Rio di Janeiro, Brazil

For longer than I've been alive, Rio has been known as a happy city, filled with good restaurants and marvelous night clubs. But there has been a problem growing in all large Brazilian cities for over 30 years. That problem is population!

The countryside has been shipping poor to the cities. Most of them end up in shanty towns called "favelas". 35 years ago, the favela was a place to go and hear spontaneous street music, look at and buy simple art and speak to people who had lived in places the tour groups don't go. The population of these adjuncts has been growing much faster than the city infrastructure. Even in the 1970's the police, fire and medical services were stretched thin.

Let's face it, it takes much less time to make a baby than it does to train a service worker. In a Catholic country, big families are the norm, especially when the family is poor. The fact that there is not food enough, or even space enough does not enter into the calculus of making love and babies. So where do the babies go when they are grown and there is no room at home, no school available and food is sparse? Ask any big city in the United States and you'll have the same answer that you get in Brazil.

Into the street they go. When there are more people than resources to support them, the answer for survival is to join a gang. There, at least, you have protection from other, bigger kids, food to share and, if the gang is so inclined, money for luxuries. As it is in the States, many gangs sell drugs to get that money. They get arms to protect their drugs and money from other gangs. The spiral into random violence and armed police actions descends while the majority of the city's people are unaware that there is a problem.

Now, things have become bad enough to be front page news... If you're in Brazil. It won't be long before the violence is sufficient to get headlines in the United States.

Alas, Rio, that delightful city of Samba and fey jouada has become unsafe. Is there an answer?

I don't know it. But happy Thanksgiving all.

Allergies

Sammi, a neighborhood cat's face

There are plenty of people with allergies. Quite a few of us are allergic to "cats". Actually, people allergic to cats usually have problems with cat dander and saliva. Like most mammals, cats have some dandruff. Some have more than others. A couple of breeds have no dander at all. These are the rarities.

The problem allergen is a glyco protein ( fel d1). This is a molecule consisting of two polypeptide chains. Cats lick themselves clean and leave the saliva on their fur. This dries to an aerosol powder. Of course, petting the cat picks up the fel d1 on your hands.

Neutered male cats produce less fel d1 than those left "intact". In fact there is a possible link between the allergen and kitty testosterone. It may even play some in scent markers.

There are a few things you can do if you want cats at home and have that particular allergy. You can, of course, head for the doctor's office and get shots to deal with your allergy. You can keep an artificial cat, like one of those cute Japanese robot toys.

Another way to reduce allergic symptoms is washing. Wash your hands after playing with the cat. Certainly do not touch your face before washing up. But that is a little one sided, don't you think? Why not democratize the washing process?

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that washing a cat with distilled water markedly reduced the amount of fel d1 and subsequent allergic symptoms. I wouldn't suggest that you immerse kitty in water unless you are a masochist or have access to full body armor and armored gloves. But using a wash cloth soaked in distilled water to bathe your cat works too. My cats don't seem to mind that kind of washing so long as the cloth is not too wet.

Be nice. Be respectful. Remember that your cats are related to an Egyptian goddess. (Her name is Bast or Bastet. She has a second aspect as a lion, so that respect is not only for her, but a little self serving.)

statue of Bast by Trent Talley

Farmville

Zynga has sent me another offer. I'm posting this one here.

In the past, their offers have been time wasters and they NEVER have made good on one to me. They don't even answer their e-mails.

Hey friends, visit the site below to get UNLIMITED FREE FarmVille Cash, over 52,488 people have liked this so far! --> http://fv-cash.blogspot.com <-- FREE and EASY!

If this is typical of the site, I've played my last game with them.

Garden time

This is my sitting place. The rock at the left has a behind sized flat spot where I place mine and enjoy the garden.

It's close to the lower fall and I listen to the restful sound of the water falling. The fall is low enough so goldfish can migrate upstream to live under the rock arch.

Watching the little fellows congregate, chase each other around and munch on the algae covered rocks is relaxing. It's also amusing to count how many are in each favorite swimming spot. It can be a bit challenging since they do swim around and regroup constantly.

The rock arch has a fairly deep pool downstream and there is a little, stone bridge down from there. Both places, as well as the rocks along the sides offer adequate hiding places for the fish eaters that frequent our neighborhood.

But we do lose a few to the smarter ones.

The rock arch is downstream from the upper fall. We designed our little river so you can hear water falling and rushing everywhere along it. Both guest bedrooms open onto a fall.

My sitting place offers good views of the butterflies that come to munch on zinnia flowers or lay eggs on the dill.

I'm sorry to say that my sitting rock is also the hiding place of a local ground squirrel. He amscrays when I approach, but I'm working on a program of trust and greed (peanuts) to get him to stick around a little longer.

Even during the day, I have the moon and stars in view.

Nothing disturbs our sleeping dragon.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-tour of my garden.

various things

Yesterday, I spent most of my time in meetings. They were meetings about things that interest me, but they were meetings.

A purple cone flower blossom

But this morning, the weather was dry and out to the garden I hied meself. I yanked about a bushel of grass and trimmed lots of heads off our purple cone flowers (echinacea). This evening, I harvested the seeds and began to package them. If anyone would like some, send me a self addressed stamped envelope. Better make the postage for two ounces. I'll poke an envelope full of seeds with instructions for planting in yours and post it back.

Harvesting cone flower seeds is pleasant, mindless work. The cones dry and the petals fall off. What is left is a ball of seeds on a stem. When the seeds are ready for harvest, they displace easily and it is almost like stroking a stiffish puff ball. I let the seed fall into a sack, then repackage it in 3"x6" envelopes.

The cone flower is a native flower to the prairies of North America. It reseeds itself, so is considered a perennial. The nicest thing is that it blooms most of the summer, when the spring flowers have faded. Best time for planting is early fall. It is a light lover, so stick in places that get full sun.

While I was harvesting, I thought. A couple of recent news stories gave me pause. A man rammed a police car twice, then ran off into some fields. He was easily captured. He had firearms in his car. Since he was a convicted felon, that was charged against him as well as the traffic foolishness.

A woman was speeding frantically. When she was pulled over, her back seat was full of drugs.

A man set fire to the house he was renting. The fire department found drugs in the house, called the police and when they arrived, the man was found, sitting in his car, watching the fire.

These things reminded me that crooks are not the brightest bulbs in the box. Where oh where is Dr. Moriarty? Are there no more master minds of crime? Had Sherlock Holmes been around today, his client list would have been very slim indeed.

The political silly season has arrived. Each candidate vies for the title of most abusive and least substantial. I think Fran has the right idea. Don't vote for Democrats. Don't vote for Republicans. Don't vote for anyone who is already in office. If we do that enough times, maybe the people who run (you have to be a little off to want to be an elected official) will get the idea.

It amazes me how men and women who are so darned bright, head of their class in university, Eagle Scout, and all the rest can just let things go by them the way it is here. How many congress critters do you supposed read all 2,000 pages of that blasted health bill? Heck, the media are just now getting finished with the fine print and finding the little holes negotiated into the law. Perhaps we should insist that no elected official many voice an opinion or vote on a law unless he or she has read the whole thing and had the parts they don't understand explained to them by experts.

Okay, that's enough of that. Thanks for looking in. Please e-mail me if you don't have my snail mail.

A reflection on a mis-spent winter

Our deck dragon is being investigated by the kitties in this photo. While my discourse has nothing to do with either cats or dragons, it is significant that one is in the dragon's belly while the other peers in. Because, this little offering has a lot to do with bellies, mine.

When I was just going on teen years, one of my teachers came up with the startling revelation that we did not feel absolute hot or cold, but felt the difference between our body temperature and that of the environment or object we were touching. I took this as gospel. If you look closely, you will find it in letters of gold upon my forehead along with other vital facts imparted by the St. Louis public school system to its students.

I began to ponder this temperature differential thing. Somewhere in January or February, I came to the conclusion that if you were to cool the body temperature sufficiently, you would be much more at ease out of doors on a cold winter's day. Obviously, my young mind had not been exposed to the custom of diving into snow after a long sauna bath or any of the other tricks that northern European, Scandinavian and Russians used to amuse themselves during their long winter days.

Suiting the action to the theory, I consumed as much ice cream as I could find. A household of four children and reasonably indulgent parents afforded rather more than was good for me. But when I had eaten all I could hold, with the beginnings of an ice cream headache, I donned swim trunks and headed for the great outdoors.

I must have been tougher than I am now. I lasted until my mother saw me dancing on the frosty lawn and commanded me inside. Yes, I was chilled through and through. In fact, I had managed to get myself iced enough to be sick for the best part of the weekend.

For the scientific minded of my readers who may wish to replicate my delving into crude cryogenics, I weighed 70 or 80 pounds and managed to eat about a quart (say 2 pounds) of ice cream. That would have been 1.2% to 1.4% of my body weight. I'm guessing that the outside temperature that day would have been in the low to mid 30's.

Disclaimer: The author specifically denies encouraging anyone to duplicate this experiment and also denies any lawful or financial responsibility for the consequences to those who are silly enough to try it.

Progress

It has been a month since I posted anything here. Sorry. It's been a busy month. The flower is a columbine blossom, one of the prettiest that bloomed this spring. I figured that faithful readers could use something nicer than a photo of two aging people as a reward for navigating here.

As for the title of this post, it is exactly what it purports to be. Fran and I have both had medical procedures that involved cutting us open. We are in the midst of making our recoveries. Our son, Cameron has come to help us since we both are physically limited for a while.

Fran, after long nagging by me and her surgeon, consented to have one of her knees replaced. She has been very conscientious about doing the prescribed exercises, both before and after the operation. She is recovering more quickly than I had hoped and the visiting nurse and physical therapist are pleased. She seems to be suffering less pain than anticipated, but is still leery of the proposed replacement of her other knee. It's going to happen, but she wishes that she had convinced the surgeon to do both of them at once.

As for me, after I got sick at the celebration where the photo was taken, doctors decided that I no longer needed a gall bladder that didn't work very well. It was yanked a couple of weeks before Fran's surgery. The surgeon took the opportunity to repair some hernias that had developed after my other surgeries. The result was that my belly looked like someone had patterned a shotgun on it. The blood thinners given before and during surgery produced a long, lateral bruise that made it appear that after I had been shotgunned, the shooters had run over me with a truck.

All that is getting better. Next week, my weight limits will be upped to the point I can pick up either of our cats (not both at once.) Bruising is fading. I am up to walking three miles on road. I'm working up to cross country hiking. But that will take some time. I am off the pain medications given me when I went home.

We do not have a fixed schedule for Fran's next knee replacement. But Cameron will return to his home in a week or so. For the next one, our daughter has drawn the care giver job. She said that she would like to be here now too. But she is still among the working classes and family leave can go only so far.

In spite of these happy changes, I am still not writing anything. I have not worked up to the extensive re-writes that publisher Serena indicated were necessary to make my stories marketable. Maybe I'll just break down and publish one here sometime.

Various things

I have been weeding frantically for the past two weeks. During most of June, I slept, didn't eat and felt like Rip van Winkle when I finally came out of it.

So Fran and I have been pulling grass and removing things like golden rod and sun flowers if they are where we don't want them.

All that sleeping and weeding has meant that I haven't had a chance to write except for briefly on FaceBook.

But I found out what put me out last month. The gastroenterologist thinks it's my gall bladder. The surgeon says that might be the case. He also says that removing it is the last test in the series. If the problems stop, it was my gall bladder. If not, we will look for a more exotic (read expensive) reason.

I had worried that this might put me off our planned trip to Australia for worldcon. The surgeon says it won't. But now Fran's knees are acting up. She has had problems with them for a couple of years and has avoided the replacement route (to give the doctors more practice, she says). She'll see an orthopoedic surgeon in two weeks. But it looks like the trip is scratched for now.

We both want to visit the area. If this trip does not pan out, I have the money saved. We'll plan another without the science fiction convention. Actually, knowing fen, I suspect that all we have to do is time our visit correctly in order to make several Australian SF cons. That would be fun too.

Knowing my superb sensitivity to anesthetics, I suspect that I won't be able to find this keyboard for the next few days. We'll have to see.

The flowers at the top are bleeding heart, purple cone flower and blanket flower. They are all growing well this summer. I'm going to save some seeds in envelopes for fellow gardeners and others who want to stick xeric flowers in their own gardens. I'm even making labels for the seed envelopes. All courtesy of the Pulaski County Master Gardeners.

Flowers on the road home

Home at last! We had quite a trip over the Memorial Day weekend. We stopped in St. Louis to celebrate my mother's 96th birthday with her. She tells me that she is slowing down. Now, she only participates on a dozen boards of directors. Her contacts and business acumen are widely sought.

Then we headed up to Chicago for the wedding of our former neighbor's son. All three of their kids grew up in both of our houses. We love them and their parents. Mitch married a wonderful girl, just right for him. I posted a description of the wedding last night.

On the way home, we were deluged the first day, but the second was alive with wild flowers, like this clump of native prairie daylilies. They grow along side of the road from Chicago south and are found everywhere in Arkansas.

Another lovely orange flower is butterfly weed. It's in the milkweed family. Unfortunately, it is usually a singleton plant and all of the ones I saw were beside the Interstate. Even I am not dumb enough to stop on a 70mph highway to photograph flowers. You want to see it? Look it up.

But the Queen Anne's lace was plentiful. It's a relative of the carrot. The carroty aroma is obvious if you pull it up. In fact it's called "false carrot" too. A word of warning here: There are two false carrots, the European and the American. The European false carrot is poisonous and I don't know how to tell them apart.

Another seasonal road flower is coreopsis. This is a HUGE family of flowers, even larger than the daisy family. They are related to sun flowers. Most of them have red or brown centers in their yellow petals. They are reliable bloomers for late spring.

As you can see, in large patches, they are spectacular.

There was quite a bit of brown grass along the roads we drove. I'm not sure if this is a run away grain plant or a weed the farmers call "cheat".

You can see that it is headed out just like wheat or rye. Not sure if it's edible. I'm going to ask our county agent.

The Illinois roads were bumpy and potholed. The Arkansas roads were just bumpy. Fran suffered through it, but had to go to bed immediately when we arrived at home. That kind of pain doesn't go away at once. I hope she sleeps well. There is only one impediment beside the road residue: our AC is only working partially. The house is not insufferable, but the temperature is about ten degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than strictly comfortable. I'll probably stay up until too tired not to sleep.

The wedding

I'm in a hotel in central Illinois. Fran and I spent the weekend in a northern Chicago suburb watching the son of our former neighbors and still friends get married. It was a wonderful wedding.

The rabbi's talks was kind, romantic and funny. It was a more or less traditional Jewish wedding. But there was enough English to keep all the gentiles abreast of what was going on. Many of the groom's friends had visited us during his time in Little Rock and remembered us (and our house) fondly.

There were drinks and hors d'oeuvres and drinks before the ceremony so any of the itchy adults were able to stay in their seats. The kids, on the other hand, were little balls of tuxedoed energy. One of them started to cry when her mother, the maid of honor, passed her on the way to the platform. An emergency "mom fix" took care of that for long enough to get my friends hitched.

They are both friends now. I think I fell in love with the bride the first time our neighbor brought her by. She is bright, gentle, kind and funny. So is he.

There was dinner after the ceremony. The only problem was that the photographer was continuously chased by the room manager to hurry. The same room that was used for the ceremony was for the dinner and post prandial celebrations. As hotel staff grabbed and stacked chairs, the photog herded the wedding party onto the platform, waited for the kids to stop doing summersaults and rolls on the floor, and snapped some pics. If my judgement is anything to go on, they were good ones.

After the dinner and toasts came the dancing. The bride danced with her father. The groom danced with his mother. Both couples were obviously talking about the past and future. It was quite touching. Then the wedding party was told to dance to a very bouncy tune. When that was done, the music immediately switched to a hora. The hora is a traditional dance and the recording was perfect, moving from the swaying beginning to the frenzied end. Bride and groom were elevated on chairs and were together only by the handkerchief they both held. But the guests soon tired of that, put the chairs down and them in the center of the three circles that had formed to dance. A couple of the men gave an excellent demonstration of the hora footwork as the music got faster and faster. Then all of us joined in for the end.

Most of us quit the room for the bar and a little rehydration, but the records kept playing. The organizers had put a table full of various types of candy out, along with little paper bags so we could take the stuff back to our tables. When I returned, an early Michael Jackson song was playing. I'm not much of a dancer.... no sense of time or rhythm. But I watched as the others danced enthusiastically. Alas, the DJ turned the music up much louder after that. I fled, but my ears are still ringing.

Poor Fran!!! She had some kind of belly bug and spent most of the day in bed between hurried trips to the bathroom. She was still sick this morning. We had to cancel a barbeque that my cousin had planned and left Chicago early. She's feeling better this evening. But her stomach (and mine) are still in the "iffy" stage.

No pictures for this post, just a description of the best wedding party I ever attended. THANKS MADELON.

Golden hours

Our gumpo azaleas are creeping around the corner of my office. They're the last of the azaleas to bloom in spring. In fact, they are just getting finished when the blossoms of all the others have fallen and been moved or are compost.

What I thought was neat is the fact that they are moving by layering. Layering is something that some garden plants do. They expand to available soil when one of their branches is allowed to rest on the ground. That spot sinks new roots and, if the parent plant is cut away, will continue to grow and bloom on its own.

That is a bright spot in these final days of electioneering in Arkansas. I don't know how it is chez vous, but here, candidates have been invading every aspect of life. They stand on corners waving signs, post on Facebook, button hole people at gatherings and worst of all, have computerized telephone calls at any hour of the day or night. Nuts to them all say I. Maybe I'll just write myself in if there isn't a suitable candidate to elect. Certainly none of the ones who have been advertising all over the TV and invading my life otherwise seem to be people I want in positions of responsibility.

The days are getting hot and humid. That pretty well limits the time I'm able to spend outside cutting grass, pulling weeds or moving rocks. On the other hand, it might just give me the impetus to start writing more. Over the past weeks, I have been sitting around reading "comfort books" instead of researching or writing.

Comfort books are those I've read in the past and enjoyed completely. Authors like Diana Wynne Jones, Eleanor Farjeon, Dorothy Sayers, P.G. Wodehouse and L. Frank Baum are the ones I've picked on for the most part. There is an ease to reading them. I don't have to think much. Am I becoming stodgy?

Music in my head and elsewhere

I mentioned in a previous post that I usually have a piece of music or a single phrase that runs through my mind for most of the day. This can be as simple as one line from a song or as complex as a movement from a symphony.

I start with this because since the evening news, the "theme" from my local station's news broadcast has been running, repeating. It is a fairly simple phrase, quite dramatic (as if to show impending import) but short, five notes with a telegraphic sounding coda. That started me wondering: Who composes these themes?

Think about it. Almost all television stations that broadcast news have a theme to introduce the news. Most of them are quite catchy, certainly au courrant. But where do they come from? Is there a workshop of composers who specialize in writing these themes? Is it a single person banging out tunes on a tinny upright piano, a la tin pan alley? Do the stations hire advertising agencies to find the tunes? Perhaps there is an underground network, known only to TV producers that locates the composer.

I think this is a silly, banal contemplation. But it has grabbed me for tonight. If anyone out there knows, please post a comment.

Thoughts about Idaho

Shoshone Falls from two angles

rainbow over Idaho flats Snake River Canyon Twin Falls Bridge

I was going to Grinch today about one thing and another. But a Facebook friend muttered something about scenery in Idaho. I'm posting a couple of pictures I took up there two years ago.

That was actually one heck of a trip. Fran and I drove from Little Rock to San Antonio, TX (there's one in New Mexico too) along the Blue Bonnet Trail. Although the blue bonnets were only just beginning to show, the dogwoods were marvelous and quite a few other wild flowers were earlier bloomers than the legendary blue bonnets.

From San Antonio, we headed west to Las Vegas, NV (there's one in New Mexico too), thence north. We drove over the Hoover Dam. On the way there, we saw a herd of about 30 deer crossing the highway. Traffic in both directions had stopped to let them cross. I grabbed my camera and was so excited that I took a picture of the pavement instead of the deer. They just jumped the fence on the other side of the highway and disappeared into the landscape.

Northern Nevada is pretty grim. But March snow storms livened things up for us. By about four in the afternoon, it was getting dark and still snowing. We were just a few miles from Twin Falls. We made it there, checked into a motel, ate and hit the sack.

The next morning, we were going to meet Arielle's hockey team in Boise. As we were driving out of town, we crossed the bridge over the Snake River Canyon. The view was so spectacular that I got across the bridge, made a 'U' turn and drove back to the visitor's center. We learned (or were reminded) that Evil Kneivil had tried to jump it on a motorcycle and had to parachute to safety on his first try. Parasailors and bungie jumpers used the bridge as a "jump off" point. The canyon and falls were fantastic.

We decided that we'd drive west through the canyon instead of heading straight to Boise. It was a good decision. The canyon bottom is fertile land. Farms and ranches are strung out along the canyon bottom. There are hundreds of springs making falls down the north side of the canyon. It was simply beautiful.

That's a part of Idaho you shouldn't miss. The northern, mountains are quite another wonderful view. There are small lakes and wonderful fishing streams. I'm told that the hunting is very good there too. It's just rich mountain pine land and I love it no matter where I find it.

What next?

This is a difficult post for me. It concerns a case recently argued before the United States Supreme Court. In the case, the plaintiff argues that a cross erected at Sunrise Rock, on government land 75 years ago by a group of WWI veterans to commemorate the many dead who lie buried in foreign graves. The cross has been replaced several times to maintain it. A former park employee challenged the right of the cross to be on government land. A lower court found for the employee but the cross was not taken down. Instead, it was covered by a large box.

While the Supreme Court overruled the decision of the lower court, I am disturbed by the implications of the entire matter. This lonely memorial is seen by few people. It was erected in good faith by a group who had seen the horrors of war and wanted to memorialize their dead comrades. The fact that a man did not want that cross, which he saw as strictly a Christian symbol on government land is disturbing. That a court in California agreed with him is more so.

I believe that this case reaching the Supreme Court is the result of interpretation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. That states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free expression thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,or the press, or the right of people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I do not see where the erection of a memorial conflicts with that amendment. There have been other cases, notably the plaque of the ten commandments in a state house, which have been decided differently. While the constitution insists on the separation of church and state, I can not find anywhere that it forbids the use of a religious symbol on government land, or even in government buildings.

While I am not a Christian, crosses to me, symbolize sacrifice and honor, not the religion. It disturbs me that such a case can make it to the Supreme Court. What will the "politically correct" demand next? Covering the crosses and stars in National Cemeteries perhaps? It just seems wrong.

If you want to look at this, the case is Salazar v. Buono, 08-472.

Weather changes things

left to right
salvia and iris
hardy orchid blossom

goldfish in a row

azaleas blooming above the pond

For the past few months, I've had the "blahs". I really didn't want to get out of bed and put off doing everything until the last minute, or later. But a few days of sunshine and nice temperatures, backed by a good evening rain storm seems to have turned the corner for me.

As you can see, I've been the garden a bit. After the rain, the weeds were easier to pull and we still had two years of weeding to do. When we went to Ireland last year, we missed all the decent gardening weather for the summer. We got a little done in fall, but there were too many other things on my plate and Fran's knees were bothering her. That meant a summer's worth of weeds were allowed full play everywhere.

It took me two days just to clear the paths of leaves. Yesterday and today, I hit the weeds in both the gardens and on the paths. I just about have the paths done. The gardens take a little longer. It helps that I am in weeding mode now. That means I walk around admiring, taking pictures and picking off weeds that come to hand. That can be a little embarrassing when I do it in friend's gardens.

I also weeded my in box. Now there is a manageable amount of "to do's" and I am working through them.

A very good friend asked me to write. I am literally years behind on my correspondence. Writing has been very dry for me, but I hope that this mood swing will get me back on track. I have a short story to finish and another to rewrite. (A terrific editor gave me her time and went through three of my stories. They are filled with suggestions to make them better and more marketable.)

I may even find the energy to post here more often.

another recipe

I promised Bobbie Smith that I'd look up my Oma's recipe for this one. I found two, both featuring almond paste. The first is what Oma called apricot kugel.

Ingredients

½ Lb. (225g) margarine

1 cup sugar

4 egg yolks (reserve one white)

3 cups general purpose flour

1 lemon

apricot preserves

Directions

Juice lemon and grate rind. Using a dough or low speed mixer, blend other ingredients.

Grease a cookie tin, then sprinkle with flour. Use half the dough. "Spread the dough over the bottom like you were making brownies."¹

Cover with a layer of apricot preserves.

1Oma's exact words.

The next is for almond dough "cigars".

Ingredients

1 can (8 oz. 227g) almond paste

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg white

½ tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Blend at low speed until uniform.

Roll the almond dough into long, thin "cigars", about 1 cm (½ inch) wide. Keep your hands wet while rolling to prevent the dough from sticking to you. (It's not a bad idea to take off any rings while working dough. If you do not, you may end up with a surprize gift in your pastry or bread.)

Place cigars on apricot preserve layer. Flatten with a moistened fork.

Bake at 325°F (163°C) on lowest rack for 15 minutes. Add second layer of cake, preserves and "cigars". Bake again.

Allow to cool. Cut into square cookies

(Keks).

These are both quite good. The combination of apricot and almond is sweet, but not overly so. Enjoy.

another belly ache

It's been a lovely Spring day. The flowers are blooming. The birds are singing. I spent most of it sleeping and waiting for a doctor to see me. Blah!

This has not been the best month of my life. I haven't gotten any work done and have missed writing to and responding to friends. I discovered that I had no stamina (not even as much as in February). I've had trouble sleeping and been tired all the time as a result. Today, I located the possible cause. My stomach. Last night, I was unable to lie down for more than half an hour before the belly began to complain. Walking made it a little better, so I spent about four hours pacing in the dark, hoping the pain would go away.

It seems like my guts have been playing an all too important role in my life for the past couple of years. Even so, I have to have this checked out. At least the docs gave me good drugs.

This is not an old man's medical complaint blog. But this time, it's made so much of an impression that I had to share.

Those of you with whom I correspond now have my excuse. This is going to get better, probably very soon. Mean time, please be patient.

Paschal melody

It's Spring!!! Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, my wife and I are out in the garden pulling weeds and fertilizing flowers.

It was a long and somewhat dreary winter. We are rejoicing in the beauty that comes with the season, yet always surprises me.

Just scroll down from this dandelion which was growing between the cracks in one of our walks. As an aside, the dandelion was chosen by my granddaughter's graduating class as their flower of choice. It blooms under the worst of conditions, has several pretty phases and persists.

Vinca minor growing in the tiny wood beside our house.

The two surviving tulips of the dozen we planted last Spring. Tulips in Little Rock are mostly annuals. Our Summer comes on too fast for them to grow their bulbs back before the heat wilts them.

These are hellebore (Lenten rose). For a change, they are actually blooming during Lent.

Usually, these beauties bloom earlier. Our seasons are somewhat ahead of the European ones that gave them their name.

These are the daffodils that a neighbor brought from her home in Italy. Not only do they look different from the native daffodils in Arkansas, but their perfume is quite different.

Muscari or grape hyacinth. After they bloom, the flowers fade and they form a grass-like cover under our Japanese maple.

We had a serious erosion problem due to the slope of this hill. We built terraced beds and filled them with plants we like to slow the drainage. The tall yellow are Forsythia. The smaller yellow are daffodils. The pink that you can barely see between the Forsythia bushes are Texas flowering quince.

This is our camelia. We stuck daffodil bulbs in front of it. The two scents combine into a wonderful perfume while we weed in that spot.

Last picture. These bleeding heart flowers are in a bed of Japanese anemone. The anemone are fall bloomers.

As you can see, I have some leaf removal ahead of me and I'll harvest the dead anemone stems for mulch.

Thank you for touring our little gardens.

Welsh pasties

Despite the name, we found our first sample of this marvelous "pocket sandwich" in Reading, England. It is sold in the railway station there, to be exact. But there is a restaurant in town that serves nothing but pasties of every imaginable flavor and combination of ingredients. Whoever said that the English don't know how to cook was wrong.

I recently received a couple of requests for my recipe. I tried to post it on Facebook (where the requests were made) but I guess it exceeded their size limit so it never appeared. That recipe is below. You can use ground meat or meat that is diced into pieces about a half inch (1 cm) or less in size.

WELSH PASTIES

Ingredients:

crust --

1 1/2 cups flour

4 Tbs shortening or lard (not butter)

1/2 tsp salt

a little cold water

filling--

1 Lb ground beef

1/2 Lb ground pork

1 Lb ground lamb or mutton (even venison can be used)

2 cups diced potatoes

1 cup diced carrots

1 small turnip

1 medium onion

1 Tbs flour

salt and pepper

optional --

1 egg

1 Tbs water

Directions:

Begin with the crust. Cut the shortening into the mixed flour and salt. I usually mix them be sifting them together. Mix in cold water a tablespoon full at a time until the dough is barely workable. Drier is better than wet.

Roll the dough out to about a quarter inch (5 mm) thick on a floured surface. Don't forget to dust the roller with flour to keep the dough from sticking. Cut the dough into circles about six inches (15 mm) in diameter. When you have cut out as many circles as you can, roll the leftover dough again and repeat until there isn't enough dough left to make another circle.

Now the filling; peel and dice the onion and turnip (potato and carrot too if you haven't already). In a large bowl, mix together with meat, flour, salt and pepper. I use the "meatloaf" method for mixing. That is, I dump the ingredients into the bowl and mix them with my hands, squeezing until I'm either tired or convinced that everything is pretty well blended.

To put the pastie together, spoon a couple of tablespoons of filling into the center of each dough circle. Moisten the perimeter of the circle with water and fold the circle in half. Use your fingers to crimp the edge of the now half circle together.

Place the raw pasties on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Here's the optional; mix the egg and water together. Brush the top of each pastie with the mixture. This will make the finished product a little browner and give a shinier appearance to the crust.

Bake pasties at 450 degrees Fahrenheit (230 C) for fifteen minutes. Reduce the oven heat to 350 F (175 C) and continue baking for 45 minutes, until the pasties are a golden brown. Remove from oven and cool before eating.

Seriously! Even though they smell wonderful, oven temperature will burn your mouth if you try to eat them right away. Be strong. Resist temptation. Remember, "Hunger is the best pickle." Benjamin Franklin

Rugby football

Last June, Fran and I went to Ireland with the Los Alamos Women's Rugby Team. We were unfamiliar with the sport. Very soon, it became an exciting one to watch.

To the uninitiated, Rugby looks like confused, mass mayhem. It isn't. But it is vastly different from most of the sports played in the United States.

To begin, there are three types of Rugby Football, union, league and sevens. The last refers to the number of players each team fields. The other two types field teams of fifteen. The ladies were playing league.

Most sports have rules. Rugby has LAWS. Rugby is a rough sport. Bruises and scrapes are normal. Padding is forbidden by the laws. Protection is allowed for the ears. Some players wear what looks like a shower cap for this. Unlike American football (hereinafter referred to as football), rugby does not permit a forward pass. If you watch a rugby match, you will see that most of the players carry the ball in a two handed grip in front of them. This allows them to pass the ball to a team mate beside or behind them if they are about to be or are being tackled.

The rugby pitch (field) is similar in size to a football field. It is 100 meters (a little more than 109 yards) long and 69 meters (a little more than 75 yards) wide. The goals are also similar to those in football. Another difference is the goals are set on the touch line (goal line) instead of behind it.

The game starts with the traditional coin toss to determine the receiving team and kick off. Difference: the ball is laid on the ground, no holder. Any player on the team may kick the ball on kick off. The kick has to travel at least 10 meters (about 11 yards) and remain in bounds. The kicking can, if their forwards are fast enough, grab the ball after it grounds and it remains in play. If the receiving team gets the ball, it also remain

s in play.

There are very few stops to a rugby match. The action is more or less continuous and the players cover a lot of ground. When the action stops, there is usually a line out or a scrum. A scrum is the photo on the upper right. The one below is a throw in after a line out (out of bounds). The ball is thrown in by one of the team's hookers (one of the rugby team positions) and both teams try to catch it. In some cases the receivers will jump for the ball. But lifting them to gain advantage of height is permitted.

The scrum occurs after a player loses the ball, usually by being tackled. If the opposing team recovers the ball, play continues. If not, the referee calls a scrum. In the scrum, the opposing forwards line up literally head to head. The ball is rolled between them and they push each other while team mates try to get the ball and pass it back to someone with room to run.

A goal is called a try. The ball must be grounded behind the touch line while it is in possession of the scoring team. A touch is five points. There is a conversion kick worth two points.

Why am I nattering on about this? Because the Olympics have decided to make Rugby Seven part of the 2016 Olympic Games. Both men's and women's teams will play for the gold. Rugby has been dominated by the United Kingdom and its former colonies. But there are nations that are up and coming. Tonga is one and Japan another. Both have had teams qualify for the World Cup. So has Argentina.

I am hoping to see a team from the United States in the 2016 competition.

If you have not seen a rugby game, they are fairly easy to find. Most large cities have several. Ask around. I think that Los Alamos proves that you do not have to be a large city to field a pretty respectable rugby team. The New Mexico ladies were undefeated in Ireland.

Last weekend was the time for the Arkansas Flower and Garden show. We had two themes this year, g

ardeni

ng around the world and the magic of gardening. The arrangement on the left is the keynote for the magic part of the show.

That consisted of horticulture ex

hibits and flower arranging contests.

The horticulture part is examples of plants and flowers growing in people's houses and gardens. The weather did not cooperate so therewere not as many exhibits as usual. But it seems there were enough.

The flower arrangements were very interesting. Most of them utilized lots of vertical space and were quite severe on the use of flowers. I think that Japanese flower

arranging has had a large impact on our flower show people.

The other display gardens were done by professional landscapers. The hummingbird and owl are parts of Garvan Gardens' display. They contrived to make a lovely garden using only the things that are growing now.

The rest of this is notes that I took during the show:

The smell of the roasting, coated nuts sold by the charity auction is irrestable. Combine that with the garlic coming from the grater demos, the smoothie stand, honey drinks from the bee keepers and samples from various food stands and I could gain weight just by walking around.

My previous management style was managing by walking around, chatting with various divisions. For the show, it is management by frenzied scurrying. In any group of volunteers, there are people who for

one reason or another, just can do the job they agreed to. When there's time, most call. I arrange substitutes. But when they just don't show, as a couple always do, it's the same substitute drill along with worrying about the no show's health (my Master Gardeners are not the youngest kids in town) and their family worked into my concerns. Two of my volunteers called just before their shift began to let me know there was an emergency. A couple just never appeared.

The show floor is concrete, no carpet. By Saturday, some of the vendors began to talk about sore feet, sore backs and fantasy pedicures. It was even more prevalent among those who set up display gardens. Regular set up was Thursday. The display gardens were started Wednesday morn

ing. These folks worked all the way through the show, even doing tear down Sunday night. But their projects were worth it. I hope they feel the same. Doing a display garden is expensive, both in plant material and labor costs. Most of them worked until they had to leave for the judging.

The display gardens are beautiful. The contest arrangement are both neat and creative.

The "red hat ladies" put in an appearance at the show. They get a kick out of dressing up and going places. They add to whatever venue they choose.

Some of the gadgets being sold are original ideasfor uses of things some of us pitch. There is the usual spectrum of metal stuff, garden tools, pottery and wood furniture. At least part of my scurrying has been slow enough to glance at booths for something new.

This year, the show organizers set up a lounge area away from the show where vendors could relax and eat their lunches. Someone brought in a box of pastries Friday morning. They were gone in half an hour. There were

about 40 cases of snacks, junk food and candy. By noon everything except the ketchup, mustard, peanut butter and jelly were gone. I think that this is one of the few shows that does things lik

e that. But the vendors are our customers. We should keep them happy.

Most of the volunteers hung out in the office when they weren't working. There was a more or less continuous bull session in there. Subject varied with the population.

Sunday was by far the slowest day for the show and vendors. All that changed at four o'clock, when the last buyer was herded out and tear down began. In spite of all our efforts, there was a huge traffic jam at the truck entrance and at the loading docks. Understandable, these people wanted to load up, go home and put their aching feet up.

My wife tells me that I came home Sunday night and slept until Tuesday afternoon. I think that's an exaggeration. I must have gotten up to eat and potty. But otherwise, I kept to the cat's nap schedule.