The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Chicago, by Studs Terkel
Book 26
I snagged a charming hardcover copy of Studs Terkel’s Chicago 
from the Little City Book Sale. It is a mishmash of short essays – the jacket called it “a long prose poem” – pulled together in the mid-1980s. I think I am going through a phase with Chicago history. There is a PBS series called “Remembering Chicago” or something that I am getting a pretty big kick out of, too. I love these stories. Also, Terkel died not that long ago, as did legendary Chicago journalist Mike Royko. I figured I had better see what the fuss was all about. I read Royko’s short biography of Maredaley 
last year.Here is the truth: I am not a real Chicagoan. Not even because I grew up in the suburbs. Because my parents are…non-native. My father grew up in New York and his family is from California. My mother grew up in Ohio and her family is from Michigan. We were here for the Blizzard of 1979, but not the one in 1967, so we cannot claim to be Chicagoans. Permanent residents, perhaps. But not Chicagoans.
(Sigh.)
My favorite part is Terkel writing about the unveiling of the Picasso. He went around asking people what they thought. What it was. A woman. A dog. “somethin’ ya ate last night that didn’t agree with ya”. An Austrian lady laughed at that one, then asked the guy:
“Vass you ever in the Louvre?”
“What is it?”
“The best art museum in the vorld.”
His civic pride was challenged. “We got one here on Michigan. The one with the lions. Don’t tell me about art.”
Or how about that Blizzard in 1967. Terkel is writing about how everyone was in a good mood and helping each other out for those three days. Drinking a bunch, but. You know. Terkel asked a cop what he thought about the weather.
“No comment.”
I love this stuff.
Birdie Bread
Several people at the Refuge have asked for my “recipe” for Birdie Bread, because Birdie Bread is the best way to trick fussy birds into eating their vegetables. I kept saying, “You just grind up some vegetables and toss them into your cornbread mix”. Apparently, this is not a satisfactory answer. So here we go:
Ingredients
1 Box Cornbread mix (I generally use Jiffy, but this time I used Martha White), plus mix ingredients
1 handful of baby carrots, washed
1 handful of cut broccoli, washed
1 handful of cut cauliflower, washed (optional)
1 container of sweet potato baby food (I used Gerber, Phase 2)
It should be noted that when it is on sale, I just buy a bag of cut vegetables. Today, broccoli crowns were on sale, so I grabbed one. Because Sigmund prefers the “tree” of the broccoli to the “leaf”, I cut the tops off the trees. Then I tossed them into my mini food processor. Next, I grabbed a handful of baby carrots from the bag and did the same thing. Tossed it all in a mixing bowl. Then I poured the baby food on top.
Side Note: The deal with the baby food is that sweet potatoes are really good for birds (and people) because they have a lot of vitamins. Karen, the volunteer director at the Refuge, swears that you can get any bird to start eating vegetables by mashing a sweet potato, mixing it with peanut butter and serving it in a cup.
Kiwi still won’t eat it.
Then I put the batter in cupcake cups, as a matter of portion control and ease of serving. I cook it according to the instructions on the box, but remember that the fresh vegetables have water in them, too. So I wait until the muffins are visibly golden brown before I am convinced they are done.
And here is Sigmund stuffing his face with the finished product. Kiwi feeds them to the dog.
African Greys are notorious for needing extra calcium, so I use milk in the batter even when the mix says water is ok. Also, if you use a powder calcium supplement, you can bake that in too. Rich, the Director at the Refuge, says that if the mix uses eggs (Jiffy’s does) you should grind the egg shell up with the vegetables and bake that in, too. Just make sure to gently wash the egg before doing so.
This recipe made 12 muffins and in my experience they will last up to two weeks if you keep them in the refrigerator. I don’t know whether they freeze well. I generally give a Grey one muffin at a time, broken into pieces. At least half of that ends up on the floor. I am considering getting a mini-muffin pan.
Back on the Organic Gummy Bears
Some Bad News
I went to the Trib to catch the latest on the storm that came through this afternoon. I heard there were some scary power lines down in Des Plaines. I caught a link about a fire destroying a building in Palatine. It was a charity resale shop belonging to the Wings program. It stands for Women in Need Growing Stronger and it provides emergency assistance and shelter for homeless and abused women and children.
Wings runs three retail shops in the suburbs – the other two are in Schaumburg and Niles. If you have the opportunity this weekend, I am sure they could use all the donations – and shoppers! – they can get.
Play Time Travel
Weekend Assignment #323: Vacation Time
Look out – here comes summer! Kids are out of school, community pools and seasonal ice cream stands are open, and temperatures north of the Equator are on the rise. Summer is traditionally the time for families to go on vacation together. What are your summer vacation plans, if any? What time of year are you most likely to pack up the family and get out of town? Is there a particular place you go more often than anywhere else?
Extra Credit: When and where did your family usually go on vacation when you were a kid?
I will be going on vacation by myself, thank you very much. I have a trip to Toronto planned for next month. A few things came together at the same time. First, United Airlines gave me a certificate of a certain dollar amount as compensation for a big hassle on my last vacation. Second, I was just in New Orleans last summer. And third, I have been meaning to go see Niagara Falls for years and not gotten to it. From Toronto, I can pick up one of those cute little day tours.
While the summer vacation has always been a big deal for me, this year I took my first real winter vacation. Mid-February, to Hawaii and it was fabulous on top of the fabulous because the warm weather was just enough to get me through the rest of the Chicago winter.
When I was a kid, my parents had a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin. We were always there in the summer. While most of my best childhood memories are from trips to Wisconsin, as an adult, I feel like I am making up for lost time in the Seeing New Places department.
Is it too early to start planning for next year?
Chance Occurrence, by Kristin Shaver
I read Chance Occurrence, a screenplay available on the Kindle, because Kristin Shaver is my friend. She helped me cram for my Biology final when I had barely attended a lecture all semester. She always had a stash of trashy romance novels for when I was brain fried. And she was a good drunk.
It’s that second one that I was worried about when I opened this up. 30-something singleton who has always played it safe has a near miss car accident and a bad day at work before deciding to start her dream business with her best friend and a handsome stranger. While it is a bit more Lifetime Movie that my usual read, I enjoyed it. But she asked for constructive criticism, so (deep breath) here it goes:
I am all about character development and I missed some things with the supporting characters. At the top of my list was the heroine’s mother. I am absolutely fascinated by the different ways that first generation Americans assimilate or don’t into the culture. Kristin starts to go there, but the plot is moving too fast to linger. I think that might be the nature of the beast when you are dealing with a screenplay as opposed to a novel.
The Stranger wasn’t quite creepy enough for me. I am thinking that might also be something that doesn’t quite translate into a screenplay. When I think about seeing it cinematically, it works better, but I really have to think about it.
Overall, I am happy to say it was a really good piece and I am looking forward to seeing what Kristin does next.
The Dahlia Connection, by Michael Dovell
Book 24
The Dahlia Connection
A middle-aged, semi-retired lottery winner sees a beautiful young lady thrown from a green Lamborghini in Pike Place Market. He rescues her, takes her home, sleeps with her for a couple of days and decides he is in love. Mr. Green Lamborghini comes back for her. He’s a bad New York mafia type. (Rolls eyes.)
There are two interesting things about this book. First there is the character that is The Market. Dovell knows it well, obviously loves it, and that shows. Second is that he uses a device that I appreciate: the mystery girl is talked about quite a bit by the narrator as he is trying to remember things she has told him and separate fact from fiction. But we never see her. We never actually hear her story for ourselves. We can never quite judge her for ourselves. He pulled that off.
The problem for me was that I found the narrator incredibly unlikeable. He is a total schmuck. His favorite words are “Focus!” – a command to himself – and “synapses”. As in, “my synapses are loose”, which is the most pretentious way I have ever heard to say that one wasn’t thinking straight. Also decidedly unlikeable, in my opinion, was the way (SPOILERS HERE) that he manipulated an emotionally handicapped acquaintance into killing a bad guy. It was a really bad guy. But still. That was disgusting.
I appreciated the descriptions of the different supporting characters, and the workings of the Public Market. But if it weren’t Seattle Souvenir thing, there would be no good reason for me to read this book.
King Charles
Yesterday, she sent me an e-mail saying that she has a co-worker that might want him. She asked for a picture. After 24 hours of back and forth, I have a picture and this puppy has a new home. They are picking him up this weekend.
Even More Cupcakes
So I was in Stefphanie’s office and I said, “I am going to require sugar this afternoon. Which really ticks me off because yesterday I did not need it and that’s when the cupcake truck came.”
She said, “I think the other cupcake truck is still here.”
The other cupcake truck. Sweet Bites Desserts. Oh, for God’s sake. Here we go:
30 Day TV Meme – Day 30
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000078UJW&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrDay 30 – Saddest character death
I could make an argument that Leo McGarry’s death on The West Wing was the saddest. The character had a heart attack the season before and then the actor dired of a heart attack, so they made the character die of a second heart attack. It was all very traumatizing. However, how much of that was brilliant writing and how much was the offscreen tragedy is subject to debate.
Henry Blake’s death at the end of M*A*S*H’s 3rd season is the answer. Everyone knew the actor wasn’t coming back and the episode begins with Henry getting his orders to go home. The entire show is a Goodbye Party. At the end, he is all in his civvies and getting on a chopper and there is Radar saluting him. You could cry right there.
Then they come back from commercial and everyone else is in the OR and Radar comes in with a telegram that says Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. There were no survivors.
They didn’t tell the actors beforehand, so when you see them all crying – that was one take and all natural. But you might have missed it while you were reaching for the Kleenex.
Thus ends my 30 Day TV Meme.
The Next Dark Age 