting when you did?

A few ideas for comments on Search Engine Optimization? SEO What?

Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Which SEO techniques, plug-ins, or add-ons have you found truly useful?
What did you think of the links I provided to more information? Did you hover over each of them? Did you find anything interesting when you did?

Well, you’re on your own from here. Please help me win this thing! It’s become a point of pride, now.

Blogger was down??

2011-05-14T08:01:00.000-05:00

Where was I?

I missed all the fuss. Happy Saturday, everyone!

Book, Nook, and Kindle

2011-04-17T15:10:00.002-05:00

My coworker and I are enjoying an "antisocial lunch." :)

Playing with Design (Again!)

2011-04-17T14:35:00.000-05:00

I loved the old theme, but it just wasn't clean enough. The sidebar was too narrow, the proportions all wrong... and I've already got one high-maintenance, highly-customized, very personal theme on my main blog, It's All a Matter of Perspective. So I went looking for a new Blogger theme, and I like this one so far. Getting the header just right is a bit of work if you're not a graphic artist, but it's fun and it's not going to suck half my life away.

What do you think? It's from Roam2Rome.

Writers Blog Through Writer's Block

2011-04-17T12:28:00.000-05:00

I don't believe in "writer's block." I believe "writer's block" is just a face-saving way of saying one of the following:

I don't have the skill to express, on paper, all the cool thoughts running around in my head.
I don't have a cool thought in my head right now; I have absolutely NOTHING worthwhile to say.
I want to write, but I feel guilty leaving the housework to rot.
It's a really pretty day out, and writing feels too much like work.
Truth is, I don't want to write at all. Writing's PAINFUL. I want to have written, preferably a bestselling book with a six-figure advance.

Next time you're tempted to say, "I have writer's block," ask yourself why - ask, "What do I really mean by this term, 'writer's block'?" Then, if you really want to write, address the root cause of the problem - don't moan about it. The writer with writer's block is a cliche - and any writer KNOWS that cliches are to be avoided like the...zombies created when the cook at Dan's Deli put too much preservative in the salami. (Wordy, perhaps, but "plague" would've been unintentionally ironic.)

Grab that paper and pen and WRITE!! Or leave a comment below, telling us YOUR favorite excuses NOT to write.

An Annual Thing

2010-07-11T20:14:00.002-05:00

Get the feeling it's an annual thing, this "redecorate and blow your blog away" deal?

Blogging. Why?

2010-07-11T17:13:00.004-05:00

Right now, I don't even know.

For the second time in a month, I've killed my site. Arguably, this one's about 90% my fault. But the point IS arguable - I wouldn't have killed it had I not relied on my host's support article that said, essentially, "Oh, that little directory there? You don't really need that. You could blow it away, and your site would still load."

Arguably, it's IntenseDebate's fault. Or the theme developer's.

I suppose it's NOT IntenseDebate's fault, exactly; everything was working just fiiiine until I tried deactivating the plug-in. Ever try beating a Zombie with its own arm? Not a pretty sight.

Next thing I knew, I was getting a Feedburner window every time I tried entering a comment. Anyone here ever have an issue (we're talking WordPress, here) where, upon clicking Submit on the comments, a Feedburner subscription email confirmation dialog pops up??

Here's the sequence of events:

- Installed and activated KeywordLuv
- Deactivated IntenseDebate (name field's not long enough for KeywordLuv)
- Got stupid cross-link between Comments and Feedburner.

I had this cross link when I first switched Web hosts, too. Reinstalling and resyncing IntenseDebate is probably what fixed it; I'm not sure. Bottom line: I've seen it before, and it went away.

Any ideas?

For all the snobbery on the part of some WordPress users, and for all the fun one can have with WordPress, there's much to be said for the simplicity of Blogger.

Go Ahead and Write on the Walls...Really!

2009-08-09T16:38:00.001-05:00

It has been a couple of months since I wrote about my plans for the Wall Candy Arts - Chalkboard Removable Wall Decals from AllModernBaby. They arrived on my doorstep just before we were due to leave on our vacation, and by the time we were done with a ten-day trip to Vancouver and Alaska, and a week-long family reunion in Los Angeles, I was so busy trying to get caught up on work and other things that I barely had time to look at them. So much for using them as my secret weapon in the Plan to Get Organized.

When I did get a chance to open the package, I found the chalkboard decals commiserating with my Franklin Planner and my son's dog-eared, but largely unused, assignment notebook from Seventh Grade. The decals were exactly as advertised - easy to apply.

It's not the most beautiful wall decoration ever, particularly when applied over eggshell white paint. (Oh, hey - you were expecting to see this in the kids' rooms? My youngest is 13, meaning we don't post pictures of his private inner sanctum on the blog. Just imagine it on the wall in your toddler's room, or think of all the creative places YOU could put it in YOUR house.) But these are meant to encourage creativity, doodling, and posting quick reminders - not to grace the walls of a formal living room. Be sure to peel each decal carefully off the backing; I got a faint but definite crease in this one when I peeled it too quickly and it folded over on itself. I suspect the crease will show up more, over time, as it collects a fine layer of chalk dust. I'm also sure that a damp cloth will make it (mostly) disappear again. My main concern had been the fact that all of our walls are textured and painted. Although a smooth surface is recommended, the chalkboard decals work just fine on textured, painted walls. It does make for a slightly bumpy writing surface, and that makes it harder to write actual words - assuming you care, later, about being able to read them. But it might serve to teach the basics of stone rubbing, and it can be a great little pick-me-up when the kids write encouraging notes, like, "Oh, for cripe's sake, mom, you're not blogging about ME again, are you?"

I made that up. Between the bumpy surface and the three sticks of standard-issue white institutional chalk that comes with these things, there's not really room for all that prose.

I suppose, if I'd put all the decals together, edge-to-edge, there would've been room for the first draft of a very short children's picture book or a couple of colorful limericks. But I suggest that these wall clings are more appropriate for creative, artistic doodles and I would like to have seen a small package of multicolored chalk included in the cylinder with the decals. That said, I think these should be reserved for kids who are old enough to know how how to color inside the lines, or you'll have chalk all over the walls. It's not easy to keep it off the walls when erasing, as it is.

Overall, the chalkboard wall decals from WallCandy Arts are fun, imaginative, and a nice way to encourage creativity, assuming you're pretty sure your kids won't take it as a license to freely write on all the walls. Together or separately, they can serve as a cute little family message board, but for organization and scheduling, I'd stick to a write-on, wipe-off wall calendar.

My twenty year old daughter is eager to steal a couple of these for herself. I told her she could, as soon as I finished telling you about them.

Doesn't Pay Attention, Doesn't Follow Directions

2009-06-09T17:49:00.001-05:00

My son is the quintessential "absent-minded professor." And I'm sorry to say he gets it from me. Often portrayed as a talented, brilliant thinker whose focus on theory or invention leads him to ignore or forget his real-world surroundings, the absent-minded professor is prone to making lame-brained mistakes, like putting his shoes on the wrong feet. Or watching the stars so intently that he steps into a mud puddle. More generally, the phrase is used to describe people who are so engrossed in their own little world that they lose track of their surroundings.

We'd do well to keep an organizer or a PDA, if only we could remember where we put it. Post-It® notes work well, too - if we bother to look at them. It doesn't matter if they're plastered all over the PC monitor; we're so lost in the space between our ears we simply stop seeing them for the organizational tool that they are. The sunny yellow squares begin to remind us of a lion's mane, and next thing you know, we're on a mental safari in the Serengeti.

People like us make great novelists and poets, but we don't do well on assembly lines. We'd be a danger to ourselves and others if heavy machinery, sharp objects, and repetitive work were involved.

Fortunately, homework is merely repetitive and a paper cut never killed anyone. Or did it? (Google is a great distraction. I call it "the rabbit hole.") Anyway... a little more organization wouldn't come amiss. I'm sure my teachers would've appreciated it, and maybe it's not too late for my son to develop better habits.

NOT that I think it's going to be the magic bullet or anything, but I am looking forward to reviewing some clever chalkboard wall decals from All Modern Baby. If they don't help my son and me get organized, they will at least appeal to our inner artists. While my babies aren't babies anymore, I was intrigued with some of the versatile furniture and products they carry, such as Stokke Care Changing Table Student Desk Expansion Kit that is designed to grow with your baby. Add a couple of Stokke Classic Tripp Trapp High Chairs - high chairs that convert to chairs for kids, teens, and adults - and you've got the perfect little study desk or gaming desk.

Please Update Your Bookmarks!

2009-06-08T18:45:00.001-05:00

I'm changing my blogging headquarters.

I'm not abandoning this blog, but if you want to get the latest posts, be sure to bookmark http://jahangiri.us/news - because most of them will go there.

Survey says...

2009-06-03T07:33:00.003-05:00

With only eight votes and a clear lack of strong preference, I'll be keeping this blog around for a while, but I will be focusing for now on my new blog, "It's All a Matter of Perspective: Mine." I hope you'll come visit me there!

A Note Would've Been Nice

2009-06-02T10:53:00.001-05:00

After several days of struggling to set up WordPress on my own hosted domain, and to configure it just so, "pretty permalinks" and all, I'd finally got everything working. But at a price.

Opening up your entire installation with permissions set to 777 probably isn't real smart. But it worked! And I wrote to hostingsupport to gloat about my unique combination of cleverness and stupidity - which was my second mistake. Or so I hope.

I think they locked me out of my own WordPress installation. At least, I hope they did. Because .htaccess has now been replaced with a small HTML error page, and I appear to be locked out of that whole subdirectory by a higher authority.

Which is what I'd do if I were troubleshooting a manic customer's account - especially after they'd informed me of every step in their painfully haphazard, buckshot approach to the scientific method ("After exhausting myself trying to change permissions on each file, one at a time, I said, 'Screw it,' and set ALL of them to 777 - and guess what? - it worked! Yippee!") But a note would've been nice.

Because now I don't know if I just hurt myself with some stupid user error, of if they really locked me out - and if they locked me out, was it for the very sensible purpose of preventing me from altering anything while they helped me to resolve all my issues, or was it just to shut me down and shut me up, once and for all?

I'm tempted to start all over again in a brand new directory. So there. See how important it is to COMMUNICATE? Grrrrr.

No, patience is not one of my virtues. Why do you ask?

President Obama Setting an Example for Schoolchildren??

2009-05-29T12:52:00.006-05:00

H. says, "Students have new ammunition in the fight to lean back in their chairs!"

To which D. replies, "Sorry, just because so-and-so (even if it the President Of The United States) does it, it doesn't make it right."

D.'s argument is not without merit, but I believe it is essential that children be allowed to emulate the President and lean back in their chairs. Falling on one's head, or getting the wind knocked out of them when the chair passes its tipping point, provides an early and practical lesson in physics, balance, consequences, and the rationale for listening to authority (which is why it is also essential to tell children NOT to do this, even while recognizing the value inherent in the behavior). Elementary school children (and possibly U.S. Presidents) are 67.4% less likely to sustain a serious physical injury as a result of "backfall." Children, because they are naturally resilient; U.S. Presidents because their Secret Service detail has been trained to dive across the room in under .45 nanoseconds so as to cushion the President's fall.

It should be noted that several important diplomatic protocols would be breached should anyone but Mrs. Obama attempt to point out to the President the likely consequences of leaning back and tipping his chair. Even Mrs. Obama would be permitted only the most subtle of raised eyebrows unless First Daughters Sasha and Malia were also present in the room, allowing the First Mother to use the First Father as an example to them of "what not to do even if you're the leader of the free world."

The Da Vinci Cruise

2009-05-27T20:15:00.001-05:00

She was built, ironically, as a replacement for the S.S. Andrea Doria. When I sailed on the S.S. Leonardo da Vinci, however, I knew nothing of its "illustrious" heritage. Somehow, I'd been allowed to join a senior class cruise - not my senior class, mind you (I never had one). I was fifteen. I felt very grown up, and quite amazed that my parents were letting me take a cruise to the Bahamas by myself.

They drove me to Ft. Lauderdale, where I boarded the ship for a three-day cruise to Nassau. Having been on several cruises before, and having been to Nassau more than once, I don't recall being the least bit nervous. I found my cabin, and met my roommate, L. We were supposed to leave our cabin keys in the box, with the cabin steward, but neither of us trusted him. He seemed a bit too friendly. We somehow conspired to get both keys out of the box and dodged him each time he looked as if he might try asking us to return them. His faltering English put him at a disadvantage with two disingenuous teenaged girls; we practiced clueless smiles and pretended to have no idea what he wanted for the next three days.

Our idea of what he wanted terrified us. We weren't about to hand over the keys.

At dinner, I met our chaperones: Two pleasant couples. The first couple consisted of the Coach and his new bride - a plump and radiant young woman who had been a student the previous year. He had waited for her to turn eighteen so that they could wed. This was a honeymoon, of sorts, for them. They were both round and pleasant and obviously very much in love. The second couple consisted of an attractive, middle-aged man and an attractive, middle-aged woman. Or maybe they were young. They were older than me, and younger than the Coach. Who knows. Who cares? I sat at their table, since I was really too young to be on a senior class trip, and they had somehow been rooked into keeping an eye on me, too.

Early experiences cruising on ships like the S.S. United States had spoiled me and led me to believe that cruise ship food should be amazing. A seemingly endless parade of exotic delicacies ranging from "Chilled Fresh Persian Malossal Caviar" to "Kangaroo Tail en Tasse" to "Clear Ox-Tail" to a never-ending row of food and desserts known as the "Midnight Buffet" - an elegant event to be treasured when you are five and your bedtime would otherwise be seven o'clock in the evening.

The Leonardo disabused me of such notions. There were hard rolls in a basket; these, we learned to stab with a fingertip or crush to dust on a bread plate to ensure that we would not see them again at each meal. There was green pasta. I had never seen spinach pasta, and I'm not convinced, to this day, that spinach is what gave this particular pasta its peculiar moldy tint. The food was adequate - I mean, no one starves on a three day excursion to the Bahamas. But the word "scurvy" embedded itself in my brain, and I swear to you the only reason I drank so much blackberry brandy was the vain hope that I might suck down enough vitamin C from it to keep my bones from bleeding.

As on the S.S. United States, I lost my inhibitions (on the former, it was due to being five; on the Leonardo, it was probably due to an overdose of "vitamin C") and I sang in the ship's lounge. The piano player was a good sport; the old folks hanging out in the lounge were enchanted and amused. How many fifteen year olds knew all the words to "Sentimental Journey" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"? After two or three old standbys, the vitamin C buzz was fading fast, and embarrassment was setting in. I went to find something else to do.

Somewhere along the way, I ran into Chaperone Couple #2. I was relieved; somehow, the presence of well-dressed, well-educated, proper adults gave me back my anchor and a sense of safety. I sat down to chat with them a while.

The woman got up to get them another round of drinks. The man continued to hold a pleasant, banal conversation with me. And then suddenly, his hand was on my thigh. We didn't blurt out "WTF?" back then, but something akin to it went whizzing through my brain. I jumped up as if someone had lit my tailfeathers on fire, and high-tailed it back to the bar, myself. By now, they'd run out of blackberry brandy. The bartender suggested something called a Singapore Sling. It looked like a grown-up version of a Shirley Temple, so I gave it a try. Nasty, but there must've been some vitamin C in it, because I was soon feeling a bit calmer.

Two really tall, really handsome seniors came up behind me and introduced themselves. "We heard you singing in the lounge. You sing really well."

Urk. "I don't sing."

"That wasn't you? That was you."

"Must've been my evil twin." It's really hard to sink into a barstool and hide.

"How many of those have you had?"

"Not enough to keep my knees from bleeding. Need more vitamin C."

Somehow, the conversation turned to the chaperones, and my shocking experience with Mr. Respectably Middle-Class. The boys laughed. "That's not his wife!"

"Not...his wife?" I blinked. I think I'd had too much vitamin C, because chaperones who weren't married to each other but pretended to be married to each other was just a little bit more than my brain could untangle. "So, he's not married?"

"Oh, he's married, all right. Last year, he took his wife and his mistress on the cruise. This year, his wife said, 'If she goes, I stay home.'"

"Oh, my. So she stayed home, and he brought the mistress?" I'm slow, not entirely stupid.

"That's right."

The animals were running the zoo. "Please don't leave me." I appointed both of these handsome young men my bodyguards, and they performed their duties admirably and chivalrously. (Really. The words "jail bait" used to work remarkably well. They were smitten, but probably had girlfriends and definitely had plans that did not include jail time.) Their constant presence also helped to fend off the advances of an amorous Italian cabin steward who apparently took my saying, ¡Felíz Pascua! as "Wanna do me in the engine room?" and tried to pin me to the wall in a spontaneous embrace that was part bear, part welterweight champion.

By the last night, I was quite ill. I was feverish, possibly delusional, and the glands in my neck were swollen to the point where I might be mistaken for someone with a goiter. Even vitamin C couldn't help me. I turned in early and took a coat hanger into the upper bunk - by this time, L. and I had both managed to lose our purloined keys and I didn't want to lock her out. Drunk seniors came in and out of the cabin to chat, most notably a maudlin K. bemoaning the fact that the girl he loved had fallen for a bad boy who was going to just break her heart and...Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next thing I know, the cabin steward - a new one, this time - is looking for our baggage. Which we had placed out in the hall, already, as we'd been instructed to do. By the time he got into the middle of the room and saw me, I was perched on my knees in the top bunk, ready to bring a heavy wooden coat hanger down on his head. He crossed himself, said a prayer, and ran. The rest is fuzzy, but I do remember K. coming into the room with a girl. "Can we use your bathroom?"

"Why? Oh, never mind, sure, whatever, go - use the bathroom." I didn't want to discuss it. My throat hurt and I think I had the flu. I went back to sleep.

Around two or three in the morning, L. finally came to bed. She opened the bathroom door, and out fell K. and the girl. Fully dressed.

They hastily scrambled up and out the door. For the rest of the night, I heard Lisa muttering, "What was K. doing in our bathroom?" (Holding the girl's head while she puked, as it turned out. That's one way to prove your undying love when the "bad boy" gets grossed out and heads for a girl with better sea legs.) L. was clearly annoyed, but so was I. I just wanted everyone to shut up so I could sleep, and the cruise could be over.

"Don't know, don't care." I rolled over and did my best to keep L. awake with my snoring. I was never so glad to see my parents as I was when I disembarked the next day.

I read of the Leonardo's demise in Newsweek or Time Magazine in 1980. "...a fire started onboard on 4 July 1980. The ship burned for four days and eventually capsized. The burnt-out hulk was later righted and towed to the scrapyard at La Spezia where it then was scrapped in 1982." Can't say I miss her, but I do wish I'd known I was sailing the Andrea Doria's replacement. I'd have appreciated the irony and the humor, even then.

Chicken Stuffed Peppers with Valley Fresh Steamers

2009-05-26T19:16:00.001-05:00

INGREDIENTS

· Chicken Breast, no skin, 8 ozs

· Cilantro, raw, 4 T

· Lentils, .25 c.

· Royal Blend Texmati White Brown and Red, 0.25 c.

· Olive Oil, Extra Virgin, 1 T

· Swanson Chicken Broth 99% Fat Free, 1.75 c.

· Red Bell Peppers, 2 medium

· Salt, 1 dash

· Green Giant - Valley Fresh Steamers W/Sauce (Roasted Red Potatoes, Green Beans & Rosemary Butter Sauce, 2 c.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Boil rice blend and lentils in chicken broth until most of the liquid has evaporated.

2. Cut chicken into small, bite-sized pieces. While rice is boiling, brown meat in extra-virgin olive oil, salt, and cilantro. Add to rice and lentils, and stir well.

3. Cut a hole around pepper stems and remove top with seeds. Stuff peppers with rice, lentils, and chicken.

4. Place in a pan, cover with foil, and heat in oven for about 45 minutes.

5. Prepare Valley Fresh Steamers and serve as a side dish.

NUTRITION FACTS

Acrobatic Parasailing

2009-05-26T08:57:00.001-05:00

Yep. This is me, in 2002. Parasailing upside-down, getting my head dunked in the Atlantic.

8 Good Things About Boys

2009-05-26T07:41:00.001-05:00

Boys can be ready to go anywhere in under 10 minutes. (Provided it's not too formal and they can bring the Nintendo DS.)
Boys are unselfconscious. (For the most part. Provided there are no girls involved. Mom is not a "girl." Sisters are only girls when they're going out on a date.)
Boys don't understand why girls spend so much time trying to look good. (They're girls. They look just fine.)
Boys always appreciate Mom's cooking. (Actually, they appreciate anything edible that's not nailed to the counter. But let's pretend it's Mom's cooking they love.)
Boys are handy with tools. (Though occasionally, they need a little guidance: "No, I need you to put this bookshelf together, not to take apart the car...")
Boys like to drive. (Sometimes, they like to drive Mom, Dad, and girls nuts - but the ability to get from here to there on their own is generally a good thing.)
Boys like to fix things. (Even things that aren't, technically, broken. Talking about "issues," not so much. Not unless those "issues" can be fixed. Preferably, with a hammer or a few lines of Javascript.)
Boys can entertain themselves. (Their fascination with knives, guns, and flamethrowers, though, is why video games were invented.)

Search Engine Funnies (SEF): Olfactory Hallucinations and Plain Ol' Stinky Stuff

2009-05-25T21:04:00.001-05:00

How do you spell the sound a kiss makes? I still have no answer to this one, and I find it exceedingly odd that none of my so-called “writer” friends will even venture a guess. Consider all the variations:

· a chaste brush of unrouged lips against a powdery, wrinkled cheek;

· a tentative brushing of an eager mouth against warm, quivering lips;

· a hungry kiss, in which two lovers employ tongue, teeth, and lips in a frantic attempt to devour the other’s breath and soul;

a…yeah, I’d better stop here. But you get the idea. If two teens kiss in the dark, and there’s no one around to hear, does it still make a sound? Seriously? If you’re so sure about that, describe it!

I get a lot of visitors from “febreze sport” and “phantosmia symptoms.” I don’t think even Febreze can combat phantom odors, but it’s a novel approach and well worth a try. If it helps, be sure to leave a follow-up comment here.

Someone told Google that cell phones rule teenagers. To think, it used to be peer pressure, hormones, and rebellion. Isn’t technology grand?

There is still a lot of concern about whether we need to worry about influenza; is the outbreak over, or do we still need to worry about it? I recommend using a good hand sanitizer and taking sensible precautions against the spread of germs – all germs. Panic and adrenaline may be good for lifting cars off babies, but they’re not so good when there’s nowhere to run. Though it has proven itself a seasoned world traveler, this particular strain of influenza seems to be a mild one, but if you’re still nervous, try drinking the 151 instead of bathing in it.

Someone wants to know “what to do before I sell my farm fresh eggs.” I’d recommend trying that recipe before selling the eggs, but I’m assuming they wanted to know how to clean and package the eggs. I like the minimalist approach, myself – the “word of mouth” regulation described here. Your state regulations may – probably do – vary.

I love the searches that bring people here in the name of improving their spelling skills. Except that they usually spell the troublesome word correctly in the search itself. Like “how to spell render.”

Learn something new every day. (Like the fact that “every day” is two words, unless it is an adjective – for example, “everyday search terms.”)

To whoever found my blog while looking for jurassic park velociraptor cake molds, I apologize. In a pinch, I’m sure you could get really creative with that old Barney birthday cake mold. Just give him claws and color him brown. Use a little gel icing to angle his eyebrows down towards the bridge of his nose and make him look really, really mean. How many search results pages did you have to go through to find your way here? I’m guessing you have the patience of a saint. That, or by making velociraptor cakes for the kids to devour, you’re sublimating the desire to see the kids devoured by velociraptors. The value of sublimation as a parenting skill is highly underrated.

Okay, who’s the smart ass who’s looking for “funny ways to spell Holly”? How about Holli, Hollie, Hawley, Haleh, Holy (that’s a common misspelling, actually – almost as common as “teh” for “the” but it amuses me to no end), Hallie, and, of course, Ilex.

That's One Tall Baby!

2009-05-25T15:56:00.001-05:00

"I'm going to hug the giraffe." It's not often that Katie wants to be in pictures, but she handed her cell phone over to William and taught him how to use the built-in camera, so that he could record the giraffe-hugging for posterity.

Dad got a few decent photos, too. Looks like Katie and the baby giraffe are having an earnest conversation. "Are people always saying, 'Wow, you're so tall?'"

"Yeah, I hear that all the time."

"At least they don't come out and gawk at you and feed you alfalfa pellets from a plastic cup."

"That must be humiliating."

"You said it, Sister."

Next came the longhorns. "Feed me, Seymour, feed meeee!"

"My name's not Seymour, it's William, and the tour guide said you're faking it. They feed you well here."

"FOOOooooooOOOOOOD!"

You have to admit, the crazy-desperate look in the eyes, coupled with the lolling tongue, is pretty convincing. And, if that doesn't work, one quick head-roll will put you on the wrong end of the pointy horns - at which point, the steer have calculated that 83% of the tourists will drop the plastic cup.

This is not a Buffalo. This is an American Bison. You can tell by the horns - can't you?

Not to be outdone by the steer, the Bison gets into the tongue and eye-rolling thing. "Hungry! Feed me!"

Okay, now I have that dratted song running through my head...

I wonder if this is how the Pied Piper felt?

All of these photos were taking at Global Wildlife Center in Folsom, Louisiana. If you're ever in the area, it's definitely worth a visit.

FW: What is this truck? What does it do?

2009-05-25T07:58:00.003-05:00

What is this truck? What does it do? Looks like the Tin Man holding a tin fire hose! I'm guessing it's some kind of oilfield equipment, but what, exactly?

Kind of Tricky, that Trikke!

2009-05-16T11:19:00.002-05:00

My friend Kathy has been blogging about her latest obsession: Her Trikke, "Bluebird." I was intrigued, so this morning she and Bluebird picked me up and took me to a nearby parking lot, where I got to try this fun, addictive exercise Kathy's gotten hooked on.

An hour later, I'm still feeling like a limp noodle.

I don't think I ever got up to one mile per hour. I didn't care that I looked incredibly silly, or that the construction workers gawking at us were probably making some pretty clever remarks about the silly woman wiggling her hips and trying to balance on this thing. It was fun. And it was work. I can see how this thing could carve inches off hips, thighs, and upper arms in short order. Even when I couldn't get it going, it was more entertaining and a better workout than any treadmill or stationary bike! And because you have to keep moving in order to ride it, the Trikke provides a better workout than a bike, or inline skates. There's no coasting; you have to use your arms, your hips, your legs, your feet.

I finally got into a groove (going downhill, towards the drain) and heard, "Shake it up, baby, now...twist and shout!" running through my head. That's about the right rhythm and movement to get the Trikke moving. It also helped to watch my shadow on the pavement, rather than focusing on my hands, my feet, my sense of balance. "Trust the lean," Kathy said. Clearly, you have to learn to trust your body and the Trikke, itself. Not consciously thinking about it is the first step.

Kathy swore it took her two weeks to get it going like that. But every time she'd point out, "Hey, you're moving!" I'd lose it, start giggling, and stop moving - despite the fact that I was still working my arms, wiggling my hips, leaning, pushing off from side to side... Trikking in place. What a concept: I'd just invented the "Stationary Trikke." I probably wore a sore spot on Bluebird's front tire, too, but since she didn't dump me on my head or my ample behind, I have to assume she's easily amused and forgiving.

After going nowhere fast, but working up a good sweat, I hopped off Bluebird and Kathy took a spin. She makes it look so easy!

Me? I know it didn't look like much, but I'm worn out and riding a happy wave of exercise-induce endorphin rush. I need a NAP!

Get the Log Out of Your Eye

2009-05-15T22:37:00.001-05:00

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

It’s a cliché, a logical fallacy: “I can’t be racist; some of my best friends are white!” or “I can’t be racist! My wife is black!”

Nonprejudiced, egalitarian, White individuals were provided with false physiological feedback allegedly indicating that they held racist prejudices against Blacks. In one study, for example, they were shown slides of interracial couples, and the experimenter commented that the subject’s skin response indicated severe intolerance of interracial romance, which was tantamount to racism. After the procedure was ostensibly completed, the participant left the building and was accosted by either a Black or a White panhandler. People who had been implicitly accused of racism gave significantly more money to the Black panhandler than people who had not been threatened in that way. Donations to the White panhandler were unaffected by the racism feedback. The implication was that people became generous toward the Black individual as a way of counteracting the insinuation that they were prejudiced against Blacks.

(from “Freudian Defense Mechanisms and Empirical Findings in Modern Social Psychology: Reaction Formation, Projection, Displacement, Undoing, Isolation, Sublimation, and Denial” by Roy F. Baumeister, Karen Dale, and Kristin L. Sommer; http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/burke_b/personality/readings/freuddefense.pdf; last accessed 5/13/09)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Another study showed that homophobic men, exposed to videotapes depicting homosexual intercourse, reported low levels of sexual arousal, but physiological measures indicated higher levels of sexual response than were found among other participants. Thus, again, the subjective response reported by these participants was the opposite of what their bodies actually indicated. This finding also fits the view that homophobia may itself be a reaction formation against homosexual tendencies, insofar as the men who were most aroused by homosexuality were the ones who expressed the most negative attitudes toward it.
Prejudice would provide the most relevant form of unacceptable aggressive impulse, because American society has widely endorsed strong norms condemning prejudice. If people are led to believe that they may hold unacceptably prejudiced beliefs (or even that others perceive them as being prejudiced), they may respond with exaggerated displays of not being prejudiced.

(from “Freudian Defense Mechanisms and Empirical Findings in Modern Social Psychology: Reaction Formation, Projection, Displacement, Undoing, Isolation, Sublimation, and Denial” by Roy F. Baumeister, Karen Dale, and Kristin L. Sommer; http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/burke_b/personality/readings/freuddefense.pdf; last accessed 5/13/09)

I think that “racism” and “prejudice” have little to do with skin color, nationality, or ethnicity – even if that appears, on the surface, to be the primary issue. Shared physical characteristics provide a convenient way to lump people together, to form stereotypes. If a child’s only experience with Hispanic people is being bullied, spit on, and stuffed into a trash can at school, she has little reason to go out of her way to get to know more Hispanic people. The objective reality is that a few bullies – who happened to be Hispanic – picked on her. But it was so traumatic it makes her wary of all Hispanic kids. In time, this perpetuates the bullies’ belief that Whites look down on them – and because the first child is now going out of her way to avoid all Hispanics, the nice Hispanic kids start to believe that she thinks she’s too good to hang out with them – and that she is a “racist.”

Prejudice stems from our fear and loathing of all that is strange or “other” – “not our kind.” We are affected by our families’ prejudicial attitudes from infancy to adulthood; we form our own along the way. Outwardly, it seems that skin color, nationality, and ethnicity are the root of racism, but I would argue that it’s a superficial excuse.

It seems to me that real distrust and loathing has more to do with ideological differences, disparity in terms of wealth and education, and differences in basic values and priorities. It’s easier to be “racist” than to try to get to know one another, or to try to understand beliefs and ideas that are anathema to us.

Some of these differences are truly irreconcilable. There are angry people in the world, and some of them have every reason to be. There are people who would kill one another over insults and injuries incurred over a thousand years ago. Multiple generations of families have been destroyed by violence and rage. Religious fanaticism and power hungry individuals have thrown great civilizations into the Dark Ages. There are people who feel their rights have been trampled, their privileges denied, and their interests ignored for far too long – and they would be right.

There are people who feel entitled to a certain way of life – people who may, in fact, have worked very hard to earn their place in the world – who feel threatened by a “mingling” of what they see as “low class” and “high class.” God forbid we should learn (or acknowledge openly) that the trash collector loves his family every bit as much as the banker.

Gandhi is said to have pointed out that “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” And yet, when we feel that our identity, our most cherished values, and our way of life are threatened, it is the most difficult thing in the world to stop nurturing old grudges and to stop seeking vengeance.

For most of us, though, the perceived differences stem from ignorance and a lack of personal experience when it comes to living, working, and playing with people from other nations, creeds, and cultures. It takes bravery, because we’re not always welcome. Attempts at friendship may be rebuffed or ridiculed. Our shields go up; constructive criticism (such as someone pointing out that in protesting how non-racist you are, you actually prove otherwise) or an innocuous question like, “What a nice accent. Where are you from?” becomes a “racist” remark in our eyes. We’re too quick to deny each other half a chance. But what is the solution? To isolate ourselves further? In a world with vanishing borders, it is more important than ever that we at least try to appreciate and understand one another. We may never agree on every issue, and it’s time we learned that vigorous debate needn’t be rude or threatening. Animated exchange of ideas need not degenerate into ad hominem attacks.

Sure, there are some dearly cherished values, like “Thou shalt not eat thy neighbor” or “Thou shalt not have sex with swine” that don’t really lend themselves to civil debate. But each of us should be free to worship God – or not – as our conscience dictates. Each of us should be free to define “family” according to our hearts. “Freedom” comes with responsibility; responsibility implies respect for the rights and freedoms of others. None of us should go out of our way to offend – and we would all do well to remember that words, once spoken or written – cannot be taken back. But none of us has the absolute right to go through life unoffended, and excessive avoidance of controversy can lead to festering resentments and reinforcement of our own narrow-minded beliefs.

Champagne and Strawberries = Vindication!

2009-05-14T10:02:00.001-05:00

From 1988 until 1994, I was a SysOp (old-fashioned term for “Moderator”) on GEnie. Many of you are too young, or too new to high tech even to remember GEnie, but for a while there it was a hot competitor of CompuServe, back before there was such a thing as Prodigy or AOL or Earthlink, and long before the days of DSL. (I won’t bore you with those old sob stories about how we chatted on an ASCII text based system at 300 baud and thought it was blazingly fast, or how in the early days of “chat” on CompuServe, it was called “CB” to make clear the similarity to Citizen’s Band Radio, which had been all the rage not so very long before that...)

I was a Senior Assistant in the Writers’ Ink RoundTable. Writing.com is the closest thing I’ve found to such a warm, funny, serious, playful, supportive, argumentative, kind, snide, silly, close-knit community of writers online since Writers’ Ink. It even has the same hierarchy of newbies, old timers, Assistant SysOps, Senior Assistant SysOps, and Head Cheeses (not to be confused with head cheese, most of the time).

Being a forum moderator has always been an unpaid and thankless job, and mostly a labor of love and addiction. I had assistants reporting to me, and I assure you they were paid every bit as well as I. For the most part, we had a blast interacting with the members of the RoundTable (or “RT” as I shall call it henceforth, to save typing). We ran writing workshops, held online conferences with famous authors (including Anne McCaffrey, Tom Clancy, and Michael Crichton, just to name a few), and we posted endless messages about writing and not writing and ways to avoid both. For kicks on a boring Saturday night, we’d play the online version of “Truth or Dare.” Dares often involved such things as sending the hapless victim over to a serious conference in the Political Science RoundTable with instructions to impersonate a radical left-winger (or right-winger, depending on the night’s topic) or to wander into the Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable (our natural rivals, since they laid claim to the SFWA members) and start a virtual food fight while nibbling on pickled alien eggs. I should add that it's distressingly easy for these folks to get revenge; all you have to do to start a flamewar with a bunch of writers is to walk into the room and ask, "So, what's so bad about using passive voice, anyway?"

Okay, so maybe you had to be there.

Point is, most of the time, we didn’t have “troublemakers.” Troublemakers are rare, when they’re paying $6/hour for the privilege of being online at all. All that changed, however, when GEnie introduced the $9.95/month all-you-can-eat plan, in competition with Prodigy’s ridiculously cheap offerings and flashy GUI interface.

Suddenly, we had “troublemakers.” We had people who logged on and couldn’t figure out how to log off again. We soon had people who logged on and wrote scripts to keep them from logging off again. (Unlimited bandwidth is nice; however, someone’s got to pay for it, and at this rate, it wasn’t the members. But I digress...) It was all good, until the day I met R.F. (I’d love to tell you his real name, but the lawyers won’t let me.)

R.F. was bored one sunny Saturday afternoon. (It might’ve been a Sunday, but that’s not important to the story.) R.F. began to post, in the Message Board, “Is anybody online? Wanna chat?” Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. Except that when he didn’t get an answer quickly, he did it again. And again. And again. In just about every topic on the board. Everyone ignored him, of course. I mean, if you see 100 messages that say “I’m bored, anybody online? Anybody? Wanna chat?” from someone who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself or join in any of the ongoing conversations, are you gonna bite?

He started posting this in an ongoing, collaborative story that a number of us had been working on for quite some time. And he watched the thread closely; any time a new addition to the story was posted, R.F. would chime in with “Anybody online? Someone talk to me!” We tried to make his outbursts part of the storyline, but that got redundant and tedious in short order.

Several of us emailed and explained how the Real-Time Conference Rooms worked. (Every RoundTable had its own RTC “chat” area, and GEnie itself had a whole area devoted to social chit-chat with many, many rooms – much like a tiny version of today’s IRC.) For some reason, though, R.F. had fixated on us.

I was young and stupid then. I dragged R.F. into the RTC chat one afternoon, and spent nearly four straight hours patiently explaining how our little community of writers worked, and giving him hints on how to fit in if he wanted to be a part of it. At that point, I sincerely believed that he was a clueless wonder who genuinely wanted to belong. He even made a little effort at staying on topic and joining in some ongoing conversations in the Message Board. I felt the same high that Evangelists must feel upon learning that a sinner has heard their words, seen the light, and converted. Hallelujah!

The next day, I was chagrined to see more drivel from R.F. “Why won’t anyone talk to me?”

Fed up, I deleted his messages. He’d been welcomed, cajoled, ignored, warned... well, shoot. Enough is enough. Delete, delete, delete.

Next thing you know, I have mail.

R.F. is going to report me to the New York Times, the L.A. Herald, the AP Newswire, CBS, NBC, ABC, the BBC... basically, anyone who’ll listen, and tell them how I’ve single-handedly stomped on, trampled on, mutilated and spindled his First Amendment Right to Freedom of Expression.

Yeah... whatever.

Fortunately for me, I was in law school at the time. I was not a government entity, nor was GEnie a public forum. That pretty much solved that worry. I had the absolute right to delete his messages and even lock him out of the RT, if I chose to be snotty about it. The contract holder for the RT, and GEnie itself, might have something to say about it (along the lines of “be nice to the nasty customer, because he IS a customer”) but basically, R.F. didn’t have a leg to stand on. I wrote back something to the effect of Fine, yeah, you do that – and next time you write to me, please cc: my boss. I’ve already sent him copies of all our previous correspondence.

And then I watched the news just to be sure...

Oh, yes, I did.

Somehow, and I don’t remember all the details now, R.F. managed to make a sufficient nuisance of himself that I ended up having to lock him out of the Writers’ Ink RT altogether. By then, I didn’t even care if my name was on the evening news. I’d had enough. I was tired. I was tired of trying to bring the lost wolf in sheep’s clothing into the fold, and tired of arguing with him about the First Amendment, and tired of being stalked and hounded in the RT at every turn. So I just slammed and barred the door. Next time he logged on, the electronic bouncer kicked him to the curb.

I’d never locked anyone out before. Never. I felt bad. I tossed and turned and lost sleep over it. But it was quiet; things quickly settled back down to normal, and a number of people thanked me for taking decisive action.

Then I got a phone call one morning, on my way to work, from the Boss. Oh, what a softie he was! (This guy had the patience of a saint, I tell you. He’d back his assistants against all comers, but he was always the diplomat with everyone, as well - whether they deserved it or not.) “I called R.F. on the phone last night. We had a little ‘man-to-man chat,’ and I think he’s straightened out now. He wanted back in, and I really think he understood what was expected of him. I’m confident he’ll behave himself now, so I let him back in.”

What? I thought. Oh, $#!^! “Well, you’re the boss. If you’re sure...” I reminded him that I was going out of town, on a family vacation, and would not have a PC with me. He’d have to keep an eye on things and deal with R.F. personally, in my absence, should he start giving other staff members or member members a hard time.

I called my assistant long distance and explained. I heard a protracted groan on the other end of the line. “You’re kidding, right? They had a ‘man-to-man chat’? Is that even possible with R.F.?”

“Look,” I said, “if anything happens while I’m gone, you guys will have to deal with it. I’m betting R.F. does something to get himself locked out, or at least make S. wish he’d never let him back in, before I get back. And I’m dying to know what that is. So here’s the deal. If S. has to lock R.F. out again, I want you to call our hotel and order a bottle of their cheapest champagne sent to me by room service. That’ll be our code. Since there’s nothing I can do about it from there, I might as well drink champagne and get some kick out of it.”

We got to the hotel about three days later, and there was no message. No champagne greeting upon our arrival. All was well. Or was it?

A couple of hours after checking in, there was a knock on the door. My husband had gone downstairs for a drink with a friend and former coworker, and Katie and I were getting ready for bed. I pulled a robe around myself and peeked through the peephole. It was about 9:00 PM! Who would be knocking? Ahhhhhh. Yes, room service. A very nicely dressed waiter bearing a silver tray, upon which was a silver ice bucket bearing a bottle of champagne, and – what the hell? A huge, crystal bowl of strawberries. Fresh, luscious strawberries – probably forty of them – each as big as a small plum, and each one utterly perfect and unblemished.

Oh, dear God, what had R.F. done now? There was even a card, “signed” by R.F.!! “Having a grand time, glad you’re not here!” I took the tray, and immediately called my assistant, K.

“Okay, what’s the scoop?”

She laughed and asked me to give her a minute to catch her breath. “Well, the minute R.F. got word you’d left town, he started posting messages all over the board with the lyrics to ‘Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!’”

“Hah! But that surely wasn’t enough to get him locked out.”

“No, it should’ve been, but of course it wasn’t.”

“Well, what did it?”

“He posted a message in the main Message Board topic consisting of a thousand blank lines.”

I didn’t get it at first. “1000 blank lines? So? What was the point of that?”

“Think about it. Most of the members log on at 2400 baud or less. At 2400 baud, it takes about 5 minutes for a blank message that size to scroll across the screen. By that time, most people think their PC has just locked up, so they force a disconnect, reboot, and log on again.”

“Oh, God.”

“Wait, it gets better. Because they never finished reading the message, it’s still marked ‘unread.’”

“And it happens again.”

“You got it. People have been calling customer support, thinking it’s a system problem.”

“So S. locked him out?”

“For life.”

“So much for their little ‘man-to-man chat.’ S. must be terribly disappointed.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Okay, that explains the champagne, but K., what’s with these incredible strawberries??”

“Oh!” K. laughed. “That’s on the house. A gift from the hotel. When I got room service, I explained the whole story to them. They agreed that the champagne was good vindication, and threw in the strawberries for free!”

* * *

Don’t think I learned my lesson. Oh, no. I went on to run a forum on another network, and later took a real, paying job with them as a Product Marketing Manager.

That company went bankrupt four months later. My boss assured me that he wasn’t disappointed in me and that “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have saved it.”

As if that weren’t enough, I went on to run another forum on the Internet for just over a year, until they realized they didn’t have to actually pay their Moderators – they had people lined up begging to do it for free. (I think the word I’m searching for here is “masochists,” but that would be admitting I once was one, wouldn’t it?) There are various reasons for wanting to be a Moderator – some involving “phenomenal cosmic powers!” but most stemming from a much simpler desire to be active and helpful members of a community they’ve come to love.

Would I ever do anything like that again?

Please don’t ask me. I’m weak, and they don’t have a Twelve Step program for online addiction yet.

* * *

Send a note of appreciation to your favorite Moderator(s) today. Sure, it’s a prestigious position and lots of fun, most of the time. But if you’ve never been one, you have no idea the shit they put up with and how very much it means to have a little note saying “Gee, you do a great job around here. Keep it up!”

Learn Something New Every Day (May 12, 2009)

2009-05-14T08:48:00.001-05:00

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Learn Something New Every Day (May 11, 2009)

2009-05-12T23:44:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 10, 2009)

2009-05-12T23:00:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 9, 2009)

2009-05-12T21:33:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 8, 2009)

2009-05-08T23:55:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 7, 2009)

2009-05-07T20:16:00.001-05:00

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Rules for Teens & Cell Phones

2009-05-06T21:03:00.001-05:00

There are good reasons for giving your teen a cell phone. I can think of two:

their safety and your peace of mind;
your convenience.

Latchkey kids, kids whose families have given up on land lines, kids involved in sports and extracurricular activities who need rides at unpredictable times, and kids forced to walk uphill, three miles, in snow, ice, and heavy traffic through a seedy red light district at midnight - yeah, they need a cell phone.

Let's not confuse "need" and "want." That's almost as bad as losing sight of the difference between "tool" and "status symbol." I don't need to pay $20 a month for my child to have a status symbol that's going to cost me another $300 the first time it's dropped in the toilet. My daughter washed hers - on hot, regular cycle, with jeans. Kudos to LG - it survived. But not one of her cell phones made it to the two-year, free upgrade mark.

So here's the deal - far be it from me to tell anyone else how to raise their children, or what rules of the road they ought to lay down before handing over the high tech toys. I'm just going to throw these proposed "rules" out there with the caveat that I wish I'd thought them up years ago, before switching over to "shared rollover minutes" with my teenaged daughter. She pays her own cell phone bill these days, and I laugh when I hear her say things like, "Mom! Slow down. I'm glad you've learned how to send text messages, but they're not on my plan..."

With her off the plan, I can afford unlimited MMS. She can't. Revenge is sweet.

RULES for the CELL PHONE

Do not waste your callers' time with inane, long, loud, rude voice messages or ten minute punk rock songs. "Hi, this is Ariella Bombast. Please leave a message at the tone and I'll call you back as soon as my mom lets me," said in a pleasant, cheerful, clear, and upbeat tone of voice would be perfect.

Check your voice mail regularly and respond to it - at least if it's from your mom or dad.

CLEAN your voice mail box frequently to ensure that mom and dad are able to leave a message.

Screen your calls, by all means, but you'd better answer when it's mom or dad - preferably on the first ring - unless it's during school hours. If your phone is confiscated during school hours, you will have to write a letter of apology to your teacher, the principal, and your mother in order to get it back - unless your school was in lock-down and you were in fear for your life.

I can hear you roll your eyes over the phone. And yes, I do have eyes in the back of my head.

You can think what you like, but I do not want to see it on your face nor hear it in your tone of voice. You may flounce, pout, make faces, and roll your eyes all you like - in your room. Having a crappy attitude is normal at your age; inflicting it on others is just rude and makes you look asinine. Trust me, you'll be embarrassed about it later. I'm just helping you to save face (before someone says "enough is enough and breaks your cute little nose").

The phone is MINE from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. MINE.

If you miss curfew, or if I cannot find you when I need you, and you don't answer the phone, and it turns out you're NOT lying dead in a ditch somewhere? Your A$$ is mine from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and you will not have a cell phone. (Parents take note: A home alarm with sensors on every window works both ways - they prevent break ins AND break outs.)

"My battery died!" is not an excuse unless your battery fails and needs to be replaced. Did you know that cell phone techs can easily tell if you dropped your phone or battery in water? There's a little sensor there - you cannot lie about these things. You are responsible for ensuring that your phone battery is fully charged and stays that way when you're outside the home.

If you drop or misuse your phone, it may be replaced at my option - depending on your behavior and attitude at the time. You will be required to reimburse me for it, including the cost of phone insurance on the new phone. If you do not have money in savings or an allowance that I can garnish, you will be doing manual labor - yardwork, laundry, scrubbing toilets, whatever I ask - cheerfully. Or see "the phone is MINE" (above) but change "10 PM to 6 AM" to "24/7."

Think I'm bluffing? Try me. I love you, and don't want to be the death of your social life, so your phone is cooler than mine. Just give me half an excuse to switch SIM cards...

Learn Something New Every Day (May 6, 2009)

2009-05-06T04:55:00.000-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 5, 2009)

2009-05-05T09:09:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 4, 2009)

2009-05-05T08:47:00.001-05:00

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Learn Something New Every Day (May 2-3 Weekend Edition)

2009-05-03T10:28:00.001-05:00

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Mother, Touchstone, Friend

2009-05-03T00:02:00.000-05:00

We mothers – we are merely rudders, guiding our children’s ships through the storms and over the turbulent seas of life – we guide them as steadily and as best we can, but we are not the only influence that determines the outcome of the journey...

Who am I today? I am a woman, a daughter, a wife and mother, a writer. I am confident with unexpected moments of self-doubt, calm with occasional thunderstorms, selfish but generous, affectionate but reserved, intelligent with a few Swiss-cheese holes in my brain, rational but prone to flights of fancy, a dreamer with her feet planted on the ground – and I see none of that as contradictory. I am my mother’s daughter.

My mother nurtured me with love and learning. My parents married young, with the understanding that both would attend and graduate from college. Did having a baby at nineteen deter my mother from her commitment? No! She told me once that my earliest bedtime stories were chapters from her college Psych texts. If I am determined, efficient, and able to multitask, it’s because I was raised by a woman who could study, cuddle an infant, and read to her child simultaneously!

Astrologers might argue that the Pisces child, born on a Sunday, so near the pull of the ocean’s tides would naturally be gifted with creativity and a vivid imagination. But I contend that any innate creativity and imagination I possessed was nurtured by a mother who got down on the floor and played with me, allowing herself to be cast in the thousands of roles I invented for her. My love of writing was sparked when she installed a bulletin board in my room, and daily pinned a writing prompt – a quote, a photo, some whimsical item – to it, and supplied me with endless reams of paper and a variety of pens. She later insisted that I learn to type; much, much later, I thanked her for it.

I have a great appreciation for languages. If I can’t speak fluent French today, it’s not my mother’s fault! My mom’s answer to a whiney eight-year-old who cried out, “I’m bored!” was to enroll her in private French lessons at Berlitz. Latin was a 7th grade elective; my mom elected it for me. If I believed that college was just an extension of a child’s compulsory education, it was my mom’s doing – she was still working towards her Master’s degree when I was twelve! She made studying seem as natural as breathing, as essential as eating. Blame my mother for the fact that I started college at age twelve – the early French lessons, her schedule of classes from Kent State lying open on the bed, and my natural curiosity combined: “Do you think they’d let me take French I?” Well, why not? With three years of French under my belt and my parents there to support my request, doors opened – and I was enrolled in summer school!

Okay, maybe I can’t speak French fluently today, despite eight years of lessons - but I have learned to entertain myself! If I love Oldies, it’s because my mother handed down her 45 RPM records and a phonograph; if my tastes are eclectic, it’s because she also made sure I attended the symphony and the ballet, met Beverly Sills, saw Linda Ronstadt and The Irish Rovers in concert, and took piano lessons. If I can appreciate fine art, it’s because one of my mother’s most cherished books was Jansen’s History of Art – and because she saw to it that I got to tour the Louvre.

While my mother built my confidence and self-esteem, she took care never to talk down to me, never to sugar-coat the truth, never to inflate my ego unrealistically so that the world at large could tear down what she had so carefully built. All her life, I could rely on my mother to be a trustworthy touchstone: she was an honest critic as well as a staunch supporter. If I am happy, content with who I am, it’s because my mother never allowed me to believe that my best wasn’t good enough. If I am able to appreciate constructive criticism and learn from it, it is because I had a mother who dished it out with love.

Twenty years ago, I became a mother, myself. When I held my daughter in my arms, I realized the awesome responsibility my mother took on at the tender age of nineteen. For the first time, it hit me just how much I was loved. And that’s when I knew that the debt I owed her was marked “payable to my grandchildren.”

When my mom died – on Valentine’s Day, 2002 – I lost not only my mother, but my best friend. Though she always insisted “It’s not my job to be your friend – I’m your mother,” she couldn’t help but be both. I miss her, but because of her, I am strong enough to wipe away the tears, smile, and go boldly forward in my own journey of motherhood.

Learn Something New Every Day (May 1, 2009)

2009-05-01T20:14:00.001-05:00

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Swine Flu Tip: Use an Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer

2009-05-01T19:04:00.001-05:00

Our offices now have industrial-sized hand-sanitizer stations outside the parking garage doors. That's only about 60% alcohol, and you still have to open the door to get inside the office. My hot tip of the day? Just stay home and use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that's at least 75.5% alcohol.

And, as always, don't forget to drink plenty of fluids.

Learn Something New Every Day (April 30, 2009)

2009-04-30T23:38:00.001-05:00

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Swine Flu: Is It Time to Panic, Yet? ("Are We There, Yet? Huh?")

2009-04-30T08:43:00.001-05:00

In 2004, 727 deaths were attributed, worldwide, to acute nasopharyngitis, or the common cold. I suspect more could be attributed to a successful attempt to eradicate the common cold, as the makers of over-the-counter cold and flu remedies faced bankruptcy. There's just no incentive to find a cure for the common cold, no matter how miserable those pesky little viruses make millions of us each year. It would be devastating to the global economy.

About 36,000 people die, in the U.S., each year - from the flu. And yet, there's very little panic over it, most years. People rationalize their reasons for getting - or not getting - the vaccine:

"I work in healthcare. I have to get it."
"My doctor says that at my age, the flu could kill me. He said I had to get the vaccine."
"I'm not getting vaccinated - I'm allergic to eggs!" (The vaccine is made with eggs.)
"Who knows if this year's vaccine will protect us, anyway? It probably doesn't even contain the right flu strains."
"I hate shots."
"I'm terrified of needles." (This is my excuse. That, and "That sucker HURTS! Last time I got the flu vaccine, I couldn't lift my arm for a WEEK!" Double your fun: get the flu vaccine in one arm, and the pneumonia vaccine in the other - on the same day. Then walk around like a gorilla, dragging your knuckles on the ground and asking everyone to "open this" or "carry that" while you wince in pain and try not to swing your arms as you move.)

Considering that 36,000 people die of Influenza every year, that's a pretty lackadaisical attitude. My mother used to tell of the "polio scares" when she was a kid - the daily death toll announced on the radio, parboiling tomatoes and peaches (then peeling off the skin and throwing it away for good measure), not being allowed to swim in lakes and public pools, knowing kids who died or ended up confined in an iron lung for the rest of their lives. It's easy to dismiss statistics and say "only 727 people died of the common cold," or "36,000 is just a tiny fraction of the total population - most people recover just fine" but if you're one of the ones who doesn't survive it - or a close family member of one of its victims - it's still horrible and unacceptable.

But is it worth panicking? No.

Taking reasonable precautions? Absolutely. Know how to prevent swine flu and talk to your kids about good hygiene, not sharing drinks, not touching their faces, and minimizing physical contact. Stay positive and optimistic, particularly when talking to your kids. Remember that most people who catch the flu do survive and recover fairly quickly, but the misery of being sick, not to mention the personal and community cost of lost school time, lost work and wages, and lost productivity, is enough to warrant avoidance. Know when to seek emergency care for the flu, but avoid being around other sick people - in doctors' offices, emergency rooms, crowded places - if you don't need to be there. That's just common sense.

If you use Twitter or other social media outlets, avoid falling victim to hype and misinformation. For example, no, you cannot get the flu from eating pork. On the other hand, if there were less demand for bacon, there would be fewer pig farms...not a bad thing, in my opinion, having been downwind of a pig farm. But then we go back to that whole issue of real risk analysis and the economy, as well as the all-important question of "Would life be worth living if it weren't for bacon?"

To keep abreast of the latest serious flu news, follow these sources: @whonews, @CDCemergency, @CDCflu

BCC: It's Not Just for Sneaky People

2009-04-30T07:34:00.001-05:00

Anyone else annoyed by people who "Reply All" to tell everyone to stop using "Reply All"? Or using "Reply All" to every group email saying, "Please take me off your email list"? That could be avoided altogether by the savvy sender. Next time you send that chain mail, Internet hoax, or important group correspondence, try entering all those addresses in the "BCC:" field. I know that "blind copying" seems rude and sneaky, but it does serve a more polite purpose when sending mass missives: It protects multiple recipients' privacy. They may all know you, but some might prefer not to get intimately acquainted with everyone else on your mailing list.

That said, using BCC: on private, personal correspondence is still creepy, and using it inappropriately at work quickly erodes trust among team members. So use it wisely, but please use it on those mass mailings.

Chic Gamine

2009-04-29T23:49:00.001-05:00

It's obvious that my friend, Karen, has caught onto my musical tastes. She practically forced me to listen to this CD she picked up at the Houston International Festival, this "Chic Gamine," and before we got to lunch, I was hooked - and jealous that she got to see them perform in person. Look them up on MySpace, too - it's almost worth it to hear better recordings of some of their top songs. Be sure to listen to "Butterfly Woman" and "I Don't Lie."

Learn Something New Every Day (April 29, 2009)

2009-04-29T21:38:00.001-05:00

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How to: Get Twitter Tweets on Your Cell Phone

2009-04-29T08:18:00.000-05:00

I didn't sign up for mobile Twittering for a long, long time. I wanted to be sure my "unlimited messaging plan" really was "unlimited" before risking a breach of that particular floodgate. I wanted to be sure I understood how to turn it off again. I needn't have worried; configuring Twitter to send messages to my mobile phone was easier than I'd expected it to be. And it didn't automatically send messages from everyone I follow - just the ones I selected to follow on the cell phone. I could limit it to direct messages only, and I could set a quiet, "do not disturb" period during which I would receive, but not be notified of, new messages.

I thought I was the last person to jump on the bandwagon, but judging from my blog's keyword tracker, apparently not. For those of you who landed here wondering "how to set some one on cell phone to follow on twitter," here's how:

1. Log on to your account at http://twitter.com

2. Click Settings.

3. Click the Devices tab. Enter your cell phone number (starting with "+" and your country code, and leaving off the leading "0" if necessary).

4. Check the box next to "It's okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone. Standard rates apply." Twitter doesn't charge for this, but your cellular service provider may. If you're on a pay-as-you-go plan, don't allow text messages from anyone whose tweets aren't worth $0.20 a pop to you. Click Save.

5. From your cell phone, you will need to send a confirmation (a unique code, sent by Twitter, as shown above in green). You must send this message back to Twitter in order to verify that you can receive and send messages. Twitter will send one back to you: "Twitter has verified your device and sms alerts are enabled. Std msg charges apply. Send 'off' to silence or 'stop' to quit. Send 'help' for more." Nothing you do from your cell phone changes who you are following and whether you will receive their updates on your phone. For that, you will need to configure settings on the Web at http://twitter.com for each individual.

6. From the Devices tab, you can now turn sms messaging on, off, or choose to receive only direct messages (DM's). With Device updates On or set to receive Direct Messages, you will receive all Direct Messages from people you follow, regardless of the general sms settings you've chosen for them.

7. Next, choose the times during which you do not want to be disturbed. My cell phone buzzes each time a new text message is received. I don't want to be awakened at 2 AM because someone I follow tweeted. To set up your quiet period, click the box next to "Turn off updates during these hours." Click the drop-down arrow next to each box and choose start and end times.

8. Now, for each person you follow whose updates you want to see on your cell phone, first go to the individual's Twitter home page (click @name next to one of their tweets, or click their avatar). The screen should look like this:

9. Click Device updates OFF. The yellow area shown above will expand to show additional options:

10. Below Device updates, click On. You will begin to receive this user's updates on your cell phone. To turn off this user's updates, you must come back to this page and click Off. Turning updates Off from your cell phone is only temporary, and does not change the options you've selected here.

Learn Something New

2009-04-28T00:54:00.001-05:00

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A Winning Recipe

2009-04-27T22:05:00.001-05:00

Ingredients

Graham cracker crumbs
Butter
Brownie mix (usually needs 2 eggs, 1/2 cup oil, 1/4 cup water added)
Mini-marshmallows
Semi-sweet chocolate morsels

Line the Dutch oven with a parchment paper Dutch Oven Liner (I found these at Wal-Mart) or foil, to make clean-up easier. Otherwise, grease oven well with butter.

Mix graham cracker crumbs and softened butter and press into bottom of Dutch oven to form a crust. Reserve some of the graham crackers for a topping.

Put all brownie mix ingredients into a large Zip-Loc freezer bag, remove most of the air, seal, and gently knead for several minutes to mix well. Pour over graham cracker crust, cover with lid, and place over hot coals. (I used a 10" Dutch oven with seven coals on the bottom and twelve on the lid.)

Every fifteen minutes, rotate the lid clockwise 1/4 turn. Then lift the entire oven and rotate it over the coals counter-clockwise 1/4 turn. Check after 30 minutes.

When brownie appears to be mostly cooked, top with mini-marshmallows, a sprinkling of semisweet morsels, and a dusting of graham crackers. Replace lid and add three or four briquettes, if necessary. Check after 5-10 minutes; when marshmallows are golden brown, dessert is done.

Enjoy! (And I think I'll spare you the nutrition info on this one.)

Swine Flu: How Panic Spreads

2009-04-27T20:59:00.001-05:00

CREDIT: http://xkcd.com/574/

Learn Something New Every Day: Vocabulary Quiz

2009-04-27T20:01:00.001-05:00

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Swine Flu: How Disease Travels

2009-04-26T20:40:00.001-05:00

Here's an interesting map of the current outbreak of Influenza that originated in Mexico and has now traveled to the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. There are suspected cases in Europe and Israel, all linked to recent travel to Mexico. There are confirmed cases across the U.S., most recently in New York and Ohio.

According CBS News, the new virus "contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia." It's rare to see such a mix of genetic material from such widely spread geographic areas. Scientists are still unsure how the disease is spreading; normally, swine flu involves direct human contact with infected pigs, and doesn't easily spread from person to person. However, this outbreak seems to involve people who have had no contact with pigs, and little or no contact with each other.

Of further concern is the large number of deaths in Mexico that are being attributed to this virus, although no deaths - so far - have occurred outside of Mexico. One theory is that the normally vulnerable groups - infants, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems - have had their seasonal flu vaccines, giving them a limited protection against this outbreak, or at least lessening the severity of symptoms.

Blog Comments: Conversation or Junk Mail?

2009-04-26T09:16:00.001-05:00

The answer depends, entirely, on you.

My grandmother used to say, "You have to write letters to get letters." And while letter-writing isn't a dead art quite yet, it is quickly being replaced by IM, email, and blogs.

Does anyone just spill their words onto paper, pay postage, and not hope for a response?

Even junk mailers hope someone might glance at the postcard and make an impulse buy before tossing it in the trash. They've figured out the odds and the cost of doing business; it's a coldly calculated exchange, and not deep enough to be called a relationship. It's more like a one-night stand.

Retailers and service providers have always known the importance of building a relationship with customers, in order to gain loyalty and repeat business. While they don't expect lengthy correspondence in exchange for their sale flyers and coupons, they're a bit disappointed when you toss them in the trash and don't stop by frequently - or at least pop in for a quick hello on every major holiday. They like to know what you're thinking. In fact, they can be somewhat needy, willing to spend inordinate sums of money getting others to ask, "Why haven't you come to see us lately?" Like insecure and dysfunctional family members, they're often willing to bribe you to visit.

If you've been hanging out with the truly dysfunctional side of the family - the retailers and service providers - too long, you may have forgotten the niceties of polite conversation, or how to start one. Friends and family expect a genuine, somewhat meaningful relationship that is as complex and subtly nuanced as Aunt Carolyn's nine-layer bean dip. The only bribe they offer is their ears - or eyes - and the occasional pot roast or a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Everyone likes to be heard, and these are the only folks who give a fig about what you have to say. If you occasionally disgrace yourself, you're automatically forgiven - they're willing to blame it on Aunt C's bean dip. Note, though, that unlike the junk mailers and retailers - unlike the folks who service your AC unit or your plumbing - these folks usually treat conversation like a tennis match. "Ball's in your court!" they say, expecting you to lob it back.

It's the same with blogs. Most are written by real people - even the biggest corporate blog has real people behind it. Friends and family really do want a conversation with you. Take a minute to chat when you drop by their online "home," and they'll usually do the same for you. Refill your coffee and pull up a comfy chair - it might lead to a meaningful conversation. Even the "professional bloggers" usually welcome some exchange of ideas (hint: they often use it as fodder for future posts, so your silence can leave them reeling and your offhand comments may just end up in some widely read and highly acclaimed article). Sploggers and spammers, the "junk mailers" of the online world? They can be good for entertainment, but never feel obligated to respond. Unlike most blogs, these can be written by a small script while the nefarious mastermind sleeps. They're usually programmed not to answer back.

But What Should I Say?

"What kind of comments do you want?"

Remember the Golden Rule? "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." What kind of comments or response would YOU want?

Spontaneous comments - the kind inspired by something you've read - are always welcome. If they take the conversation off on a tangent, that's okay. If you're new to my blog, please introduce yourself! If you have a blog, and your thoughts evolve into a post there instead of a comment on mine, that's okay - just leave me an invitation and directions to your place.

Sometimes, people post comments that make you wonder if they're the sort of people who listen with half an ear, waiting for a nanosecond of silence in which to blurt out something that was on their mind two hours ago. Friends can get by with that, sometimes, but when I see that on my blog from someone I don't recognize, I have to assume they're junk mailers masquerading as real people.

Can I Leave a Link of My Own?

Of course. Leave me a meaningful comment, take two seconds to engage in a little entertaining chit-chat, and you get a line of free advertising or the right to leave breadcrumbs back to your personal blog. The only links I'm likely to delete are these:

Comments or links to sites that promote illegal activities, hate, or bigotry;
Links to "adult" (as in "M for mature") sites;
Links to splogs, "get rich quick" schemes, irresponsible (dangerous) products, etc.;
Links to sites that don't allow links in comments (c'mon, now, it's a two-way street!);
Comments that contain nothing BUT links to other sites;
Comments that look like they were left by a automated script ("bot");
Comments in languages other than English (unless I can read them and be sure they're appropriate).

So please, grab a coffee and pull up a chair...

Swine Flu: Do We Need to Worry?

2009-04-26T00:23:00.001-05:00

What is Swine Flu?

Swine influenza is a common respiratory disease in pigs, most often occurring during the fall and winter; however, most types of swine flu do not kill many pigs or infect humans.

Influenza viruses change constantly. Pigs can be infected by swine, avian, or human flu viruses. When different types of viruses infect pigs, the viruses can trade genes to create new viruses that are a mix of swine, avian, or human influenza viruses. Rarely, these viruses jump to humans, causing outbreaks of a new type of flu for which no vaccine is yet available.

Beginning in mid-March, Mexican health officials noted a steady rise in Influenza-Like Illness (ILI). The number of cases as of April 23 exceeded 854, with 59 deaths. Laboratory tests conducted in Canada confirmed that 18 of these were Swine Influenza A/H1N1, with 12 cases being genetically identical to the 7 confirmed cases in California. Two cases have been confirmed in Texas and two more in Kansas, as of April 25, 2009.

I've Had the Flu, and It's Awful - But How Do I Know if it's an Emergency?

According to the CDC, the emergency warning signs for children that indicate a need for urgent medical attention include:

Fast breathing or trouble breathing
Bluish skin color
Not drinking enough fluids
Not waking up or not interacting
Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough
Fever with a rash

In adults, emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include:

Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
Sudden dizziness
Confusion
Severe or persistent vomiting

Why is this Flu Outbreak Worrying Health Officials?

There are cases of human illness associated with an animal influenza virus.

The majority of these cases have occurred in otherwise healthy young adults. Infants and the elderly, the age groups normally hit hardest by influenza, have not been as heavily affected.

The geographical spread of multiple community outbreaks is of concern.

The Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses characterized in this outbreak have not been previously detected in pigs or humans, and appear to be fairly resistant to antiviral drugs. They show some sensitivity to oseltamivir and zanamivir, but not to amantadine or rimantadine.

What Can I Do to Stay Healthy?

Stay away from pigs and sick people.

Try not to touch your eyes, nose, or mouth - this is how many germs are spread.

Wash your hands frequently; use soap and water or alcohol-based hand cleaners.

Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Be sure to throw the tissue out in the trash can or flush it down the toilet!

If you get sick with the flu or flu-like symptoms, do everyone a favor and stay home from work or school. Government officials in Mexico have closed schools and other public facilities to help prevent further spread of this disease, and World Health Organization officials have declared this "a public health emergency of international concern," so don't be a martyr and drag yourself to work where you might spread it to all your coworkers.

Call your doctor, but avoid crowded waiting rooms if possible and consider wearing a face mask to the doctor's office (or hospital) if you must go, in order to prevent the spread of germs to or from you.

Antiviral drugs work best if you start taking them within two days of becoming sick, so if you think you have the flu, don't delay - call your doctor.

Where Can I Learn More?

For more information, refer to the following sites:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

World Health Organization (WHO)

Relay for Life

2009-04-25T11:14:00.002-05:00

I thought we'd be spending the night at Relay for Life, so I set up the tent and then went to help with the Dutch oven dessert cooking. The Boy Scouts know how to cook; I have learned a lot from them already. They know how to cook in huge quantities:

Isn't that efficient? When cooking with Dutch ovens, you can just stack one on top of the other! And you thought your double oven was snazzy, didn't you? That little one in the lower left corner? That's mine. Brian M. "forgot" to bring his Dutch oven - or a recipe - and so, upon tasting my S'mores Brownies (another variant of my infamous "Chocolate Soup Goop") and my Seven-Layer Bars (wow, did those ever turn out FANTASTIC in a Dutch oven!) graciously conceded defeat.

Brian, if you're reading this, I just want you to know that if there's ever a team competition, I'd be happy to have you on my team!

William was the top fundraiser on the team! Thanks to all of you who helped us reach our fundraising goals, our team brought in $1500. The "Team within a Team" final standings were:

Holly Jahangiri $85.00

Katie Jahangiri $45.00

William Jahangiri $125.00 (That's before Crabby's donation, so the final total isn't in yet!)

It's never too late to help the American Cancer Society, so if you think you missed your chance, the pages are still live and you can still contribute if you want to. It was really moving to watch the Survivors' Lap - people of all ages whose lives have been brushed by Cancer. The memorials placed around the grounds were touching as well; a reminder of the fact that while we've made great strides in the development of effective treatment for many forms of cancer, the battle's not over yet - not by a longshot.

You can't have a Boy Scout food booth without smoked meat. The savory, smoky smell of sausage-on-a-stick had our mouths watering:

Does Mr. Cool up there look familiar to you long-time readers of my blog? He's the one who taught me never to turn my back on the brain-damaged disaster victim during my CERT graduation drill in 2008:

Andrew's on the left. William, playing "Boy with bolt through wrist" is lying "bloodied" in the triage area on the right, wearing the purple shirt.

The guys also served hot dogs - copious quantities of hot dogs served with ketchup, mustard, and pickle relish - and dinner was wonderful. All proceeds, of course, go directly to the American Cancer Society.

Hungry walkers and runners kept the kids busy throughout the evening. It rained on and off, and Mr. H. kept a close eye on the radar through his cell phone. He predicted that the worst would pass to the south of us, so we just ignored the intermittent showers as best we could, or huddled under tents for five minutes until the rain slowed. Around 10 PM, though - just as we were about to announce that the next batch of cobblers were ready - the heavens drenched us and the field was lit by lightning as well as floodlights. Car alarms blared at each clap of thunder. The temperatures dropped quickly, and we reluctantly began to pack up. I got to experience the joy of packing a tent in the rain - but I was aided by Katie and her friend Meg, who had come to walk and run in the true spirit of a Relay. They were determined to run at least eight miles, and - despite everyone calling them "crazy," they did. It's too bad my real camera was under a different tent, getting slightly damp. All I had on hand to capture this was my cell phone, as we huddled, cold and wet, under the big tent and watched Katie and Meg run the last five miles in the rain:

Now that's dedication.

Bring It, Brian!

2009-04-23T08:10:00.001-05:00

I finally found the perfect Dutch oven recipe for tomorrow night's rematch. My competition's tough - and determined - and I know he's been plotting and scheming for weeks, now, disappointed that we couldn't go head to head at last month's camp-out.

Click the picture. Go on...you know you want to.

I'll be winging it.

Brian has, no doubt, been testing, refining, tasting, and tweaking his recipe for weeks, now.

We'll let the hungry folks at Relay for Life decide who's the best.

Wanna go "Best of Three"?

The "Cool" Factor vs. the Sacred Cows

2009-04-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

Why are Some Brands "Cool?"*

Because they're like cows...outstanding in their field.

Seriously, part of the "cool factor" is uniqueness - the product isn't as necessary or as ubiquitous as a toaster. Toasters aren't cool, but most of us own one. Ho hum. Makes great toast, but it's about as cool as your grandmother, who probably made even better toast.

Another aspect of "cool," I think, revolves around our need to rebel against the establishment, coupled with our instinctive urge to cheer for the underdog - Apple the upstart vs. Microsoft the monolith. Isn't David cooler than Goliath? Microsoft and HP were cooler when they operated out of someone's garage.

Real "cool" doesn't try too hard to be cool - and it certainly doesn't toot its own horn and tell you how "cool" it is. It's the same with authors - I laugh when I hear someone describe their own work as "classic literature." That's not a genre; that's a label to be applied, posthumously, by literature critics. If you have to tell people you're cool, you're not. And just as anti-snobbery can be the worst form of snobbery, anti-cool tends to be cool. James Dean and Steve Urkel...now they're cool.

* Visit Mike C J, author of "Why are Some Brands Cool?" at Mike's Life. He's pretty cool, too.

Earth Day: Get the Kids Involved

2009-04-22T08:16:00.000-05:00

I remember making posters in elementary school: stop littering, stop drop and roll, stop forest fires, stop smoking...stop, stop, STOP!! I joined the Animal Protection Institute and circulated an annoying number of petitions: stop bashing the brains out of baby harp seals, stop slaughtering whales, stop leaving your cat or dog in a hot car on a hot day (now we need to remind folks to stop leaving their babies in hot cars on hot days)...stop, stop, STOP! I trick-or-treated for UNICEF; I walked for the March of Dimes. Stop hunger. Stop birth defects. I could never understand why CARE wouldn't take "care packages" of leftover food (usually liver and broccoli) that I wanted to send them, but my parents said, "Stop!"

We were anti-litter, anti-fire, anti-animal cruelty, anti-hunting - but what were we for, really? I'll tell you - we were all for annoying our parents and we all wanted the Indian guy to stop crying. We were for cute, furry animals like kitties and puppies and baby harp seals, and we were for cool sea creatures like whales. By making posters and circulating petitions and walking for our chosen causes, we were getting involved. We were helping to save the world. And that felt good.

I wrote, yesterday, on importance of feeling like a useful, needed member of the family. It's also important to give children a sense of connection to their community - a community that can be as small as their neighborhood block or as large as the entire world. What better way to do that than to teach them to care for the planet that sustains us?

A good source of environmental information for kids is National Geographic Kids. Their list of "green tips" to conserve resources is an easy way to involve even the youngest family members in making meaningful changes that really can help save the world (or at least make it a better place). Need more ideas? The Green Guide for Kids is a great resource that shows how kids around the world can make - and are making - a real difference. Here are a few other sites that focus on getting kids involved in a good cause:

Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and faith-based organizations are also good ways to get kids started in community service projects. What are some of the ways you encourage your children to be more active in the community?

Author-Publisher Chat: On Women (and Zombies!) in Fiction

2009-04-21T23:43:00.000-05:00

I was chatting, online, with my friend, fellow author (we co-authored the book Hidden Lies and Other Stories), and publisher, Vivian Zabel. We got to talking about what we liked and didn't like about some of the books we'd read lately. She mentioned that one was a little too "gritty" for her taste.

"But some of us like gritty," I said.

"I think what I don't like is women who want to act like a man and be rougher and tougher than a man but then allow their 'emotions' to override their good sense."

"True. I like strong women who are women. You know," I said, "the sort that'll take down a big man with a Vulcan neck grip rather than a kick to the family jewels."

"Yep."

"I can't stand fluffy women - the kind who trip over the carpet, land on their butts, crawl backwards like terrified crabs, and get their brains sucked out by zombies with a bendy straw. We're better than that."

"And a woman," said Vivian, "or a man for that matter, doesn't have to cuss like a sailor to be strong. Strength is often mental more than it is outward swagger."

"I agree," I said. All my female characters began knocking at the inside of my skull, clamoring for attention. To placate them, I added, "But she's allowed to cuss like a sailor under duress, in my book. Not to 'be one of the guys.'"

"Hey, every other word in anyone's vocabulary doesn't have to be profanity. Ish."

"True. But honestly, if the zombies were chasing me with the bendy straws, I'd probably drop an f-bomb on 'em before I figured out how to turn the Bacardi and a Bic into a flamethrower."

"I have tossed books because the characters, usually women, acted so stupid. And usually the authors were women. It doesn't make sense to me that women would work so hard to make women seem like dumb, emotional idiots. I can't stand the silly woman who puts herself in danger when all she has to do is call 911." There was a slight lull in the conversation while Vivian did a mental double-take. "Why associate with zombies in the first place?"

"Good point. Waste of good 151."

Relay for Life is This Weekend!

2009-04-21T18:19:00.002-05:00

We are down to the wire, folks, and still slightly short of our $100 fundraising goals for Relay for Life. Current standings:

Holly Jahangiri $85.00

Katie Jahangiri $45.00

William Jahangiri $95.00

If you're looking for a great way to contribute to the efforts of the American Cancer Society, here's your chance. Help put us over the finish line! Just click on any one of those links above, and donate $10, $20, $50, or more - any amount helps in the fight against cancer. We'll be out there with HP and my son's Boy Scout troop - Troop 626 - selling food, drinks, and homemade Dutch oven cobblers and cakes. I'll post pictures on my blog this weekend.

Chores: to Pay, or Not to Pay?

2009-04-21T07:10:00.002-05:00

"Mom, Joey's parents give him a dollar every time he takes out the trash."

"Really? Why?"

"I don't know. Can I have a dollar for taking out the trash?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because taking out the trash is something you do as a member of this family, something that benefits us all. It's not something I should have to bribe you or pay you to do. Are you going to give me a dollar every time I do your laundry?"

"Oh."

Busy parents sometimes take the "easy way out," employing outright bribery to get kids to help out around the house. Take it from someone who's been there, done that: It's not the easy way, in the long run. Everyone has a need to feel useful. When a child has a sense that he's not needed or valued, he becomes less motivated to pitch in and help. This is the point at which the exasperated parent often gives up and gives in. "Fine, I'll give you a dollar if you'll just take the stinky garbage out of the kitchen and put it in the garage." If money is the only motivator, the child still doesn't feel needed or valued. He recognizes that "getting the trash out of the kitchen" is something that has value, and that mom or dad is willing to pay for it. But it doesn't satisfy the child's need to be needed; it doesn't teach anything about the balance of give and take in a healthy relationship.

That said, there are times when payment may be appropriate. Times when mom or dad, weary from a long day, ask for something above and beyond the norm - such as doing another family member's chores, or a chore that doesn't benefit the one doing it. "Would you go into your brother's room and ferret out the dirty towels so I can do laundry? I'll give you a quarter for every towel you can find in that mess." Occasional bribery can be effective and rewarding, and may even encourage the enterprising child to take on additional duties.

Allowances ought to be tied to such "additional duties," and not be treated as an entitlement, unless they are meant to be a lesson in budgeting, and the child's "expenses" are clearly understood. The unearned allowance ought to come with obligations: a portion set aside each week for charitable contributions; a portion set aside to share in gas expenses when asking to be chauffeured somewhere, perhaps. I don't believe in asking a minor child to pay for room and board, no matter how miniscule the "payment" may be. Nor do I think they should be required to pay for necessary clothing, books, or family travel.

Accessories, make-up, movie tickets, candy, and video games are all things a child can save up for and use to learn the value (and the hardship) of saving money over time. Even so, parents should set expectations early on: no child should be entitled to spend his hard-earned savings "on anything [he] wants." If mom or dad disapproves of the purchase, then the money stays in savings. Imagine a child with a sense of entitlement: "It's my money! I can buy drugs with it if I want to!" Or "I'm going to pay for that piercing with my own money, and you can't stop me!" There are less extreme - more legal - examples: the short, short miniskirt; the t-shirt with a sexual come-on emblazoned across the chest.

I've given my kids a choice between their current deal: all reasonable expenses (including the occasional frivolous purchase) covered, or an allowance where all frivolous expenses become theirs. They're smart kids. Suddenly, "But Johnny gets five dollars a week!" doesn't seem like such a lucrative deal. And I'm not willing to pay my kids to clean their rooms, take out the trash, or do the occasional load of laundry. That's just "stuff we do" because it has to get done, and we're a family. But I'm also willing to pay a quarter a towel to the kid who didn't leave the dirty towels upstairs, to save me the trip up and down, as well as sparing me the aggravation of seeing a messy room.

What's your approach to chores and allowances?

Keeping Your Family Close In The Face Of Techno Trends

2009-04-20T09:14:00.001-05:00

by Jacob Duchaine

In today's world of deteriorating family values and decreasing real world social interactions, establishing and nurturing family values and bonds that were once standard is becoming more and more of a challenge. I'm sure no parent likes the idea that their children may grow up lacking a strong familial bond, but if you let yourself simply surrender yourself to the idea that it's simply the new way of things then that's how things are going to be.

Instead you should realize that while the old ways may be going out the window, it's your place to bring in the new way, and there's no reason that the new way of things can't include close family bonds, even in the face of a new age of electronics.

I can think of at least three major ways you can bring your family closer together, even in the face of the growing techno trends. The first of the three ways is to adapt, and work to help family bonds survive in the new age. The second way is to preserve. It may seem old school, and they may hate you for it while it's happening, but nine times out of ten they'll love you for it later. The third way is to teach. Too long the youths have been considered the world's computer savvy people. The fact that you've been around longer only means that you have had longer to learn about these things, and if you can be the one to teach them about technology, that's an opportunity to shape how they interact with it.

Adapt Your Family Functions to Technology

It's been said a million times a thousand ways. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Your family is moving into the future. You cannot keep yourself or your family in the past, and any effort to do so will make you seem out of date.

If you want to adapt, learn what the other members of your family are doing on the computer, and you do it to. Don't just do it, like it. Get good at it and make it serve your needs like it does for everyone else. You may think that since you've never done it before, you don't need to do it now, but the reality is that while you may not need it, you may find you like it, and even if you don't it will give you something in common with the more technological of your family's members.

In your efforts to adapt, you will no doubt come across the social networking sites. Use these especially, because they are in fact the heralds of something greater, and getting to know them will help you more than the current can show. Use the social networking sites not only to watch your children, but also to communicate with them, and organize your family's daily living. Integrate technology into the way your family functions.

Use social networking to organize family events. If there's a birthday party, a play, a family outing, or anything else, mark it online and invite the appropriate family members. This will not only help the family members remember, but will also make them feel like the family life is perfectly integrated with technology.

I'm sure you can think of other ways to adapt your family values into the technology age. Use Twitter to keep up with each other. Run a blog of major family events. Maybe even require that a child visiting a friend’s house, a summer camp, or some other location away from home, tweets at least once each day.

Preserve Key Experiences In The Face of Technology

While it wouldn't be wise to try to ignore technology, and I suggest adapting yourself and your family structure to technology, there are some things that can only be preserved. These are things that can't be done online. Things that you can either save, or let fade away. Things like eating dinner together, going to the park, camping, or a multitude of other vital experiences.

While it may sometimes seem tempting to let your family scatter through the house while eating dinner, you may require that every family member eat dinner at the table, as a family. This will provide a family ritual that you all do together, which will help create a sense of family bond if practiced over months and years. Do not teleconference your dinner. It's not the same thing.

Especially when your children are young, take them to the park. Some parents today essentially let the television and computer raise their young children, but the reality is that watching a park on television will never have the same emotional effects or health benefits as being taken by your parents to a real outdoor park to play on the swings and roll in grass. You just can't digitize real life.

Take your children camping. I know that a lot of parents have taken to the idea of RV camping, but it's my opinion that an RV is a bad plan. RV's have electricity, and if there's electricity your children are likely to want to bring and use their electronics. When you go camping, don't let your children bring electronics. No laptops, no blackberries, no cell phones. The adults should have cell phones for emergencies, but should not use them unless someone is hurt. Do not make business or social calls while camping for any reason.

Once again, I'm sure you can think of many other family traditions to preserve. Reading bedtime stories, family outing, things your parents did with you when you were young. Maybe you want to teach your daughter to bake, or maybe you want to have your son build a table or a shed with you. They may be resistant while it's happening, even after it's happening, but the truth is that later, maybe years later after they've grown up, they will love you for it. I know I do.

Teach Your Children About Electronics

Children have in general gotten a reputation for being more tech savvy than adults. Adults have been in general considered resistant to technology as they tried to preserve old things like pencil and paper that they were used to. Don't let yourself be the resistant adult, because if you are it will take away some of your authority as your children subconsciously realize that you're out of date.

Instead, learn about new technologies before your children. Tell your children about the technologies before they've gotten into them. This will be easiest if you have young children who haven't yet gotten into Twitter or Facebook. Teach your children about these services yourself, and it will make you seem up to date, and will keep your children's opinions of you higher than it might be if they think you live in the past, and will help you when it comes time to teach your children to moderate there use of technology.

Censorship = More Yummy "Banned Books"?

2009-04-16T08:44:00.001-05:00

I like reading "banned books" and encouraging others to do so, especially when they encourage people to freely exchange ideas that might shake up the political and social status quo. Along with those come a few purely entertaining books that may or may not have any "redeeming social value," but that adults ought to be allowed to read, in order to determine their value for themselves. In principle, censorship is a bit like not being allowed to watch the President deliver his State of the Union address, but being forced to watch Fox News tell you what he "really said." Now there's a dangerous idea.

Apparently, Amazon.com has removed certain material from its sales rankings, thus burying it and effectively removing it from public view. For a straightforward explanation of why sales rank matters on Amazon, see this article. First, someone at Amazon explained to author Mark Probst that the company was doing this on purpose, "in consideration of our entire customer base"; now, it appears that in the face of massive protest on Twitter and among bloggers, Amazon representatives are claiming "it was a glitch." A few people think it's a smokescreen for poor accounting practices.

If the folks at Amazon were just being prissy and were truly interested in protecting the sensibilities of their "entire customer base" (which they apparently misjudged as being as prissy as they were), wouldn't they also have removed books on violent, illegal practices such as dog fighting? What about heterosexually explicit books? If there's anything I hate worse than censorship, it's lying and hypocrisy. One of the company's stated explanations must be false. Or maybe it's not Amazon - it's the glitch that was concerned about Amazon's "entire customer base." If you find this disturbing, here are a few things you can do today:

Call or write to Amazon. Amazon executive customer service email is: ecr@amazon.com and the customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575. Below is a template found on Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary that you can use for starters:

Dear Amazon,

It has come to my attention that you are de-ranking books, supposedly on the basis of “adult content.” Apparently, according to the Amazon Dictionary, this is defined as books that have anything at all to do with GLBT characters, authors, issues, or references, with some general erotica being roped in, as well. In the meantime, however, books on the illegal, inhumane, and horrifyingly violent sport of dog fighting remain ranked and appear on a first page search under “dog fighting”: http://bit.ly/18l70B. Further, a search under “playboy” yields as the first return “Playboy: Wet and Wild Complete Collection,” followed by “Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds,” and so on. At what point did “adult content” exclude nude women and dogs killing other dogs for sport?

This is nothing short of discrimination; this is nothing short of censorship. This is nothing a business that claims commercial integrity at even the most basic level would do. Consequently, as a longtime Amazon customer, I look forward to an immediate reversal of this ridiculous policy. Otherwise, I will purchase elsewhere and encourage everyone else I know to do the same.

Add Smart Bitches, Trashy Books' definition of amazon rank to your lexicon. You can even have a hand in its adoption in the Urban Dictionary.

Sign this petition. Because even if it was "a glitch," bookstores and libraries should take great care to protect our right to freedom of expression. When books are censored based on categories like "homosexuality," "GLBT," "erotica," and - "disability"? - then we're on a slippery slope to nowhere good. Of course, if consumers do find those titles, Amazon will still sell them and take its cut of the profits, right?

Ash e-Anar (Pomegranate Soup with Lamb Shanks)

2009-04-14T20:19:00.001-05:00

Ingredients:

1 c. lentils
1/2 c. rice
1 bunch fresh parsley chopped or 1 c. dried crushed parsley
1 6 oz packet of frozen chopped spinach or 1/2 pound fresh chopped spinach
1 T. crushed dried mint leaves
1 T. salt
1 tsp.crushed black pepper
2 T. sugar
1 tsp. tumeric powder
4 lamb shanks
3-4 c. water
32 ozs. pomegranate juice or 3/4 cups pomegranate syrup

Instructions:

Brown lamb shanks in a large skillet with a few T. extra virgin olive oil and place in crock pot.

Add all ingredients except pomegranate. Cook on low for 6-7 hours. Add pomegranate and let simmer for thirty minutes more.

Serves 6-8.

Farm Fresh Eggs, Tomatoes & Crimini Mushrooms

2009-04-13T23:18:00.001-05:00

This was tonight's dinner. Tasty and nutritious! It was 9 PM before we got home from Boy Scouts and grocery shopping, and I was so tempted to take one of the easy routes: McDonald's drive-thru, or Lean Cuisine.

But to confirm and celebrate my rediscovered commitment, I decided to cook.

Ingredients

1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
5-6 crimini mushrooms
1 campari tomato
1 farm fresh egg, shelled (this one had a pale green shell, but really, any fresh egg will do)
sea salt & freshly ground pepper
whole wheat toast (this is HEB whole wheat "baked from scratch" bread)

Instructions

Clean and slice mushrooms and tomato.
Salt vegetables lightly.
Heat oil over medium burner; add pepper, tomato slices,
Cover and steam until veggies are slightly tender.
Move veggies to form a ring around the outer edges of the saucepan and drop the raw egg into the center of the pan.
Cover and steam until egg is cooked to your liking.

Try it and let me know what you think.

I am loving SparkPeople's Daily Nutrition Feedback! It's just one more reason to faithfully track everything you eat. Not only does it report on whether you met, fell short of, or exceeded your nutritional goals, it generates colorful little pie charts to show you, visually, just where your calories are coming from:

What to Do When Your Personal Trainer Thinks You've Died

2009-04-13T16:40:00.001-05:00

Where I'm starting over. From scratch. Time to stop using, "Well, I quit smoking" as an excuse for "I gained it all back." It's not rocket science; I'm not stupid; and excuses are just that - excuses.

Commit to and trust the process. The following quote (and copious amounts of raw jalapeno peppers) helped me to quit smoking, and I doubt they'll fail me now:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
          Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
          Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'"
                    - W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951
Deliberately form better habits. They're obviously not forming themselves. Supposedly, it takes about three weeks to a month to form a new habit (bad habits may take significantly less time). Some sites that may be helpful:
Zen Habits at http://zenhabits.net/
My Bad Habits at http://my-bad-habits.blogspot.com/
Eat healthier, fresher, foods in the right quantities (1200 -1550 calories a day). Track nutrients and calories on SparkPeople. Some sites that might help:
World's Healthiest Foods: Food Advisor at http://whfoods.com/foodadvisor.php
Drink more water (2 liters daily), less coffee (1 cup daily, at most).
Coffee is a diuretic and a stimulant that burns energy but gives nothing in return.
Exercise more, realizing that even just getting up and walking up a flight of stairs once an hour is "more."
Get up and move, take more walks, just burn more energy.
Set small, realistic goals and milestones. Maybe this isn't the year I climb Everest... maybe I'm NEVER going to climb Everest. How about a twenty-mile hike without dying?
Ultimately, my goal is to weigh 160 lbs. I can do that by November 21, easily, if I follow Nike's advice and "Just Do It."
Be accountable.
Pictures don't lie. Well, not unless they're heavily photomanipulated. But that would be...cheating. Not to mention counterproductive.

According to the Food Advisor over at World's Healthiest Foods, I should be eating more of the following in order to boost my daily intake of nutrients I'm likely to be deficient in, and increase my energy:

Spinach, boiled

Calf's liver, braised

Turnip greens, cooked

Kelp (sea vegetable)

Romaine lettuce

Basil, dried, ground

Mustard greens, boiled

Crimini mushrooms, raw

Parsley, fresh

Collard greens, boiled

Oregano, dried, ground

Salmon, chinook, baked/broiled

Beef tenderloin, lean, broiled

Cauliflower, boiled

Cinnamon, ground

Tomato, ripe

According to the records of my gym membership, I'm either dead - or wasting a lot of money each month. Each time I write an exercise related goal, my fingers form the words "going to try to..." What's wrong with this picture? I am going to spend three hours sweating at the gym each week, whenever I can work it in. (Notice how cleverly I phrased that? I could just sit in the steam room...) I will never run a Marathon; I fully intend to die with my own, original knees. But I would like to have more endurance and stamina for the next time I tackle a hike like Cinder Cone, and I'm keeping "do one proper pushup" on my list of life goals. "Live until there's no life left in me, preferably in my hundreds," might be a good goal to add.

Care to join me? What's motivating you or holding you back? What excuses do you make for dragging your feet or not reaching your goals? Are you as healthy as you want to be? If so, share what's worked best for you.

2009-04-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

How well do you know me? quiz - Take more fun quizzes at ibeatyou

8 Ways to Guarantee a Follow on Twitter

2009-04-11T21:50:00.001-05:00

There are plenty of posts, lately, on what will get you "unfollowed" on Twitter. It's kind of like wearing the wrong style of denim in middle school. Don't look at the stats, and whatever you do, don't sign up with Qwitter.com, if you don't have a thick skin.

Then there are services that say they can guarantee you hundreds, even thousands, of followers. If they're not engaged in a dialog with you, or even reading what you say, what good is that? It's like having a million viewers during ratings week; if all of them go to the bathroom during commercials, what good does it do you?

And somewhere in between, there's me. I'm not going to second-guess your reasons for Twittering, and I won't pretend that doing everything on this list will guarantee that everyone will follow you on Twitter. But if you do all 8 (or maybe even 5) of the following things, I'll follow you.

Be genuine and human. Fill out your bio before inviting people to follow you. Don't be coy and make me guess, "Is this my long-lost third cousin twice removed on my stepmother's side? Or is it just some random spammer?" You have 160 characters to tell me who you are, what you do, and what topics pique your interest. Use them!
Add a real photo of yourself. Or, if you're in the Witness Protection Program, a photo of something that symbolically and uniquely represents the real you. Avoid free clip-art if you want to stand out and be noticed. If you don't want to be noticed, why are you on Twitter?
Include a link to your Web site or blog - not one of those canned "get-rich-quick" pages (because I always read those as "run away as fast as you can"), but a real Web site or blog that answers the question, "Why might I want to get to know you better?" The answer to that involves a combination of things we have in common and things we don't - isn't that usually the basis for a lively conversation?
Be humble. Please don't auto-DM me to say, "Thanks for the follow. Download my [whateverthehellyou'reselling] from [ittybittyurl] and TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE!" My life's fine, just the way it is. It would be arrogant to assume, on brief acquaintance, that you could improve it to such a degree that it would require the exclamation marks, let alone my hard-earned cash.
By all means, pitch your product or service. I do. Just remember: I like my Spam grilled, with pineapple and Mai Tais. Served any other way, I just ignore it. Or make fun of it on my blog.
Use standard English. (Or broken French. Or kindergarten Spanish. I don't read anything else, really.) Don't make me break out the Buzzword Bingo cards. txt, l337, etc. give me hives; Marketing-speak and too many mentions of "SEO" and "social media" and "Web 2.0" will send me into anaphylactic shock. I use semicolons in cell phone text messages. I admire people who can express a complete thought in one grammatically correct, 140-character sentence.
Following people shows you care; being followed shows you're interesting. Talk to yourself, if you must - but do post regular updates. On the other hand, following 2000 people, only 5 of whom follow you back, and having only one tweet to your name...that's just weird.
Start a conversation. Ask a question. Leave a comment on my blog (you can even link back to your own blog, provided you're not just serving up canned Spam - I reserve the right to delete or make fun of comments from Sploggers and Spammers). Make me think or make me smile, and I'll try to return the favor. Don't follow me if it's all a numbers game to you. I'm not a notch in your Twitter tree.

Pygmies at the Lake

2009-04-11T09:18:00.001-05:00

I was bored. I made no secret of that fact to Mrs. Brown*, the woman whose unpleasant duty it was to watch over me that summer. “I wish I could go swimming,” I muttered.

“Why don’t you, then?” she asked.

I told her about the lake, and how an early thaw had left it overgrown with thick, slimy, bilious-green algae and duck droppings. “It’s like that at the start of every summer,” I explained. “It’ll be a few weeks, yet, till they clean the lake.”

“How do they clean the lake?” asked Mrs. Brown.

I had always assumed they did it with chemicals, harsh things like chlorine and copper and things with names I couldn’t pronounce. Or maybe Mother Nature took care of it in due time. In a few weeks, the water would be clear and clean and fit for swimming, a fact we village kids took for granted. But looking over at Mrs. Brown’s expression of sincere interest and willingness to listen, I couldn’t say that. It would be too boring. Too depressingly mundane.

“It’s the pygmies,” I said.

“Pygmies?” she exclaimed. “What pygmies?”

What pygmies, indeed. “The ones from the Allegheny Mountains. They’re in Pennsylvania, you know.”

“I see. And what do they have to do with cleaning the lake?”

“We hire them. They travel across the States, cleaning up the lakes after they thaw. It’s a long way, you know. Just outside Johnstown.”

“Pygmies, just outside Johnstown.”

“Yes,” I said, warming to my story. “They camp out on the side of the lake. They’re vegetarians, you see. They like the algae. It’s sort of a, a delicacy to them.” Eeewwww. Sometimes my imagination runs away with me. I pictured little brown-skinned men and women, about four-feet tall, munching clumps of algae dripping with duck droppings. Seasoning, you might say. “It’s actually quite nutritious. In fact, they don’t charge us a cent. We could probably charge them for the meal, but it works out to everyone’s benefit this way.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Brown, nodding earnestly.

Oh, give it up already. Aren’t you tired of playing ‘humor the twelve-year-old’? I thought. Adults can be such dorks. “There are plenty of lakes around here. By the end of spring, they’ve had their fill.”

“Where do they go then? What do they do the rest of the year?”

Oh, so glad you asked. “Why, they go back to the Alleghenies and, um,” I thought hard. “They hibernate.” Oh, right. She’d call me on that for sure. Pygmies are people. People don’t hibernate.

“Really? All winter long?”

“Yeah, all winter. You know, they travel by foot. Won’t have anything to do with cars or planes or trucks or anything. After gorging themselves on algae and marching back to the mountains, they’re exhausted. It’s all they can do to digest all that food. Did you know that it takes seven months to digest a pound of algae?” I improvised.

“No! I had no idea. That’s fascinating. Thank you for telling me all this. It’s amazing, the things I learn every day…” Mrs. Brown shooed me out of the house. If I couldn’t swim, I could at least ride my bike or play in the sunshine. It wasn’t healthy for a growing child to be cooped up indoors all day, with nothing but a thick book for company. I slipped a book under my sweater, anyway, before slipping out the back door. I read under the apple tree until dinnertime.

A few nights later, we went out to dinner, my parents and I, with Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Mr. Brown was a business associate of Dad’s. I’d forgotten all about the ridiculous pygmy story, until Mrs. Brown began eagerly telling it to her husband. Mr. Brown looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head and a third eye. My mother looked at me, and I began to slide under the table in the vain hope of disappearing. “You didn’t--“ my mother began.

“You didn’t!” my father said, trying to look stern as he politely stifled a giggle for the Browns’ benefit.

I nodded silently, trying to look contrite.

Secrecy is the one thing the villagers had always promised the pygmies, and I had violated the contract. You see, they are a very private people, those pygmies…

*Disclaimer: Names have been changed to protect the gullible and the not-so-innocent. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is...well, not meant to be insulting or embarrassing. Truly. Hi there. ;)

Author's Note: Honesty is very important to me. Both of my kids know that just about the only thing that makes me really angry - see red and snort like a bull enraged - is dishonesty. Lying, cheating, stealing, sneaking - all manifestations of the same basic character flaw. But honest to G-d, if someone's going to be this gullible... No, really, mea culpa. I'm sorry. No I'm not. There are three times in life when it's acceptable to lie:

When writing fiction that is clearly labeled "fiction."
When answering questions like "Does this dress make me look fat?" but only when changing clothes or otherwise fixing the problem is not an option.
When talking to college-educated adults that could not reasonably be expected to believe such a hare-brained tale as this one... I mean, really!

17 Things to Do on Twitter

2009-04-10T22:07:00.001-05:00

NOTHING TO DO?
by Shelley Silverstein

Nothing to do?
Nothing to do?
Put some mustard in your shoe,
Fill your pockets full of soot,
Drive a nail into your foot,
Put some sugar in your hair,
Place your toys upon the stair,
Smear some jelly on the latch,
Eat some mud and strike a match,
Draw a picture on the wall,
Roll some marble down the hall,
Pour some ink in daddy's cap--
Now go upstairs and take a nap.

Or log on to Twitter, where you can:

1. Challenge yourself to form a truthful, yet interesting, answer to the question, "What are you doing?" If YOU’RE bored, do something else.

2. Tighten your writing. Learn to express a complete thought in 140 characters or less.

3. Promote a blog post: yours, or someone else’s. Go sparingly with your own; be generous with others’.

4. Ask a question. Provoke a thought. Start a conversation.

5. Promote good products; critique the bad. 140 characters is about all the critique most companies really want on their products, anyway.

6. Meet new friends. Just don’t mistake “followers” for “friends” and invite them home for dinner.

7. Follow the Twitterati. Don’t know who the Twitterati are? They’ll be happy to tell you.

8. Obsessively check your Twitter popularity on twitter.grader.com.

9. Expand your professional network. Don’t kill it by behaving like a self-centered twit or a mindless bird brain.

10. Exchange tips with the pros. Avoid the cons.

11. Follow people who tweet about things that interest you. Don’t go all middle school and unfollow someone just because they unfollow you.

12. Talk to yourself. (Who’s going to know?)

13. Write a serialized novel, 140 characters at a time. Try to make each tweet a cliffhanger. If people unfollow, don’t quit your day job.

14. Explain, in 140 characters or less, what “microblogging” is and why companies, or individuals, should care.

15. Write poetry. (Twitter is the perfect medium for Haiku.) If you write a sonnet, post it in the comments here!

15. Share what you’re listening to, right now, on Grooveshark.com.

16. Report breaking news. Try not to BE the news.

17. Learn about fun things like Problogger's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. Find more information on what it entails here.

Rare Delicacy Stirs Controversy, Protest, and Feeding Frenzy

2009-04-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

Today's introduction of Sasquatch Jerky has some Cascadians up in arms. The Bureau of Sasquatch Affairs is looking into a new product by Jerky.com that claims to be "hand-sliced strips of rare, 100% premium choice Sasquatch meat...seasoned and marinated with the finest of all-natural ingredients to create a savory flavor which will satisfy your taste buds every time." Few people have been lucky enough (or wealthy enough) to try 100% premium choice Sasquatch meat, though it is said that "the meat of the Yeti has a considerably higher fat content than Sasquatch meat, due to the severe cold conditions in yeti territory, but the flavor is quite similar to buffalo. Not so with Chupacabra, which is rather goaty by comparison."

Doug Iske, President of Jerky.com, claims that Sasquatch meat is very much in demand, citing the success of Bigfoot Hunting Preserve and exotic travel destinations billed as "Yeti Safari Tours," despite the protests of the Save the Sasquatch Society and others. For the vegetarians, though, jerky.com offers delicious pineapple jerky straight from Maui. Pineapple jerky is a healthy alternative to the typical "fruit leather" snacks - slices of sweet, fresh, sun-ripened pineapples are dehydrated and lightly glazed with honey. Made from 100% natural ingredients, they still look and taste like real pineapple, making them a lovely and edible garnish for a main meal, as well as a tasty treat at snack time.

While Sasquatch Jerky is just a little too rich (for my wallet) - and too hominoid (for my tastebuds), I must admit that I'm intrigued with the other exotic offerings of Jerky.com, and if the pineapple jerky I got this past weekend is truly a taste of things to come, I'm really looking forward to trying venison jerky, turkey jerky, elk jerky, buffalo jerky, and ostrich jerky. If your tastes are more simple, they also provide plenty of beef jerky varieties - and who can resist bacon jerky? I predict this will be a popular hangout for the guys - particularly here in Texas, despite the fact that they don't seem to have any rattlesnake, raccoon, or roadkill jerky among their product offerings (yet).

So, what DO you give the Intrepid Adventurer who has everything? With all-natural ingredients such as soy sauce, crushed black pepper and a splash of pineapple juice in every bite, you just can't go wrong with Jerky.com brand Sasquatch Jerky. All Jerky.com products come shipped to your door FREE OF CHARGE in re-sealable bags, guaranteeing flavor and freshness the whole bag through.

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

2009-03-31T23:00:00.001-05:00

When J.J. and I were married, nearly 25 years ago, our minister refused to allow my father to "give me away." He said that dated back to when women really were chattel to be given away by their male relatives. I didn't care; I'd never felt like chattel a day in my life. But I'm an only child, and there was no way the man was taking my dad's part out of the ceremony. In the end, the minister found a solution that pleased us all and gave my father-in-law a part in the wedding: Instead of giving me away, my dad welcomed my husband, J.J., into our family, and my father-in-law, A.J., welcomed me into his. Eleven years ago, he moved in with us. Somewhere along the line, I started to think he'd live forever. Saturday, he proved me wrong. In all the times he thanked me for everything I did for him, he never seemed to remember that he gave me two brothers and a sister, and the most precious gift of all: his son, my husband - and through him, two beautiful children.

Febreze Sport

2009-03-27T22:46:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, still gung-ho over having a workout buddy to go with me to the gym during my lunch hour every day, I signed up on MapMyRun.com to receive a free sample of the new Febreze Sport, Cool Energy Scent. It arrived a few days ago - a taunting reminder of fitness aspirations that have since crawled under the couch to die and have begun to stink like last month's stale, sweaty gym socks moldering in the trunk of my car.

Meanwhile, we've had a series of unfortunate events occur in our household, leading to the only bright side in the whole fiasco - a visit from my in-laws. (No, really, that IS a bright side - I love my in-laws. I often tell them I wonder why on earth I waited so long to have siblings. They've just about cured me of the smug, self-centered satisfaction of being an only child.) Since my sister-in-law would be sleeping on the hide-a-bed, it was particularly unfortunate that my kids chose last night to have a spat involving a cup of coffee and a throw-pillow (I try to explain to them that "throw pillow" is a decorative term, not the description of an upholstered weapon). When we got home last night, and started to prepare the bed, I smelled the pungent and unpleasant aroma of cold, stale coffee.

"Febreze Sport to the rescue!" I thought, patting myself on the back for having had the foresight NOT to stick it in my gym bag with the rank tank top and the slightly damp and funky sweatpants. I grabbed the little sample box, pulled the can from the plastic bag, examined it, wondered why it didn't have a cap, like normal spray cans, shrugged, and pressed the top.

Nothing happened. I twisted the top. In hindsight, grabbing the orange ring while twisting wasn't the thing to do. I actually did do it correctly - which is to say I twisted just the silver spray button to the left ("righty tighty, lefty loosey") but if you twist it too far in the correct direction, you still can't press down and spray it. Admittedly, a bright light and reading glasses might've helped, but I wasn't seeing these instructions:

Can you read that? It says "Lock" (upside down, because that's how I saw it) and has an arrow pointing to the right. Well, left - but you get the idea. Can you read that? This is somewhat larger than actual size. I couldn't make it out last night, but it didn't matter. I turned it right, I turned it left, and the button wouldn't budge. I looked for more clues in the fine print:

There it is, plain as the nose on my face, black-on-shiny-silver in 4-point type. I'm such an idiot. I didn't even see this until tonight, when I started taking photos using my camera's macro mode. (To my credit, the can has a shiny silver surface - you turn on a light to aid in reading the print, and you get a slight glare that makes it hard to read. Catch-22. But it's there. Well...except that I tried twisting the spray button, and it just turned in both directions but wouldn't budge. If I had seen this, I would at least have known I was on the right track, and not moved on to Idiot Move #1.)

Idiot Move #1

Let's just say that this is not the proper tool to open a can of Febreze Sport:

If I'd ever earned my Totin' Chip from the Boy Scouts, it'd be clipped and maybe burned after last night. Thinking that the orange band might be some sort of safety seal, such as that on many plastic milk bottles and other containers, I tried to break it or tear it off. It's a tough little sucker. I couldn't find the scissors, so I did the next best thing: I grabbed a steak knife.

If you must do Idiot Move #1, at least point the damned thing AWAY from your hand while you do it, so you don't end up in the ER for two hours, with three stitches to show for your trouble:

This morning, my sister-in-law figured out how to open the can. I finally got to SMELL Febreze Sport. My husband has long been an avid fan of Febreze, but I was never fond of the original scent. In fact, I really disliked the original scent, although I had to admit it works to eliminate worse odors. But I like the smell of Febreze Sport. It is light and crisp. And it works beautifully, not only on stinky gym shoes and bags that have sat, long forgotten, in the back of a humid car trunk for weeks after a lunchtime workout, but also on stale, cold coffee stains, funky old pillows, and whatever's down there in the carpet that smells like feet. It's a light sort of herbal, citrusy scent that makes everything seem clean and fresh again. Febreze Sport, in short, is the master of illusion.

Just one more caveat: Don't spray near open wounds.

Whimper.

Why You're Fat

2009-03-15T13:46:00.001-05:00

My husband told me he'd found this informative site, "Why You're Fat" and insisted I had to take a look at it. "Whooooa," murmured my son, anticipating a volley of dirty looks and DVDs from my side of the office. My husband had the nerve to email me the link.

"Fine," I snarled, rolling my eyes, expecting yet-another-weight-loss-advice site.

Look, if this is why you're fat, it still doesn't begin to explain my weight problems. Just browsing this gallery of mostly meat-based, deep-fried, occasionally inventive concoctions makes me slightly queasy, gives me a bit of a tension headache, and produces a strong urge to go totally ovo-lacto vegetarian. I have a sudden craving for a five-pound box of Clementines; holding that thought in my mind, I can almost feel the imaginary citrus washing away the imaginary slime of lard that's now palpable on my tongue.

I can appreciate the artistic entries here:

But this? Kind of makes you wonder why anyone gets bent out of shape over a teaspoonful of HFCS or a few grams of trans-fats:

Okay, on that note, I'm off to get some healthy foods to restock the pantry. I've found my new weight loss aid: I'm posting these on the refrigerator door.

A Team within a Team: Relay for Life

2009-03-10T00:14:00.001-05:00

On April 24^{th – 25th}, over 1,000 plus individuals will gather at Cy-Woods High School in the Cypress TX area to participate in the American Cancer Society’s "Relay For Life" event. This overnight event allows friends and family to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against a disease that takes too much.

William, Katie, and I have joined "HP's Friday Night Lights - Texans" and Troop 626 (my son's Scout troop) to support the American Cancer Society in the fight against cancer. Troop 626 will be cooking cobblers throughout the night. Brian M. and I will be facing off to see who makes the best Dutch oven dessert - and who raised the most money to benefit the American Cancer Society. If you're interested in making a donation to this worthy cause (ACS, not the Dutch oven dessert awards), please pick any of the following links and click Donate:

You can help a Boy Scout do his good turn:

Donate via William's Page

You can help me show the kids how it's done:

Donate via Holly's Page

My Reason to Relay

I want to see an end to cancer during my lifetime.
I want to give something back to my community.
I want to honor the cancer survivors in my family: my dad, my father-in-law, my grandfather and my aunt.
I want to honor friends and coworkers who have battled cancer - some victorious, others valiant but defeated.
I want to support my son's Boy Scout troop (Troop 626) in its support of Relay for Life.
I want to beat Brian M. in the dessert cook-off rematch!

Relay gives me the unique opportunity to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer, to remember loved ones lost, and to support the American Cancer Society’s lifesaving mission by fighting back against a disease that has already taken too much. Please support my efforts to fight back against cancer by making a donation or joining my Relay For Life® team.

Please consider donating $10, $20, $50, $100 or more. Honor or remember someone with a luminaria during the Relay For Life Luminaria Ceremony of Hope. Your efforts will help the American Cancer Society fund groundbreaking cancer research, provide up-to-date cancer information, advocate for all people to have access to screening and treatment, and offer free programs and services to improve the quality of life for people facing cancer. By being a part of Relay, we are joining a worldwide movement to help defeat cancer for future generations.

You can help my daughter earn service hours and beat the pants off her mother and her little brother:

Donate via Katie's page

Give in the name of a loved one, a friend, a colleague - is there anyone whose life hasn't been touched by cancer? Give to honor the tireless researchers, doctors, and caregivers who fight the good fight daily. Help out in any way you can. It's a friendly competition - we don't really care whose page you click on, if you click. Thanks in advance for helping to support the efforts of the American Red Cross!

The Next Big Thing in Social Media?

2009-03-05T12:45:00.001-06:00

me2everyone is going to be a cool new virtual world where you can meet friends, chat, shop, play, watch videos, create an art gallery, open a virtual newspaper, play the free inworld lottery and make money from your own online store! You and everyone you know make the decisions, shape the world, create real incomes and share in the profits. It’s a new place where you meet new people or invite your friends. Learn new skills or expand your business. Find the love of your life or help the planet.

Membership is free and every member automatically becomes a shareholder in me2everyone Limited.

I'm going to spare you the rest of the "cheesy canned message," since it simply doesn't resonate with me - or most of my similarly cynical friends. But what if you'd been given an opportunity - at no cost - to get in on the ground floor and own shares of MySpace or Facebook or Second Life? Would you have taken it, pre-launch? Or would you have said, "If it sounds too good to be true, it is"? What might those shares be worth, now?

me2everything.com sounds similar to the virtual worlds that exist today, such as Second Life. me2everything.com hasn't launched, yet, and they're giving away shares to anyone who registers. They're giving bonus shares to those who refer their friends. They're not asking for money or bank routing numbers. They're not even asking - yet - for your street address or phone number. Naturally, there will come a point where shareholders will need to prove that they are real human beings (not infants, pets, alter egos, avatars, or imaginary friends), and will need to register these shares. We can all decide, then, just how comfortable we are doing that.

My guess is that, in order to get businesses to view me2everything as a viable place to advertise and conduct business, they first need to populate the virtual world. That's us. They'll also need to make it a rich, entertaining, multimedia experience that can give long-standing "virtual worlds" a run for their money. Competition is a good thing; we all benefit. It could fall flat. Or it could be "the next big thing."

Sound intriguing? If so, you can sign up now at http://www.me2everyone.com/240349 .

You Know You're a Geek When...

2009-03-03T08:00:00.001-06:00

...Facebook reminds you you have a birthday coming up, and you're slightly surprised by this.

...the first friends to wish you a Happy Birthday are people you've never met in person - and your favorite Web sites.

My dad called to tell me it's also "Square Root Day." There are only nine of these in any century, and only a few of us get to celebrate a birthday on one. My husband has to wait until he's 77 to celebrate his birthday on Square Root Day.

I'm not a math geek, but I do think that's pretty cool.

Spring Seems a Long Way Off at Spring Creek Park

2009-03-02T09:41:00.001-06:00

In a moment of clear-headed honesty and self-awareness, I'm ready to admit that I'll always be a fair-weather camper. Just imagining myself trying to pitch a tent in a thunderstorm brings a vision of me, in a muddy, crumpled heap, howling tears of frustration. But this weekend was beautiful, and perfect for camping - despite a wind advisory and temperatures falling into the mid-thirties at night.

We camped near the site of an old Confederate powder mill. Cannon powder was made at the mill for the Confederate Army from 1861 to 1863. An explosion at the mill in 1863 killed three men: William Bloecher, Adolph Hillegeist, and Peter Wunderlich. In 1966, the marker shown below was donated by Mrs. E.B. Hillegeist and her sons, Earl and Roy Hillegeist, and was erected by the Harris County Historical Survey Committee, Spring Creek County Historical Association, and the decedents of those killed in the explosion.

Here's a little Lord of the Flies moment:

Boys. Sticks. Axes and pocket knives. It doesn't get much better than this, does it? Well, maybe it does - when the day is done, there's dinner.

We had pasta, followed by a Dutch oven dessert competition.

I won, with a scrumptious lemon pound cake that reminded our Scoutmaster of his grandmother's cooking. But it was a close race, and we all got to enjoy a taste of the entries. Here's my stiffest competition - he and I have challenged each other to a cook-off at the next camp-out. Our Scoutmaster says we have to come up with new recipes, though - no repeating what we did at this camp-out.

Cold-weather camping means fewer bugs and less sweat.

Wait. Scratch that. Fewer mosquitoes, maybe.

This little guy decided to hitch-hike home on my abdomen. All together now: Ewwwwww! Nothing like getting into the bath and realizing that the fleck of dirt or leaf you're trying to brush off your tummy has...LEGS. Eww.

@#$%. The downside: I get to worry about all the dreaded tick-borne diseases out there for something like 12 weeks. Fortunately, none are "common" and most tick bites are harmless. The upside: William got hands-on experience removing a tick, something he's supposed to know for his First Aid merit badge. He did a lovely job of it.

Anybody out there know what kind of tick this is? To me, it looks like a dog tick (no snickering from the peanut gallery - that is NOT proof of anything!) but it could be a Lone Star Tick (now we know the REAL reason Texas is known as the Lone Star State!). Tenacious little suckers. They hang on for dear life and are not at all easy to pull out.

Anyway, we had a great time. It was cold, and I'm wind-burned and tick-bitten, but it was fun.

Book Review: Historic Photos of Daytona Beach, by Harold D Cardwell, Sr.

2009-02-22T08:50:00.000-06:00

I was born a stone's throw from the Daytona International Speedway. I drove my first car down International Speedway Boulevard, thinking the odometer didn't work. "I can't get it up over forty!" I complained. My dad, ever the calm one, quietly explained what a "tachometer" was, and informed me I had been flying down the road at forty miles OVER the speed limit. He never broke a sweat. The salesman recovered the power of speech by the time we returned to the lot, and I had my first car - a fully-loaded, powder blue Ford Mustang. I road my bicycle around the race track - two and a half miles of mind-numbingly boring scenery - and I've driven a car down the beach, the beach by which I judge all other beaches in the world.

In November 2008, I was asked to take a look at Historic Photos of Houston, by Betty Trapp Chapman. It highlighted how little I knew about my current hometown, and piqued my interest in learning more. Naturally, I was eager to review Historic Photos of Daytona Beach, by Harold D Cardwell, Sr. What might I learn about my birth place and its history? Well, first of all, I had no idea that Daytona was named for its founder, Matthias Day.

Most interesting, to me, were the photos and stories of Mary McLeod Bethune, a black woman who, in 1904, started a school for the children of railroad workers. Her first students were five little girls. That school would eventually grow into what is now the well-respected Bethune-Cookman University.

Also fascinating are the panoramic views of the beach - taken just as oceanside development began, and long before tall hotels and condominiums defined the landscape of the coast. There is a photo of the first car in Daytona; it arrived there in 1898. But some of the first people to drive on the beach are shown here in horse-drawn carriages. Wind-sailing is nothing new; there are photos here of tricycles with sails, along with an impressive array of human-powered, steam-powered, and gas-powered vehicles on the beach. "A lone horse and buggy stands apart in the distance, as though to suggest its passage into history." There is a sense of something lost to time, even as you stand on the brink of progress and so much to be gained in the future. On page 91, there is a photo of aviatrix Ruth Law in her biplane on Daytona Beach's "first landing strip or airport" - the beach itself.

In my lifetime alone, I've watched Daytona Beach sparkle, grow grubby, and shine again - a visible indicator of ups and downs in the national economy. It is a seasonal town with a small core of local residents and a thriving throng of visitors during Spring Break, summer, and other holidays. Fashions have changed dramatically over the years. It's a bit startling to realize that, in the early 1900s, women wore dark wool skirts, leggings, and shoes to go bathing in the ocean! No doubt they didn't swim far - they'd have drowned under the weight of their clothes. Daytona Beach has never been short on entertainment - from automobile races and time trials conducted along the full length of the beach, to concerts and organ grinders (there's an organ grinder and his monkey, on page 57), to biplanes and strolls along the dunes, Daytona Beach has long been a favorite vacation destination. Speakeasies and gambling thrived in Prohibition era Daytona Beach, until residents demanded enforcement of the laws.

I find myself longing to see side-by-side photos: then and now. Daytona Beach has evolved so much that I don't recognize what should be familiar landmarks. This book makes me feel young.

From photographs of the 1920s and 1930s, I begin to see landmarks I really recognize, such as the Boardwalk, the Pier, the Clock Tower, and the Daytona Beach Bandshell, which until now, I didn't know was a Work Projects Administration (WPA) project. There is a sign showing speeds recorded along the Measured Mile: from 68 mph in 1903 to 276.82 mph in 1935. Guys take note - on page 183, you can see why "Lifeguard" is one of the best jobs in town.

Historic Photos of Daytona Beach, by Harold D Cardwell, Sr. is one of many wonderful, annotated collections of black-and-white archive photos showcasing the fascinating history of cities throughout the United States. I have spent hours perusing the pages, and see or learn something new each time I lose myself in the history of familiar places.

Book Review: Prairie Dog Cowboy

2009-02-21T01:58:00.002-06:00

One of the challenges we face in getting kids interested in history is the way it's typically taught in school. Forced to memorize dry facts and dates that have little meaningful context, it's hard for children to relate to the lives of the people who shaped our present. I remember thinking, as an adult, that Washington and Lincoln would have been so much more interesting to me if I could have seen them as real and ordinary human beings - people who made good and bad choices that led to them becoming the people they were, and people who had relationships with family and friends. You only get that in later years - often, you don't get it until college or beyond, when you learn that the cardboard cut-out figures who passed for "great men and women of history" were, in fact, made of flesh and blood and bone. The few stories that deal with historical figures as young people are mostly nonsense and parable. But that's not to say that even very young readers don't enjoy history or historical fiction. My daughter was a reluctant reader - a good reader, but curling up with a book wasn't her idea of fun. I asked her, once, if she'd prefer fantasy - which is what her teachers assumed children wanted to read - or "stories about real people doing real things." Her face lit up. "Stories about real people doing real things!" she answered.

Vivian Zabel, a retired teacher, author, and publisher, has a special interest in reaching reluctant readers - especially boys, as there never seem to be enough books designed to appeal to them.

Prairie Dog Cowboy, by V. Gilbert Zabel, is the story of a hard-working boy growing up in "No Man's Land" on the cusp of statehood - in the region that would come to be known as the Oklahoma Panhandle. Most kids today can't even imagine working on a ranch from sunup to sundown, in addition to doing chores that put "take out the trash" to shame. In Prairie Dog Cowboy, young readers who have grown up thinking of school as a chore get a whole new perspective on it. On the turn-of-the-century frontier, school is a privilege and a bit of a luxury. School didn't happen until all the farming and ranching work was done, and then a kid had to be willing to put in more effort towards reading and writing. An education might enable them to manage their own land or business one day - it might let them support a family of their own. But even if that notion is hard for today's kids to grasp, they can relate to the story of a little boy who has thoughts and feelings and dreams and frustrations just like theirs.

Four year old Buddy Roberts herds his father's cows and calves on foot, even in winter. He works hard, especially after his father's stroke leaves him incapacitated, even as his brother Jake is coddled and treated like a little prince. His mother makes it clear to Buddy: he's meant to work with his back, while Jake is destined for college and a better, easier life. Buddy likes working, though, and dreams of becoming a cowboy. He practices his lassoing skills on prairie dogs - something Jake's friends Hulmet and Ross find hilariously funny. They take every opportunity to taunt and torment the boy.

Buddy's efforts impress the neighboring rancher, Caleb Hyman, and he begins to mentor and encourage the child, eventually becoming like a father to the child who struggles to understand why his mother dislikes him. Caleb's children become Buddy's closest friends, and the nearest thing to family that he's ever known. Plucky little Katie Hyman is particularly attached to the young man, but one wonders if it would take whacking himself in the head against a stable rafter to make him see the young woman she's becoming. As Buddy grows to be a young man, he faces some tough choices in how to deal with others - he could succumb to bitterness and resentment; he could exact revenge on his brother's bullying friends; or he follow the example set by his employer and friend, Caleb Hyman. There are unexpected rewards and heartbreaks along the way. There is also plenty of action and adventure when Buddy, who loves animals, discovers he has a talent for breaking horses. Life on a ranch is never easy: Buddy faces a chilling blizzard, a coyote attack, and near death at the edge of a cliff.

The only real question I had for Vivian Gilbert Zabel when I finally turned the last page in Prairie Dog Cowboy was, "When do I get to read the sequel?" Because there has to be a sequel; I've come to care for all the characters in the story, and I'm not ready to close the curtain and trust that they all live happily ever after. I know that the author has more Buddy stories up her sleeve; after all, she's been married to the inspiration behind the tales for nearly fifty years. She has long dreamed of incorporating her husband Robert's stories of working on his family's farm, becoming a cowboy, and learning to break horses into a novel for young readers. Prairie Dog Cowboy begins what I hope will be the first of many such books from Zabel.

This book is available at Amazon and directly through 4RV Publishing, LLC. It is an excellent book for boys.

Prairie Dog Cowboy Tour Schedule

Be sure to leave a comment below. At the end of the tour, four people's names will be drawn from comments left at the stops of the tour, and each will receive a 4RV canvas bag. In case you missed a stop along the way, the full schedule is as follows:

February 15:

Ransom Noble http://www.ransomnoble.wordpress.com

Carolyn Howard-Johnson http://www.SharingWithWriters.blogspot.com

February 16:

Beverly Stowe McClure http://beverlystowemcclure.blogspot.com

Jennifer Nipps http://jensorganizedwriter.wordpress.com

February 17 :

Nancy Famolari http://nancygfamolari.blogspot.com

Joy Delgado 2 blogs

http://www.laughing-zebra-children-books.com and http://goingbeyondreading.blogspot.com

February 18:

Elysabeth http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com

Rena Jones http://renajjones.blogspot.com and http://renajean.multiply.com

February 19 :

Malcolm R. Campbell http://knightofswords.wordpress.com

Chris Speakman http://chrischatreviews.blogspot.com

February 20:

Joyce Anthony http://joyce-anthony.blogspot.com

Nikki Shoemaker http://pinkpencil.blogspot.com

February 21 (Welcome, everyone!):

Holly Jahangiri http://hollyjahangiri.blogspot.com

And don't miss the final wrap-up at Vivian's blog on February 22:

Vivian Zabel http://vivianzabel.blogspot.com

6x6

2009-02-13T22:46:00.001-06:00

At long last, someone's sent me a new game of Tag! No "6 Random Things," no "100 Good Things," no "7 Things You Probably Didn't Want to Know," no "15 Things I'd Really Rather Not Tell You" (get real - if I'm blogging it, I don't mind telling you)... Kidcessory Haven, one of several new friends I've met as a result of the ridiculousness that is the CPSIA, has tagged me in the 6x6 game. The rules are simple (as they must be, if one expects fellow bloggers to actually follow them): Choose the 6th image out of your 6th picture folder from your computer and blog it. Then tag 6 more people to do the same.

Well, it sounded simple - until I realized that the 6th picture folder contains Webcam photos (and before you get too excited at the prospect of obscenely candid photos of me, there weren't six shots in that folder!) So now what? I clicked on the next folder, assuming that the rule means "out of your 6th picture folder that HAS six pictures in it." The next folder had one screenshot. Now, the dilemma: Move that into the previous folder and call it the sixth? But no. No, the previous folder would still have only five photos, none of them worth blogging about. (Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. They really are your typical, self-conscious, "gee, I have a Webcam, hello world, ain't this nifty?" photos - embarrassing, but not titillating.)

So now we're down to the seventh folder, technically, but it's the sixth folder containing six or more pictures. Here you go:

Mmmm...caviar! Happy New Year! This stuff didn't last long. Carr's Table Water Crackers and caviar, a New Year's Eve Tradition. Don't give me that, "Ewwww, fish eggs?" crap. I'll bet 90% of the people who say that eat chicken eggs. For the first time, it occurs to me to wonder: Why are fish okay, but fish eggs not? Why are chickens and their eggs okay? Why are frog legs okay, but their eggs - ewwwwwwww? (Anybody ever tried them?)

I've loved caviar since I was little. I'm not sure when I first tasted it, but I remember eating it aboard the S.S. United States, when I was five. We dined on some odd delicacies: caviar, turtle soup, oxtail soup, kangaroo tail soup... Our waiter, Jose, asked me, "Do you really like this stuff?"

I had to think about that for a second. "No, but I love the look on the grown-ups faces when I order it and eat it."

That was the beginning of a lifetime of acquired tastes. I grew to love caviar, frog legs, turtle soup, ostrich burgers - I have an adventurous palate and I figure if it's not going to kill me, it's worth a try. My dad and I used to stand in my grandmother's kitchen and eat caviar from a spoon. Salty, fishy goodness - we like anchovies, too.

I haven't outgrown that childish glee in watching the shocked looks on the faces of the culinary cowards who prefer to stick to chicken, beef, pork, and potatoes. I've even been known to pop Vanda orchids into my mouth and moan as if they were the most sumptuous things I'd ever tasted, just to savor the look on dinner companions' faces. (They taste a little bit like watermelon rinds.)

Oh, and that Webcam photo? Fine. Here:

Satisfied? Look, it's been a long day, okay? I haven't brushed my hair in twelve hours. I'm not wearing makeup. And my Webcam turns everything a weird orangy yellow. You could probably run the fingerprints on my glasses through AFIS. But hey...hi.

Now, who to tag for the next round of 6x6?

Rena Jones

Ramblin' On

Home Is Where The Cars Parked

ApronStrings

Lion's Ima

How to be a Woman..?

This should be fun. Ready? Go.

bodybugg® Display: I Can See Clearly Now

2009-02-08T11:55:00.001-06:00

I was up .5 lbs this morning; instead of getting discouraged, I let it spur me to action: I went to the gym, bought the bodybugg® display unit, and worked out. 24 Hour Fitness has independent dealer Elizabeth Sherman to thank for the sale - she played around with one for a few days before answering my question about whether I would also be required to have the Web site subscription to make it work. Then she followed up with me on Twitter. And I would have bought it from her, for all the trouble she went to, but she said that with shipping and handling, I might as well get it locally if I could. I've heard of good customer service - but good customer service for someone who's not a customer and not likely to be one any time soon? Unheard of. Elizabeth Sherman ROCKS. 24 Hour Fitness, if you're reading this, give the woman a bonus or something.

I set up the new display unit while paying for it. I was pretty sure it would work when I read, "Hello Holly." (You do need to use the Web to set up a program and enter your personal details; the dealer or trainer should help you do that, and it's included with the purchase if you buy direct or through an authorized dealer.) Glancing at the display now and then, I learned something interesting during my workout. I don't reach my peak calorie burn until well into (almost at the tail end of) my workout. I got up to 5.0 calories/minute, but that was not a steady rate by any means. The interesting thing is, 20 minutes after leaving the gym, while doing nothing but standing, my rate was up to 5.1-5.2 calories/minute! It rose slowly to peak at 5.2, and is only just now - 30 minute later, beginning to drop. Exercise really does keep working for you for a little while.

Trockle a Top Ten Finisher in Preditors & Editors Readers Poll!

2009-02-01T12:33:00.001-06:00

Thanks to all who voted! Trockle finished Sixth in the The Preditors & Editors Readers Poll, in the category of Book/e-book Cover Artwork.

Vivian Zabel's Midnight Hours also finished in the Top Ten, in the category of Mystery.

Sanity Prevails: Common Sense Carries the Vote at CPSC

2009-01-30T21:44:00.001-06:00

Today, the CPSC voted unanimously to to issue a one year stay of enforcement for certain testing and certification requirements for manufacturers and importers of regulated products, including products intended for children 12 years old and younger. This does not mean that they have relaxed the lead standards or repealed the law. If a product is found to contain lead in excess of the standards set by the Act, the CPSC will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. But for artisans, manufacturers, authors, small businesses, and libraries who already know that their children's products are safe, it's a welcome reprieve. Provided there's no lead or phthalates in excess of the limits set by the CPSIA, failure to obtain the prescribed third-party testing and certification will not be punished.

In CPSC Acting Chairman Nancy Nord's statement regarding the vote, she writes,

The stay of enforcement of the testing and certification provisions will give some temporary and limited relief to small manufacturers, home-based businesses and crafters who cannot comply with the law without incurring substantial testing costs. However, the stay does not relieve them of complying with the underlying requirements enacted by Congress and which go into effect on February 10, 2009, dealing with lead, phthalates and a number of other toy standards. Any changes to these requirements will need to be addressed by Congress.

The stay of enforcement does not provide relief for the charities, thrift shops, resellers and small retailers who are impacted especially hard by the retroactive effect of the lead ban to existing inventory. While these groups do not have a legal requirement to test their inventory, they must meet all standards enacted by Congress. Thrift shops, charities and other sellers will have to decide whether they will continue to sell children’s clothing and other products that have not been tested, even though no one has suggested that they are unsafe. The retroactive nature of the lead ban has caused much of the concern that has been voiced over this law but Congress will need to address that issue; the CPSC cannot.

It is important to note that the stay of enforcement does not apply to the following:

Four requirements for third-party testing and certification of certain children's products subject to:
- The ban on lead in paint and other surface coatings effective for products made after December 21, 2008;
- The standards for full-size and non full-size cribs and pacifiers effective for products made after January 20, 2009;
- The ban on small parts effective for products made after February 15, 2009; and
- The limits on lead content of metal components of children's jewelry effective for products made after March 23, 2009.
Certification requirements applicable to ATV�s manufactured after April 13, 2009.
Pre-CPSIA testing and certification requirements, including for: automatic residential garage door openers, bike helmets, candles with metal core wicks, lawnmowers, lighters, mattresses, and swimming pool slides; and
Pool drain cover requirements of the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act.

Are books included in the products receiving a stay of enforcement? Yes. Cheryl Falvey's December 23rd response to Allan Adler states:

...with regard to those books that are intended or designed primarily for children 12 years of age or younger, ordinary books are not subject to the ban on lead-in-paint. As has always been the case, printing ink is not considered a surface coating under the lead-in-paint ban (16 C.F.R. Part 1303) because ink by its nature soaks into paper or cardboard and becomes part of the substrate. However, a book intended or designed primarily for children would need to meet the new lead content limit of 600 ppm and subsequently 300 ppm established by the CPSIA.

Thus, ordinary books and most other products for children aged 12 and under do not fall under any of the categories that are specifically excluded from the stay of enforcement - meaning that they are included in it.

For handcrafters and clothiers, it's important to know the lead content of the zippers, buttons, and other components of the items they make or sell. Now is the time to demand the use of safe materials from suppliers.

Commissioner Thomas H. Moore wrote:

From the outpouring of letters, emails and phone calls to the agency, it is clear that many smaller manufacturers did not know that there were any federal standards that applied to their products, had no idea how to have their products tested and may never have heard of the CPSC, or if they had, did not think this agency had any relevance to their business. Their reaction made a number of things clear:

That the new electronic media channels, particularly the blogs, are tremendously useful tools for disseminating important information to small businesses, but that they can also be a channel for spreading confusing misinformation,

That the Commission has not done enough to make the home crafters and other smaller businesses aware of their pre-existing obligations under the law,

That the new law (CPSIA) has done what the Commission had not been able to do, get the attention of many, many of these smaller manufacturers with respect to their responsibility to assure the safety of their products, and

That the vast majority of these smaller businesses, while they may not know the specific rules that apply to their products, are likely making safe products, or they would have come to our attention.

First, let me just say thank you to Nancy Nord and Thomas H. Moore. Well done.

Second, if "the new electronic media channels, particularly the blogs" are "a channel for spreading confusing misinformation," then part of the blame rests with poor communication from Congress and the CPSC over a year ago, and with the ambiguous "clarifications" posted by the CPSC in response to early expressions of concern. Had they been as clear as today's statements by Chairman Nancy Nord and Commissioner Thomas H. Moore, it is possible that there would have been less fear and speculation among the general public, most of whom do not hold degrees in law but found themselves caught directly in the path of a law that was swiftly bearing down on them with the threat of bankrupting their businesses within weeks.

Third, home crafters and other smaller businesses were prepared to err on the side of caution; despite the utter lack of common sense apparent in the CPSIA, they were prepared to stop manufacturing and selling - libraries were preparing to remove books from their shelves or shut their doors to children under 12! - in their shocked and horrified willingness to be law-abiding citizens even at the cost of their livelihoods during some of the toughest economic times we've faced since the early 1980s. Let's not be too eager to push through new laws in the name of "children's safety" before considering all of the ramifications of those laws, including their negative impact on the very children they purport to protect.

Fourth, Mr. Moore, don't break your arm patting yourselves on the back - smaller manufacturers should never have learned about the CPSIA so late in the game. Many of them didn't hear about it or have an opportunity to comment prior to its passage into law. That is largely the fault of Congress and the CPSC. But now that you know what an effective method of communication "the new electronic media channels, particularly the blogs" can be, we expect to hear more from you - and to be more involved in the legislative process.

Finally, you're correct in stating that "the vast majority of these smaller businesses, while they may not know the specific rules that apply to their products, are likely making safe products, or they would have come to our attention." So many of these "smaller businesses" began in response to the spate of unsafe toys and recalls issued by the CPSC. Their goal was to design, produce, and sell safer products for children. So to expect them to bear the brunt of consequences that are largely the result of large companies' greed or negligence is unjust. Today's stay of enforcement is an important step towards restoring our faith and trust in the process, but I suspect many of us will be keeping a closer eye on what government is doing to us in our names.

Book Review: Bubba & Giganto: Odds Against Us

2009-01-30T00:02:00.002-06:00

bully (n.): 1538, originally "sweetheart," applied to either sex, from Du. boel "lover, brother," probably dim. of M.H.G. buole "brother," of uncertain origin (cf. Ger. buhle "lover"). Meaning deteriorated 17c. through "fine fellow," "blusterer," to "harasser of the weak" (1653). Perhaps this was by infl. of bull, but a connecting sense between "lover" and "ruffian" may be in "protector of a prostitute," which was one sense of bully (though not specifically attested until 1706). The verb is first attested 1710. The expression meaning "worthy, jolly, admirable" (esp. in 1864 U.S. slang bully for you!) is first attested 1681, and preserves an earlier, positive sense of the word.; (from The Online Etymology Dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com )

Who would have imagined that the word "bully" as we know it, today, stems from a word that originally meant "sweetheart," "lover," or "brother"?

In her book Bubba & Giganto: Odds Against Us, author Lea Schizas explores the growing pains of adolescence. The mother of five, Ms. Schizas has created believable, three-dimensional characters that illustrate the harmful, dangerous consequences of bullying at school, without demonizing the bully, himself.

First, there's Bubba. "Bubba" dates back as far as 1839, a variation, perhaps, of the American English colloquial term "bud," used to refer to "a little boy," or maybe from the German, "bube," meaning "boy," or from the English word, "brother." Common slang in the southern U.S., the nickname "Bubba" can have connotations ranging from "good ol' boy" to "uneducated simpleton." The foundations for bullying have been laid on far less solid ground than that; one wonders what possessed this kid's parents. We agonized over names for our children even before they were born, testing each for it's potential corruptions and nasty connotations. There isn't much you can do to "Katherine" or "William." Ironically, my son's first "words" were "buh buh buh buh buh buh buh..." and, without thinking, I started calling him Bubba. Some parents go out of their way to give their kids bully-fodder names. A recent court case in New Zealand involved a girl whose parents named her "Talulah Does the Hula from Hawaii."

The judge criticised parents who give their offspring bizarre names, saying it exposed children to ridicule among their peers.

"The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment that this child's parents have shown in choosing this name. It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily," he said.

...he said names such as Stallion, Yeah Detroit, Fish and Chips, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit were prohibited by registration officials. Others that were permitted included twins called Benson and Hedges, other children called Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter and, the judge added, "tragically, Violence". Another mother tried to use text language for her child's name, he said.

(from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/24/familyandrelationships.newzealand )

Then, there's Giganto, whose real name is David. An innocuous "giant" of a kid, David is gentle and good-natured. Most of the kids at Pierson High think David's a good guy, but none are willing to stand up to Jason, Patrick, or Don - three soccer players who delight in tormenting the boy. As Bubba and David form a friendship, Bubba, too, becomes a target for their taunting.

There are, I think, two main kinds of bullying: that which stems from a "herd mentality," and that which stems from a "misery loves miserable company" mentality. To be ostracized by the herd is to be cut off from its protection, and the herd naturally ostracizes those who are "different" or perceived as "weak" or "troublesome": the boy with the funny name, the girl with a limp, the quiet, overweight "Giganto" who works up the nerve to try out for the soccer team. The rest of the herd will go along with the leaders' actions, either because they agree or because they fear being ostracized, themselves. Among humans, there is an added component - a need, sometimes, to lash out and make others suffer when we're in pain. Sometimes, when the victims have had enough, they become the bullies, themselves - as Bubba's first meeting with David shows.

Bubba's and David's reactions to being bullied are very different: David is non-confrontational, while Bubba is eager to put the bullies in their place. Both approaches have their flaws - because despite his peaceful nature, David stands up to the bullies' challenge with Bubba - all the while, hiding a secret that could spell tragedy.

Bullies have their secrets, too; ferreting them out may be the key to solving the problem of bullying. Written primarily for kids in grades 4-6, the tale of Bubba & Giganto demonstrates the power of understanding and an opportunity for redemption.

Lea Schizas is the founder of The MuseItUp Club, an online critique community, the Muse Online Writers Conference, and co-founder of Apollo’s Lyre. Each of these venues has consistently been in Writer’s Digest 100 Top Writing Sites since 2005.

For more information on her blogs, upcoming books, zines/newsletters, go here: http://www.leaschizas.com

Mercury Found in Foods Kids Love to Eat: Another Reason to Avoid HFCS

2009-01-28T08:44:00.001-06:00

I'll admit, I didn't jump on the "high-fructose corn syrup is bad for you" bandwagon. I didn't start calling it "HFCS" to make it sound more like some exotic, toxic chemical than a foodstuff. Fructose is, after all, the same kind of sugar found in fruit and honey. Corn is a vegetable. I just didn't pay attention to how corn was turned into "high-fructose corn syrup," or HFCS.

In making HFCS, caustic soda is used, among other things, to separate corn starch from the corn kernel. For decades, HFCS has been made using mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine (chlor-alkali) plants. The use of mercury cells to produce caustic soda can contaminate caustic soda, and ultimately HFCS, with mercury.

I don't know about you, but the words "caustic soda," "chlorine," and "mercury" are just not words I want to hear mentioned in conjunction with stuff I'm going to put into my mouth. But I don't know much about food processing, and I'm assuming there are inspectors and regulators whose job it is to ensure that our food supply is safe. Maybe not actually good for us, but mostly it's not going to kill us, right?

I have always thought we overreacted, somewhat, to the dangers of mercury. I miss chasing little beads of it around a plate with my finger, whenever a glass thermometer broke. It's almost impossible to buy one of those things, today. There was a big hue and cry over mercury in amalgam dental fillings, years ago, but most of the folks who switched all their fillings out for newer materials were largely dismissed as nut jobs. It was acknowledged that maybe dental technicians would come into contact with unacceptable levels of mercury, but since most of us aren't dental technicians, it's just not high on our list of things to worry about. And then there were a few bizarre news stories where guys in HAZMAT suits kicked people out of schools and homes and "decontaminated buildings," but most of us have never seen a whole jar of metallic mercury in one place at one time, so that, too, seemed remote and mostly irrelevant.

But nobody in their right mind eats the stuff. I don't know why, mind you - but I "get" that it would be an unhealthy thing to do. And it has never occurred to me that I might be ingesting mercury daily.

EPA and FDA have set a limit of 2 parts inorganic mercury per billion (ppb) parts of water in drinking water. EPA is in the process of revising the Water Quality Criteria for mercury. EPA currently recommends that the level of inorganic mercury in rivers, lakes, and streams be no more than 144 parts mercury per trillion (ppt) parts of water to protect human health (1 ppt is a thousand times less than 1 part per billion, or ppb). EPA has determined that a daily exposure (for an adult of average weight) to inorganic mercury in drinking water at a level up to 2 ppb is not likely to cause any significant adverse health effects. FDA has set a maximum permissible level of 1 part of methylmercury in a million parts (ppm) of seafood products sold through interstate commerce (1 ppm is a thousand times more than 1 ppb). FDA may seize shipments of fish and shellfish containing more than 1 ppm of methylmercury, and may seize treated seed grain containing more than 1 ppm of mercury.

Okay. Up to 2ppb is "safe." That would be 2000ppt. A report released by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) this week indicates that about half of the food samples tested were found to contain mercury. Curious as to which ones contained mercury, and how much? Click here. And you thought grabbing that oatmeal on the run was better than skipping breakfast... Now, nothing on the list contained 2000ppt mercury. But mercury is one of those things that hangs around in your body for a while - months - while you continue to add to it. It accumulates.

HFCS is found in sweetened beverages, breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS. Consumption by teenagers and other high consumers can be up to 80 percent above average levels.

Surely, there's no mercury in our high-fructose corn syrup - I mean, the FDA regulates this stuff, right? Isn't it their job to keep us safe?

While the FDA had evidence that commercial HFCS was contaminated with mercury four years ago, the agency did not inform consumers, help change industry practice or conduct additional testing.

But even if there is mercury in my food, how bad could that be? According to the CDC:

Children exposed to metallic mercury for long periods may have trouble learning in school. When mercury levels in the body are extremely high, "chelation" therapy is necessary. Chelation therapy involves putting a chemical into the bloodstream; the chemical combines with the mercury to aid in its removal from the body.

Okay, so maybe that explains why learning disabilities are on the rise, along with obesity. But really, is mercury all that dangerous? See the CDC's Public Health Statement on Mercury. And note that mercury is listed right below arsenic and lead on the 2005 CERCLA Priority List of Hazardous Substances (phthalates, by the way - banned by the CPSIA in children's toys - don't feature in the top 50 - they begin at 52).

Why is there no immediate recall of products containing high-fructose corn syrup?

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms,” said IATP’s David Wallinga, M.D., and a co-author in both studies. “Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply.”

Well, what can we do about it? The IATP has a few action items for us:

HFCS as a mercury source is a completely avoidable problem. HFCS manufacturers don’t need to buy mercury-grade caustic soda. And the chlorine industry doesn’t need to use mercury cell technology.

In fact, most chlorine plants in the U.S. don’t use it anymore, as it is antiquated and inefficient. While we wait for the FDA to do its job and eliminate this unnecessary and completely preventable mercury contamination, we have a few suggestions for what you as consumers and voters can do.

Currently, food manufacturers don’t list on their products the source of HFCS and whether or not it is made from mercury-grade caustic soda. So call them. Make use of the toll-free numbers or Web sites on many packages, and let companies know you’re not comfortable eating their product until you know exactly what is in it.

As voters, call your elected officials and ask them for hearings to find out why the FDA is not protecting us from mercury in HFCS. Also, ask these officials to reintroduce legislation originally proposed by then-Senator Barack Obama a few years ago that will force the remaining chlorine plants to transition to cleaner technologies. Because even if they stop providing the caustic soda used for HFCS, their mercury pollution is still contaminating our food system as it falls on farm fields and waterways.

Sources:

"Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup," by David Wallinga, M.D., Janelle Sorensen, Pooja Mottl, Brian Yablon, M.D. (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Minneapolis, Minnesota; January 2009) at http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=105026

Table A: Total mercury detected in 55 brand name foods and beverages high in HFCS

"Much High Fructose Corn Syrup Contaminated With Mercury, New Study Finds Brand-Name Food Products Also Discovered to Contain Mercury" (IATP Press Release)

Action Alert: Tomorrow is CPSIA Blog-In Day

2009-01-27T21:57:00.001-06:00

In order to educate consumers as well as designers, artisans, authors, manufacturers, retailers, publishers, and resellers about the effects of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, tomorrow is "CPSIA Blog-In Day." You are invited to blog about the CPSIA and the effect it will have on you and your family. Proponents of this law argue that you can't put a price on kids' safety - and they're right. The problem is, they haven't read the law.

No one is objecting to tougher lead standards in children's products, or to limiting kids' exposure to phthalates. Unfortunately, the CPSIA imposes new testing and certification requirements that many individuals and small businesses devoted to making handcrafted toys, clothes, accessories, and books for children cannot afford to comply with - meaning that on February 10, 2009, they face a choice: Defy the law or go out of business. Those that can survive still face tough decisions. Already, many of them have had to lay off employees - in a tough economy where jobs are scarce. Many of them will simply have to destroy their inventory of children's products and stop selling them in the future. Public libraries are contemplating whether to remove books from their shelves - or ban kids twelve and under from the library. Schools and school libraries are also affected. Imagine that on February 10, your child's textbooks must be taken away - destroyed or locked in a storeroom, because they are deemed "hazardous substances." I invited readers of my blog to fill out a survey on the CPSIA and its effect on their businesses.

"Safety laws are important," says bookseller Zach Smith, "but they need to target specific things that pose a problem - they should not indiscriminately blanket the entire market."

Connie Hughes writes, "I think it is ridiculous to make such a sweeping law to protect children from products that have no chance of containing lead. The hand smocked baby bonnets I make and sell in no way use any product that contains lead or is exposed to lead, yet I will be penalized by this law." More affordable tests have been deemed acceptable as initial screening mechanisms, but insufficient to comply with the requirements of the CPSIA. They might serve to give resellers and thrift shop owners that "level of confidence" that the goods they sell won't get them thrown in jail. After all, they're exempt from the testing and certification requirements, but they will still be held liable if they sell any product containing lead. How the CPSC plans to prove that second-hand goods came from one thrift store or another is beyond me.

Another survey respondent who signed only as "C." adds, "This is going to have such a huge impact on the nation as a whole! Especially with the economy in the state it's in, people are relying on small business, and second hand items to get them through!"

One argument I hear, occasionally, goes like this: "If you can't afford to properly test your products for safety, you shouldn't be in business selling products to children." While that seems a fair point, consider this: Many of the businesses hit hardest by the CPSIA were started by parents and grandparents and people who cared about kids in response to all the recalls of lead-tainted children's goods imported from China by mass-market toy companies. They wanted to create safer, healthier, more environmentally friendly toys, clothes, and accessories. And they're being punished for it. Those who have already broken the law, exposed our kids to harm, and put their lead-laden products on the market are going to survive this!

Children's clothes typically don't contain lead. In fact, of all the kids' clothes recalled over the last two years, I found lots of choking and strangulation hazards, but no lead or phthalates. But where is the cry to ban drawstrings and buttons? The CPSIA only calls for warnings. Glancing through the lead-related recalls of the past two years, it looks to me like most of the problem goods were, basically, cheap crap. Not quality handmade items. Not books.

That's right - books aren't exempt from the CPSIA! I found two instances of lead involving books - both of which were attributed to painted wire bindings. The only books that might contain lead or phthalates in any significant amount have painted metal trim or flexible plastic bits or toys packaged with them. Ordinary books made of paper, cardboard, glue, and ink simply don't have lead in any quantity of toxic materials that would pose a danger to a child's health - even if he ate the entire book. As a mother, a writer, and a citizen who places high importance on the value of a good education, I am - by God - willing to take that chance with my kids' health.

To think that "rulemaking" and a series of minor, specific exemptions is sufficient to save small businesses in America is to open the door to costly, time-wasting litigation. It even wastes the time and resources of the CPSC, meaning they're LESS likely to have the resources to stop the really unsafe products that make it to the U.S. market. Meanwhile, families are hurting already from the downturn in our global economy; this will sound the death knell for countless small businesses as February 10 - National Bankruptcy Day - approaches. It is time to REPEAL THE CPSIA.

If you don't already have a blog, now would be a good time to start one. This affects everyone. Please don't sit back and think "somebody else" will take care of it. They're trying, but they need your help, your voices, your opinions.

Bye-Bye, George!

2009-01-24T21:12:00.001-06:00

Out of the mouths of babes...

George, you've taught us so much.

First Recipient of the Flaming Red Pen of Death™

2009-01-24T17:37:00.001-06:00

You thought I forgot, didn't you?

First, let's recap the qualifications for the Flaming Red Pen of Death™:

This award will be given to the bloggers who exemplify the spirit of the Red Pen of Death™ by consistently exhibiting at least 5 of the following traits:

Ruthless honesty in writing;
A knack for irresistibly engaging the reader, compelling him or her to immediately act - or at least leave thought-provoking comments;
Ability to argue one or both sides of an argument effectively, without being wishy-washy or Namby Pamby as to which one they agree with;
Ability to make clear distinctions between personal opinions and assertions of fact;
Ability to distinguish truth from cruelty, tact from "political correctness," and worth from popularity;
Unflinching appreciation when presented with constructive criticism, and the ability to let hateful negativity fall off their shoulders like chocolate cupcakes off a well-greased pan;
Fearlessness and uncompromising honesty when giving constructive criticism, coupled with the ability to find something positive and encouraging to say without "sugar coating" the truth.

It was a tough decision - and yet, an easy one. Tough, because I know over half the nominees. And there's a softer, kinder side of me that would like to give each and every one of them an award - which, come to think of it, I have done - often to their annoyance. The Red Pen of Death™ allows for no sentimentality. It is not given out of friendship. I mean, honestly - "Here, I love you, have a Flaming Red Pen of Death™!"? Don't think so. Those who have been passed over may breathe a sigh of relief, in a way. But beware... I do plan to give this award out monthly, and you may yet find drops of flaming red ink gracing your blog.

Without further ado, the first recipient of the Flaming Red Pen of Death™ Award is...Redzilla Attacks!

A few quotations from Redzilla's blog that exemplify the spirit of the Flaming Red Pen of Death™:

"We actually elected somebody who wants to give us a talking to at his inauguration. I love that he's not going for the cuddly, but telling us we've got to get to work and be responsible."

"I've said it before, but it's the writer in me that makes me want to critique everything around me. Or at any rate, it's the little shriveled part of my soul that survived an MFA program that makes me want to critique everything. Including attempts to fake one's own death." Read more here...

"Why there are so few gangs in northern Minnesota - Because it is hard as shit to throw up gang signs when you're wearing mittens. Also, there's a much higher risk of having someone misidentify your mitten-clad gang sign and shoot your freezing ass."

"...if you need help you'll get it, as long as you send me very pleasant and reasonable e-mails making requests, rather than coming into my office to fling yourself onto my non-existent fainting couch in a melodramatic huff and spewing demands for immediate attention."

"I am happy to say that the next night, Hubbicula came around to my mathematical theories, and first advanced the solution of a power saw." Yeah, I know you want to read the story behind that quote.

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to have this for a cat.

I think it's uncanny that Redzilla and I were blogging about these deadly little nuggets of chocolate (presumably, unbeknownst to each other) at about the same time:

Redzilla: Killer Truffles

Me: Addictive "Palm Kernel Oil Blobs"

And this made me laugh, but not as hard as the one right before it. I'm going to give you the link to the writerly one, because this is about writing - mostly. But if you're female and profanity doesn't make you faint, do check out the entry right before this: Weird things writers do (on the internet)

I discovered Redzilla what seems like many, many years ago. Her blog entry, "Abortion is okay," written on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, prompted me to write a pro-choice post that got me into an intense debate with a Catholic father who'd married his girl after, well...making a life-changing choice: to become a husband and father. The exchange that followed is, I like to think, one of the best examples of debate-without-flaming you're likely to find on the Internet. The breadcrumbs are all still there, if you want to follow them - just look for comments by ClamouringChampion (who should, maybe, be nominated for this award, himself).

Congratulations, Redzilla - I hope you'll wear this badge of honor proudly, and remember that you were the first, ever, to receive it. I also hope that you will nominate another blogger you feel exemplifies the spirit of the Red Pen of Death™.

Nominations are now open again for next month's winner! (This award will be given monthly, provided any qualifying entrants are nominated.) Just click Mr. Linky, below - instead of entering YOUR name and URL, enter your nominee's name and URL:

When Life Gives You Lemons, Tag 'em, Bag 'em, and Make Lemonade!

2009-01-23T08:14:00.001-06:00

Tag Award from Debb

Debb, author of "Home is Where the Cars Parked," has bestowed upon me the dubious honor of a Tag Award. I say "dubious" because I swear, there just aren't seven things about me that interested readers don't already know. The award calls for "seven random and/or weird facts." I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, and I have another friend over on Facebook who seems to think I can cough up another sixteen things. I think someone needs to come up with a new meme. But here goes:

1) My big toe is longer than my second toe. My mom and I used to argue over who was smarter: People with long big toes or long second toes. I think the smartest people are the ones who realize that the brain isn't connected to the toes.

2) I met President Clinton, once, when he was Governor of Arkansas. My mother complimented his mother on her turquoise and silver belt buckle. His mother said, "Let me introduce you to my son, the Governor of Arkansas." It was at Wiederkehr's Winery in Altus, Arkansas, during Octoberfest. I don't remember the year, but it was sometime between 1980 and 1984. Not that memorable. Maybe it was the wine.

3) I speak INTJ. Except when I'm feeling INTPish.

4) I have never experienced a need to "go find myself." I never lost me.

5) I spent three days in hospital quarantine, once.

6) I've made (and eaten) "Tubby Toast." It's the closest I've come to seeing Mother Mary on a Cheese Sandwich.

7) My grandmother and I woke up one night at midnight, looked outside, and saw a tiny red light floating slowly past the balcony that overlooked Daytona Beach. Having just watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we were sure it was a UFO. We jumped up and ran outside to get a closer look - and waved at the guys in the Goodyear blimp. They were almost close enough to touch, but surprisingly enough, they did not have pale green skin and huge eyes.

Now, I'm supposed to tag seven other bloggers - randomly. Or was that seven random bloggers, in a somewhat orderly fashion? Debb cheated. She only tagged me. And she foolishly failed to say "No tag backs."

Kidcessory Haven

Home is Where the Cars Parked

Now read this, folks - no tag backs! Honored as I am to be tagged so often, I'm really running out of weird and interesting bits of trivia about...me. Let's talk about YOU for a while.

Lemonade Award from Lisa

Lisa, author of "Kids Accessories by Kidcessory Haven," has kindly given me the “When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade” Award!

This one's a bit simpler: Nominate 10 blogs you feel are worthy of the award. Here's my list (though it is hardly comprehensive - there are more than 10):

Brain Cells & Bubble Wrap

Home is Where the Cars Parked

Dead Rats in my Freezer

Sharing with Writers and Readers

More later, but I'm sure my coworkers would appreciate it if I showered and dressed before gracing them with my presence, and time's a-wastin'!

ALA, Books, and the CPSIA

2009-01-22T19:58:00.001-06:00

Dear Jessica McGilvrary,

I read, with disappointment, the latest news from today's District Dispatch regarding the meeting with the CPSC. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is overreaching and will have devastating effects on our economy at a time when we can least afford it - without affording children the "protection" that is its purported purpose. I am a mother, and as such, my first concern is my children's safety. I don't believe that the CPSIA does anything to assure that safety; however, it may deprive them of access to books - both old and new - and to handmade goods made by individuals and small businesses whose main reason for being was to produce safe, original children's products as an alternative to the mass-marketed toys and clothes that have been the subject of recent recalls.

I looked through those recalls. The only ones related to books involved faulty (dangerously faulty) technical instructions, and a few books with painted wire bindings (lead content). Most recalls involved toys or jewelry made in China, or clothing with small detachable parts (choking hazards) or drawstrings (strangulation hazards).

I have been following this since the holidays, which is when I first learned of the CPSIA. As a children's book author, I am affected by this law. My publisher is a small, woman-owned business (its president is a retired teacher and fellow author) that publishes mostly children's and young adult books.

As a mother and an author, I am horrified at the notion that our public libraries are faced with a choice like "remove books from the shelves" or "ban children from the library." As a mother and an author, I hope that your decision is to (temporarily) ban children from the library and mark the children's section "Intended for Adult Study of Children's Literature." (We subversive parents can still check books out for our children, but the ban might help to publicize the ridiculous, largely unintended - I hope - consequences of this law.) I am urging solidarity between authors, artisans, publishers, printers, clothiers, and others affected - we need to repeal this law, not get multitudinous tiny exceptions to it that will no doubt tie up valuable resources in numerous court cases, while small businesses die off waiting for relief.

--
Holly Jahangiri
http://blog.jahangiri.us
http://trockle.blogspot.com

I'm in Such a State! Junior Geography Detective Squad Wants to Know...

2009-01-22T00:01:00.001-06:00

What's wacky, cool, interesting, or fun about the state YOU'RE in?

Who or what is the Junior Geography Detective Squad? So glad you asked!

In the book State of Wilderness, Elysabeth Eldering presents state-related facts in an entertaining, playful format. Matt, Guy, and Mary Beth explore a handheld video game, "Junior Geography Detective Squad: 50 States Mystery Trivia Series," that helps them with their social studies in a fun and challenging way. Together, they become the Junior Geography Detective Squad, eager to discover new facts about geography and the fifty states. And isn't fun the key to learning?

Author Elysabeth Eldering makes learning fun with her book, State of Wilderness. As Matt and his best friend, Guy, play the game, they are given twenty-seven clues, and each boy writes the number of the clue beside his guess. Matt's sister, Mary Beth, helps them out along the way. The one who correctly guesses the state first wins. Matt and Guy raise the stakes, making a bet: the loser has to do anything the winner tells him to do. And given the friendly rivalry between these two, it's sure to be something embarrassing!

Readers can play along as each clue is revealed. Questions vary in difficulty, getting easier as the game draws to a close. Geography, history, weird laws, and politics are just some of the areas covered by the clues. Can you guess the state? I was halfway through the clues before I guessed!

At the end of the book, you will find more learning activities related to the subject state: a map quiz, a cryptogram, facts about the state flag and motto, and a bibliography for more information. Teachers' guides, available for all books in this fifty-state series, will make this a fun addition to the classroom, too.

If you love Geography, and want to learn more about the 50 United States of America, you're in luck!

State of Quarries, second book in the JGDS 50-state, mystery, trivia series is coming this month. The third book, State of Reservations, is due out in spring 2009.

Where will the adventure take you next?

My adventures led me to settle in Texas in the early 1990s. Texas is a huge state, second only to Alaska in size. Did you know that six different flags have flown over the state of Texas since 1519: Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, United States, and Confederate. The name "Texas" comes from a Spanish misunderstanding of the Caddo Indian word for friend. Houston is home to the world-famous LBJ Space Center and the Astrodome.

What can you tell us about your state? Leave a comment, below, and give us some fun, wacky, strange, little-known fact about your state. When you do, include a valid email address and you'll also be entered to win some state-related goodies from author Elysabeth Eldering - but be sure to enter the email address in the body of the comments section, since I can't see the one that validates your comments! If you're worried about spam, you can enter it like this:
email [at] provider.com - as long as Elysabeth, who is decidedly human, can read it, you're entered!

Celebrating Martin Luther King's Dream

2009-01-19T08:20:00.001-06:00

Dangerous Books!!! Killer Kids' Clothes!!!

2009-01-15T23:23:00.001-06:00

Today's highlights and thoughts on the CPSIA.

Libraries: Ban Kids - Don't Burn Books!

Libraries also are concerned about the Act, and American Library Association leadership has been quoted in press interviews predicting that libraries could have to destroy existing holdings or keep children away from the books. According to Library Journal, the ALA sent a letter to Congress last week asking for an exemption for libraries; later executive director Amy Sheketoff posted a note on the organization’s District Dispatch that counseled libraries not to take any action until the uncertainty is sorted out.

Pasted from <http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=talkBackCommentsFull&articleid=CA6629950&talk_back_header_id=6580119>

I hope that libraries would sooner shut their doors, temporarily, to children under age 13 than to destroy or warehouse any part of their collections. While an immediate repeal or resolution to the problem of the CPSIA may not come in time to save the cottage industry of handmade toys and clothes, and many small publishers will not hang in there long enough to see it through, I am confident that our lawmakers will soon see how ridiculous it is to include ordinary books - even those intended specifically for children under age 13 - in the scope of the CPSIA.

I suppose handheld, electronic book readers will gain a windfall from the demise of children's books. It would be tempting, but unfair, I suppose, to say something like "Amazon Kindles the flame that ultimately burns books" - many of us would not have heard of the CPSIA were it not for Amazon's notice that they would stop carrying our titles unless our publishers provided proof of CPSIA compliance (hard to do, when the CPSC still hasn't defined acceptable testing and certification methods) by January 15.

Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and Girl Scouts of America (GSA)

I wonder if the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were blindsided by this, too. I suspect they were, and I suspect that they are scrambling to figure out what to do.

[The CPSIA] will impact all the ordering of gear, patches and so on for NOAC 2009, for the 45,000+ attendees of the 100th Anniversary National Scout Jamboree at Camp A.P. Hill in Virginia, and every summer camp’s trading post for the 2009 season (and so on). That’s a lot of stuff.

. . .

The gear, patches and clothing currently in inventory is what will cause the most interest by BSA National because 300+ council offices have lots of stuff in inventory in their stores and summer camp trading posts.

All of it has to be certified or tested, or it must be removed from sale on Feb 10th. Or someone has to find an exemption. Right now, there are no exemptions.

This law was written primarily to deal with large multi-national firms importing containers of lead-tainted junk toys, so the fines are substantial.

Pasted from <http://www.rescuemarketing.com/blog/2009/01/06/pinewood-derby/>

Actual Recalls by CPSC Since August, 2007

12/30/08

Faulty Instructions Prompt Recall of Electrical Wiring How-to-Books by The Taunton Press; shock Hazard to Consumers (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09078.html)

7/10/08

Children's Necklaces with Ballet Shoes Charms; solder on the charm of the necklace may contain high levels of lead, which if ingested by young children can cause adverse health effects.

4/8/08

Children's Board Book Sets Recalled By Dalmatian Press Due to Choking Hazard

2/6/08

eeBoo Sketchbooks; paint on wire binding contains lead

10/7/2007

Journals from Antioch Publishing; paint on the spiral metal bindings of the journals contains lead

8/23/2007

Priddy "Trucks" Shaker Teether Books; small pieces of the teether can break off, posing a choking hazard to young children.

Going back as far as 2002, using a search for "book," the preponderance of recalls were due to cutesy, detachable playthings or embellishments on books that might cause a choking hazard to small children. The only lead recalls were the ones shown here; one was due to a necklace sold with a book, and the others were strictly due to paint coatings on wire bindings.

Of the children's clothing that was recalled, most of it was due to choking or strangulation hazards. Drawstrings on children's clothes should be banned! But then, so should snaps and buttons. These things could actually kill a kid.

Then again, so could tripping over the pants that just fell down around their ankles. Maybe it would be better to say, "Parents, supervise your children when they are wearing clothes. Teach your kids to use drawstrings responsibly, and not to pull things off their clothes and stick them into their mouths."

God knows, we all needed a good laugh.

Julie Vallese (former spokeswoman for the CPSC) opened herself to the disdain and fury of the blogging community when she said, condescendingly, "There is a lot of misinformation being floated out by the media, by the mommy blogs, by others blogging on legislation that they're just not understanding…it needs to be clear, and it needs to be concise in terms of their requirements under the law." As if the CPSC's own clarifications were clear or concise in terms of anyone's requirements under the law.

I’ll sleep better, now. But you might want to rethink your condescending remarks about "the media, the mommy-bloggers…"

"Resellers need to have a certain level of confidence," said Vallese, "that they are meeting the law," which is exactly the point - when you're told, on the one hand, that there is no requirement to test used merchandise, but that you are going to be held liable for compliance, nonetheless - that you just have to have a "level of confidence" that your products meet the requirements (which are "not defined in the legislation") it doesn't exactly give you a "level of confidence," does it?

If resellers do choose to test their merchandise, Vallese informs us that lead swab tests aren't good enough for the CPSC. XRF technology might be used as a rough screening tool, but it's not definitive.

Thanks, Ms. Vallese, for clarifying the obfuscation, or further obfuscating the clarification, or telling us what the CPSIA means, by way of what it doesn’t.

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Do I Have to Spell It Out?

Your Mission...

…should you choose to accept it, is to help me win the We Blog Better Guest Posting Contest. The gloves are off; a certain blog promotion site owner has entered the contest and is now mass mailing all of his loyal subscribers, asking them to vote and comment on his entry.

How to Comment When You Don’t Know What to Say

Blogger was down??

Book, Nook, and Kindle

Playing with Design (Again!)

Writers Blog Through Writer's Block

An Annual Thing

Blogging. Why?

Go Ahead and Write on the Walls...Really!

Doesn't Pay Attention, Doesn't Follow Directions

Please Update Your Bookmarks!

Survey says...

A Note Would've Been Nice

President Obama Setting an Example for Schoolchildren??

The Da Vinci Cruise

Chicken Stuffed Peppers with Valley Fresh Steamers

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

NUTRITION FACTS

Acrobatic Parasailing

8 Good Things About Boys

Search Engine Funnies (SEF): Olfactory Hallucinations and Plain Ol' Stinky Stuff

That's One Tall Baby!

FW: What is this truck? What does it do?

Kind of Tricky, that Trikke!

Get the Log Out of Your Eye

Champagne and Strawberries = Vindication!

Learn Something New Every Day (May 12, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 11, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 10, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 9, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 8, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 7, 2009)

Rules for Teens & Cell Phones

RULES for the CELL PHONE

Learn Something New Every Day (May 6, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 5, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 4, 2009)

Learn Something New Every Day (May 2-3 Weekend Edition)

Mother, Touchstone, Friend

We mothers – we are merely rudders, guiding our children’s ships through the storms and over the turbulent seas of life – we guide them as steadily and as best we can, but we are not the only influence that determines the outcome of the journey...

Learn Something New Every Day (May 1, 2009)

Swine Flu Tip: Use an Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer

Learn Something New Every Day (April 30, 2009)

Swine Flu: Is It Time to Panic, Yet? ("Are We There, Yet? Huh?")

BCC: It's Not Just for Sneaky People

Chic Gamine

Learn Something New Every Day (April 29, 2009)

How to: Get Twitter Tweets on Your Cell Phone

Learn Something New

A Winning Recipe

Ingredients

Swine Flu: How Panic Spreads

Learn Something New Every Day: Vocabulary Quiz

Swine Flu: How Disease Travels

Blog Comments: Conversation or Junk Mail?

But What Should I Say?

Can I Leave a Link of My Own?

Swine Flu: Do We Need to Worry?

What is Swine Flu?

I've Had the Flu, and It's Awful - But How Do I Know if it's an Emergency?

Why is this Flu Outbreak Worrying Health Officials?

What Can I Do to Stay Healthy?

Where Can I Learn More?

Relay for Life

Bring It, Brian!

The "Cool" Factor vs. the Sacred Cows

Why are Some Brands "Cool?"*

Earth Day: Get the Kids Involved

Author-Publisher Chat: On Women (and Zombies!) in Fiction

Relay for Life is This Weekend!

Chores: to Pay, or Not to Pay?

Keeping Your Family Close In The Face Of Techno Trends

Adapt Your Family Functions to Technology

Preserve Key Experiences In The Face of Technology

Teach Your Children About Electronics

Further Reading

Censorship = More Yummy "Banned Books"?