:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Thursday, March 31, 2005 ::

Oops follow-up

Sorry to leave you hanging for so long. The overly watered brownies turned out OK, though not great. The water boiled away, leaving lots of holes and a gooey, almost shiny top layer, but otherwise they were brownie-like in texture and flavor. I'll try the brand again, sometime, to see what they are like when you do it correctly.
:: Ray 5:01 PM [+] ::
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Oops

I was all excited about making brownies. A box of mix with organic flour, sugar, and cocoa, and no trans-fat had been in my cupboard for a while, and I got the bug to make it. There was a variation printed on the box that involved swirling rasberry jam on top. I looked in the refridgerator, and we had raspbery jam! Fate seemed to be with me, or so I thought. Then I misread the directions. Instead of a quarter of a cup of water, I measured a full cup. I didn't notice the mistake until I was pouring the batter into the baking pan. Bummer. I went ahead and put it the oven, but I don't know what will come out. Will it be chocolate soup? Chocolate pudding? Chocolate sludge? I'll let you know.
:: Ray 9:52 PM [+] ::
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Spring

I'd just like to belatedly wish everyone a happy Spring. It is finally upon us, though you wouldn't know it from the weather in Chicago so far this week. Still, the promise of longer, warmer days is on its way to being fulfilled. I haven't seen my tulips poke through the ground yet, but the pussy-willow buds are fuzzy. Life is returning. It can't come too soon for me. After some of the pre-spring teases we have had, I am ready for warm, sunny days.
:: Ray 1:00 AM [+] ::
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Time to let go

There have been several little bits that I have been tempted to post over the past week or so, but nothing has motivated me lately like the developments in the Schiavo case. For those of you just returning from offplanet, Terry Schiavo is the comatose woman whose husband has been trying to remove her feeding tube since 1998, at which point she had already been comatose for eight years. He has been fought in the courts tooth and nail by her parents. As a widower myself (who also lost my father at age 18), I feel sorry for both the husband and the parents, but for very different reasons.

For the husband, I am sorry he has had to endure this protracted legal battle. It sounds like he has made his peace with himself and is ready to move on with his life, now that his wife, for all intensive purposes, has been dead for 15 years. He should be allowed to do so, and I think karma owes him a lot less stress in another lifetime.

For the parents, I am sorry that they are so tragically unable to accept the death of their daughter and move on with their lives. It has been 15 years. If she was going to wake up, she would have done so by now. There is a whole world out there. Yes, your daughter won't be there to experience it with you, but at a certain point you have to let go of those that are gone, and get out there and live your own life again.

Finally, to the protestors complaining that the husband and the judge are murdering Terry Schiavo, nobody is murdering anybody. Let the woman die with dignity and in peace. Life is precious, but it ends, and none of us have control over when. If murder is really what you are concerned about, why not protest the dozens of gun homicides that occur in our cities daily, or the thousands of shooting deaths that have happened in Iraq and the Congo over the past couple of years? Get some perspective, people.

Finally, to the House and Senate committees that have subpeonaed this comatose woman and her husband to testify, I ask this: what the the hell does care of comatose patients have to do with taxation, national defense, or interstate commerce? Unless the woman's hospice is on federal land, this is a state matter. Ironically, during the Clinton administration it was the Republicans who continually bleated "states' rights!" Now that the tables are turned, I actually heard Rush Limbaugh use the term "federal supremacy" in talking about this case today. Sorry, Rush and the rest of you. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
:: Ray 5:02 PM [+] ::
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A perfectly good Airstream no more

Courtesy of Tivo, I just watched an episode of While You Were Out, a home makeover show on TLC, in which they made a complete mess of a 1974 Airstream. It was kind of sad...they completely gutted a perfectly good Airstream, kitchen and all, and then attempted to make it look like the interior of a Lear Jet, which is ironic, as the Airstream interiors were aircraft-inspired. And they tried to do it all in two days. Having attempted my own renovation of a 1974 Airstream, that didn't sound realistic to me, and I was right. Everything took longer than they thought it would (surprise!), and the craftsmanship suffered for it.

The worst horror, other than removing the kitchen and not replacing it, was that they attempted to completely cover the interior, walls and all, with carpet tiles. It must have seemed like a great idea until they hit the first curve. Then they realized what a nightmare they had created for themselves. I don't have high-definition TV, but the resulting sloppy carpet work was obvious on my screen. I can't quite figure out what they did with the rear bath, as there is now a wall to wall queen sized bed with a botched raiseable table section blocking it. And would I be picking nits if I pointed out that the cushions they made for the bed were far too thin to sleep on? I understand why they skimped...if they had used the right stuff, they would have blown a good chunk of their $2000 budget. They made some nice custom pillows, though.

The wife of a couple that had been married for only five months requested the project as a surprise for her husband. I hope their marriage survived it. The tragedy, er, episode is called New Orleans: The Drop Zone, if you get a chance to watch it.
:: Ray 1:29 AM [+] ::
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If I was in charge... Part 1

...all escalators would have WALK LEFT/STAND RIGHT signs on them, and the boors blocking the left side would be the rude ones instead of the people trying to get by.
:: Ray 12:42 AM [+] ::
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Belated thanks to Julia Child

I have increasingly enjoyed cooking over the past several years, at least in part due to watching cooking shows on TV. The genre has grown so large, it spawned its own cable network, one that I tune to frequently. There are still plenty of them on public tv, however, which is where it all got started.

Growing up in the seventies, I was too young to appreciate Julia Child, that wierd old lady on PBS. I had no idea that she was the first host ever of a show dedicated to cooking, and what a pioneer she had been in introducing America to French cuisine.

A few months ago, however, there was something quaint about a show with her and Jacques Pepin together in the kitchen that caught my attention. Or at least it caught my Tivo's attention at first. Anyway the result was that after Julia died, I still had an unwatched episode of their show together waiting for me. It turned out it was about eggs. I have never been happy with my scrambled eggs. They had good flavor, but they always seemed to turn out heavy and tough, and I never knew why. So I watched.

First they made omelets. I don't recall the details, except that Julia had a great technique for folding the omelet as you slide it out of the pan. But then they scrambled eggs, and my world changed. I don't remember what Jacques did, but Julia melted some butter over high heat, poured the eggs into the hot pan, started whisking, and kept whisking until they were done, only a minute or two later. On tasting them, Jacques remarked that they were fluffier and tasted eggier than his.

The next time I made scrambled eggs, I tried Julia's technique. It worked. I now know how to make some seriously fluffy and tasty eggs. This skill came in handy recently. Mary and I were both home sick for a couple of days, with different types of gastro-intestinal stress, to be delicate about it. When she regained an appetite and requested scrambled eggs on toast, I was able to deliver.

Considering the interesting relationship with death and life that I have had for the past few years, I like the idea that someone was able to teach me a simple but useful skill just a few days after she died. I will always be grateful, Mrs Child.
:: Ray 2:37 AM [+] ::
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Town hall meeting

John Stewart's guest tonight on The Daily Show was former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. At one point, they made this exchange about the confidence of the Bush administration:

JS: ...yet they seem really cautious about putting themselves out there in real situations...you know when they were in the campaign they went to these very managed town halls...even the Social Security thing is...
AF: Oh sure. Everyone in politics does that these days...democrats and republicans. Republicans [are] probably a little better at it, but both parties do it.

I beg to differ, Mr Fleischer. Nobody was ever ejected by the police from a democratic town hall meeting in the last campaign for carrying an anti-abortion sign or wearing a republican t-shirt. Yet scores of people were ejected from republican town halls for visibly supporting such controversial issues as human rights, and some were even denied entry because they wouldn't sign an affidavit affirming that they would vote for George Bush. That's not a town hall, that's a phony love-in, staged for TV.

I say this because on Monday I had the pleasure of attending, you guessed it, a town hall meeting. This one was organized by my congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, on the subject of Social Security. Its main attractions were Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama. At 10 am on a Monday in Chicago, they filled one large meeting room to capacity, then spilled into an overflow room with a video repeater, then spilled into a second overflow room. Nobody was asked to sign any affidavits. No police were in sight. Nobody was ejected, not even the Lyndon LaRouche campaigners who were handing out literature.

What did happen was that Schakowsky, Durbin and Obama, and several other invited representatives of varying organizations each spoke about Bush's proposed proposal (nothing has been officially unveiled yet) to privataize Social Security. Then they fielded questions, first in the main room, then moving on to the overflow rooms. The questions weren't submitted first in writing for approval, like the president seems to insist on at his town hall meetings. Instead they were simply the unrehearsed, sometimes awkwardly phrased questions that were asked by people who are hopping mad about someone tampering with the most successful government program in United States history.

If you are just tuning in to this debate, our president wants to gut the most efficient part of the government, the one that takes payroll tax dollars and pays out about 97% of that money as guaranteed benefits to retirees and disabled workers and children who lose a parent. Instead he wants to borrow money to establish private accounts instead, gambling the money in those accounts in the stock market, and paying retirement benefits with the resulting balances instead of the guaranteed amount. And he wants to do this in the name of "saving" Social Security from a slight shortfall in the trust fund that under the worst economic predictions will mean a 20% reduction in benefits in 27 years. But under less pessimistic predictions, the trust fund will be stay in the black for as many as 50 years. And in the best economic predictions, the ones the president has used to sell his own plan, it turns out that the trust fund will remain solvent into infinity. There is no crisis here, except the disaster the president wants to create with his plan.

Back to the meeting, I will take a moment to gush. I feel lucky to have such a great congressional delegation representing me in Washington, and it was a treat to see them all together in one place, attentive and appreciative with an energetic crowd. I had already met Schakowsky and seen Obama speak, but it was the first time I have ever seen Durbin speak at length in person, and I was pleasantly surprised at how eloquent he is, even unscripted.

If the mood in that room was even close to the way it is in the rest of the country, Bush has touched the proverbial third rail. He may have underestimated how adamant people are: "Don't mess with my Social Security!"
:: Ray 2:32 AM [+] ::
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