Over Easy

(Picture courtesy of mhaithaca at flickr.com.)

The Thursday tradition that carries on Southern Dragon’s practice of focus on media and news outside our usual sphere has particular poignance today, in a week of intensely localized reports on the Patriot’s Day marathon atrocity.   While we are horrified by the waste of life here, much has escaped our notice while our media zeroed in on this event.

The Venezuelan election produced results that the opposition and other countries, including the U.S., called to have reviewed.   New Secretary of State Kerry asked that the election of Chavez’ successor Maduro be reviewed before making it official.

“We think there ought to be a recount,” he told the foreign affairs committee in reference to Venezuelan opposition demands for a full audit of the vote.

At least seven people have died in the protests that have riven Venezuela following Sunday’s narrow presidential poll. The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner by 262,000 votes out of 14.9m cast.

The Constitution Project concluded that the crime of torture was committed by U.S. officials in conducting its war on Iraq.

It was led by a former Republican and member of George W Bush’s cabinet; and a former Democrat congressman.

The report will make uncomfortable reading for members of both the Bush and the Obama administrations.

It concludes that “the kind of considered and detailed discussions, involving the president and his top advisors on inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in custody” were unprecedented.

Moreover, the taskforce found ‘no firm or persuasive evidence’ that torture produced valuable information and that the policy ‘damaged the standing of the US’.

Mexico’s long reign of lawlessness has led to the rise of local vigilante forces from the ranks of everyday, frustrated, civilians who need order for daily functions.  In Guerrero state, there has developed an ease of authority that ignores local, generally corrupt, existing police officials.

Since they became a force to be reckoned with earlier this year, this is just one of dozens of arrests made by untrained, armed civilians from Ayutla and its surrounding pueblos. But they have no legal authority, and they should not be carrying their guns in the street.

This does not seem to be of concern to the steady stream of locals who come to the HQ to report crime. Dona Juana, a frail elderly woman, is having problems with a neighbour. He is trying to steal her land.

The law can be corrupted, but the need for order can prevail.   Never.Give.Up.

(Picture courtesy of mhaithaca at flickr.com.)

Welcome to Thursday’s rundown of international news and foreign media as was begun at Lakeside Diner by Southern Dragon and carried on by us, his admiring friends.

The internet has been slowed and infused with spam in a feud between Spamhaus, a firm specializing in combating spam which operates out of London and Geneva, and Cyberbunk, which hosts any sort of operation except child porn and terrorist threats.

The attackers have used a tactic known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which floods the intended target with large amounts of traffic in an attempt to render it unreachable.

In this case, Spamhaus’s Domain Name System (DNS) servers were targeted – the infrastructure that joins domain names, such as bbc.co.uk, the website’s numerical internet protocol address.

Mr Linford said the attack’s power would be strong enough to take down government internet infrastructure.

“If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly,” he said. “They would be completely off the internet.”

He added: “These attacks are peaking at 300 gb/s (gigabits per second).

The tottering presidency of Syria’s Assad reached out to BRICS with a request of support in the face of what it styled as terrorist attacks.

The embattled and increasingly isolated president said on Wednesday that his country is being subjected to “acts of terrorism backed by Arab, regional and Western nations”, a reference to the Western-backed opposition fighting his regime.

Assad’s appeal came in a letter sent to a forum of BRICS nations; Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, whose leaders have gathered for a summit in Johannesburg.

The president’s letter was published by Syria’s state media on Wednesday.

It came a day after the Arab League allowed opposition leader Mouaz al-Khatib to fill Syria’s vacant seat at the organisation’s annual summit in Doha, the Qatari capital.

Interspersing the planting of trees with agricultural crops has shown real promise for a viable economy in arid nations.

“From biophysically humid forests in Brazil, to arid areas in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel – mixed systems where you have one or two rainfalls a year – nothing is better than a tree at bringing water up from depth,” Simons said.

With more than 70,000 different types to choose from, ICRAF encourages farmers to plant trees that produce fruit, timber, biodiesel, fertiliser and rubber, providing food and income through the year.

The organisation is also pushing farmers to plant the Allanblackia tree, especially in Tanzania and Ghana. It is indigenous to the rainforests of West, Central and Eastern Africa.

For the past several years, efforts have been underway to commercialise the vegetable oil it produces, which offers a healthier alternative due to its high content of unsaturated fat. The oil is naturally solid at room temperature, but melts in the mouth, Simons said, which means it can be used for margarine.

Science continues to produce solutions to the problems we bring upon ourselves, solutions there for our survival.

Never.Give.Up.

Friday morning, foot of snow

Yesterday we saw the first red winged blackbird here, and that’s a sign that despite the foot of new snow in the yard we are on the edge of springtime.  On the first day of spring, we saw wild bunnies hiding under a van out back, foraging for fresh grass in one of the still uncovered areas now surrounded by an expanse of snow and ice.

I remember, growing up, we thought that the robins were a sign spring had come, but I think that was just a myth because I’ve noticed since then that robins are in N.TX. where I grew up year round. Of course, that could be that the winters have gotten milder since the 50′s.

Do you have signs of spring that you see now, or have they changed since your childhood?

We’ve been able to plow up a garden plot already, on one of the warm sunny days earlier this month.   That’s promising, and something the area Amish do as soon as the ground thaws enough to turn.   The snow will bring nitrogen and that fertilizes our garden. I know that I don’t fertilize house plants this early because they’ll start a growth spurt before I can set them outside for sun and warmth to support it.

Do you have a garden started, either inside with pots or outside?  What sort of fertilizing have you done so far?

It’s wonderful to me to be having this late snow, but I recall that when my kids were in their early years in MD, we never planted outside until Mother’s Day. The spring came later there, indeed.

Last year the first day of spring happened during a week of really unusually high temperatures that made the apple trees bloom. Of course, those blossoms froze and there was no apple crop in this area of NW PA. Hoping we don’t have anything of the sort this year, and that the cherry trees will have fruit this year, too.

Have you lost fruit crops this year, or last, and do you have childhood memories of the blooms coming in spring?

We had flowering peaches when I was little, and they were beautiful but produced fruit too sour to eat.  Once when I was older, in MD where we have sour peaches, I made fruit preserves with them, and that was a great way to use them.  I don’t know if we missed a boat when I was little not trying to make something with those peaches.

Cardinal, first day of Spring

Potato frittata

(Picture courtesy of  framino’s photostream at flickr.com.)

Something I always like is potatoes, and this is one way to make them that’s not something you run into every time you turn around.   A frittata takes a little time in the oven, but not so much that it’s a major project.

You can throw any kind of veggie into this as well as make it plain, and I do some of the onions and any other veggies to have on the side or top.

This is a basic, cheese and potato, frittata.

Frittata

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and shredded
• 1 medium onion, diced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 4 eggs, beaten

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Heat oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot, add the potatoes, and fry until crispy and golden, about 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, and add onions. Cook, stirring, until softened. Season with salt and pepper. Pour eggs over the potatoes and onions.
3. Place the skillet in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until eggs are firm. Remove from the oven, and sprinkle shredded cheese over the top. Return to the oven for about 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

The simplicity and the everyday ingredients make a frittata something to whip up when you just want to throw in a bit of pizzaz without much effort.   It looks more planned than it is.

Enjoy – and I used sharp cheddar, but then, I happen to like it.   Any kind of cheese that’s to your individual taste is fine.

Blueberries ready for picking

(Picture courtesy of Tom Gill at flickr.com.)

All of us have a treat coming at this time of year, when blueberries are right there on the bush and ready to be picked.   Their health benefits are almost as fine as the taste.

With just 80 calories per cup and virtually no fat, blueberries offer many noteworthy nutritional benefits. Here’s the skinny on blueberry nutrition:

Blueberries are packed with vitamin C.

In just one serving, you can get 14 mg of Vitamin C – almost 25 percent of your daily requirement. Vitamin C aids the formation of collagen and helps maintain healthy gums and capillaries. It also promotes iron absorption and a healthy immune system^1,2.

Blueberries are dynamos of dietary fiber.

Research has shown that most of us don’t get enough fiber in our diets. Eating foods high in fiber will help keep you regular, your heart healthy and your cholesterol in check. A handful of blueberries can help you meet your daily fiber requirement^1,2. What a tasty way to eliminate this worry from your day!

Blueberries are an excellent source of manganese.

Manganese plays an important role in bone development and in converting the proteins, carbohydrates and fats in food into to energy – a perfect job for blueberries³.

Blueberries contain substances that have antioxidant properties

Antioxidants work to neutralize free radicals — unstable molecules linked to the development of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Substances in blueberries called polyphenols, specifically the anthocyanins that give the fruit its blue hue, are the major contributors to antioxidant activity⁴.

The blueberry is a plant native to the American continent.   At the moment, anywhere you go there are berries being pushed, and these make your local bake sales another must.

If you grow them, you know too, the birds are wild about them and to have any at all, you will need to cover them with netting.

It’s been nice to be here in PA where the blueberries are right now just past their peak.   Some of the best I’ve ever had were on Old Rag Mountain in VA, but just having climbed the mountain probably added to the taste itself.

Yup'ik Dance Wand, 1920-30

Objects used in ceremonies include masks, robes, musical instruments, drums, and wands such as the one pictured above.  The Yup’ik are indigenous to Alaska and Siberia, and practice the far northern traditions of hunting northern seal and whale among other food sources, in winter staying indoors where their ceremonies and lessons in life are celebrated together.

In Yup’ik group dances, individuals often remain stationary while moving their upper body and arms rhythmically, their gestures accentuated by hand held dance fans very similar to Cherokee dance fans. The limited motion by no means limits the expressiveness of the dances, which can be gracefully flowing, bursting with energy, or wryly humorous.

The men and women have separate ceremonial huts, and learn the different trades of hunting and northern housekeeping in those separate places.  In this wand there are many birds featured in flight, and were quite likely used to teach future hunters about what they could observe in their skies.

Collections of NW tribes’ relics are found in excellent condition at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, where these pictures were taken.

Another northern tribal group farther to the south are the  Tlingit, Haida and Tsinshiam.   Their decorative robes are highly stylized, and their traditions are firm through many ages.  The Chilkat robe is woven from mountain sheep wool and cedar, into symmetrical designs.   The one featured below is of an older style of the Chilkat weaving, called ravenstail.   It makes symbolic pictures of more than one level and is geometric rather than curvilinear.

Ravenstail Robe, 1800

Chilkat robe

Rodin's 'Monument to Balzac' (click to embiggen)

Considered the first ‘truly modern’ sculpture, Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of Monument to Balzac graces the Hirshorn Sculpture Garden on the capitol’s Mall.   It is always striking to see the dramatic portrayal of a vigorous mind embodied in the representation of a man acting in time – and here it reaches many people to tell its message.

Rodin took seven years to study his subject and make provisional attempts, then finally complete the commission he’d taken.   The work was developed over that time as non-representational and took the direction in which it eventuated – a spirit in its form as statue of the man.

Finally in 1898, Rodin presented a plaster study of the Balzac statue in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The sculpture was not received well by the critics; Rodin took the negativity as a personal attack. Many disliked the grotesque stature of the figure while others criticized the work to be very similar to that of the Italian impressionistMedardo Rosso. As well, reports surfaced before the unveiling of the sculpture regarding anticipated dismay over the final outcome of the artwork. The Société des Gens de Lettres decided to disregard the commission to Rodin and not accept the sculpture.

Regardless of rejection from his commissionaires, contemporaries such as Paul Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec andClaude Monet supported Rodin in his point of view. A backlash against the rejection along with a petition signed by supporters in the artistic community proceeded, yet in the end, Rodin decidedly declined any bids for the work and placed the plaster artwork in his home at Meudon.

In the end, the statue was moved into the home intended on the Boulevard de Montparnasse.   Casts of it are in several places, which include the Hirshorn sculpture garden.

Representation of a person rather than a portrayal of his appearance was a shock to the audience that received it originally, but over time had an effect on our standards.   While the figure of Balzac speaks to us of inspiration and genius, its conception broke through a barrier to visions in the world of art.  Rodin gave artists a new direction that opened up expression they took in – and developed into new spirits they could work with in pure artistry not seen before Balzac. Read the rest of this entry →

Prickly Pear

Hello, welcome to the very minor Hispanic holiday of Cinco de Mayo.   The battle it celebrates didn’t do much, but in this day it’s a celebration of marketing TexMex stuff.   I recommend the fresh salsa.

What is your background in our adopted continent?   I am descended from Scotch Irish and Cajun, am Sephardic Jew by marriage.   Sadly, no tribal relatives that I know of.

My own heritage is one that I’ve only come to know by accident, because as a child I was taught about True American blood, meaning European.

My grandfather was a very obvious Cajun, a big shock of white hair, and he’s the only grandparent I remember.   He was named White, but I have heard the family name was LeBlanc.   As a small child, I was given cafe au lait and knew some French words, one being what the kids in the Homer, LA, area called Cajun, ‘labalabas’.   La bas means ‘down there’.

I so wish I had native blood, but do not know that I do.   Of course, it’s possible, but history was something we learned from our families, and they didn’t care for that sort of factual background.

I have learned that some of my family was Quaker, and part of the underground railway on the Eastern Shore of VA and MD, that helped escaped slaves to the north where they were, sometimes, freed.  I am very proud of them.

How did you learn about your background, and what did you learn?

(Photo courtesy of Sarah Jane at flickr.com.)

Points and vessels from late Caddo, 1200-1500 A.D.

In the territory now known as Northeastern Oklahoma there are the remains of a community that can be traced to 700 – 1500 A.D., approximately, where Caddo lived and made a village.   The civilization located there seems to have vanished at a time when drought has proved to have made it hard to live.   Visiting there today, we still can see the mounds where they buried their dead, and ceremonial patterns that show their observance of the sun’s role in their culture.

From the top of Brown Mound, the center of the former village, the sun rising on the Solstice will hit the top of another, former chief”s, burial mound.   It varies with the season, but shows the use of the sun’s appearance to establish the position of the dweller in the mound to appear as the chosen of the sun gods.  The solstice is sometimes celebrated in the present, and visitors get the chance to see the sun’s rays do as the ancients intended.

The relics excavated from the burial mounds have been scattered in large part, because early archaeologists were more interested in profit than history.  The end of digging up and selling Caddo relics came before they all were lost, and some appear in museums throughout the state and farther away.

On a visit to the Museum of the Red River in Idabel, OK, I was pleased to find points and carved relics from the Caddo who occupied the Spiro area.

Brown Mound, center ceremonial site at Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma

Shell carved with Snake dancer, Spiro Mounds Caddo.

Arugula (with truffle)

Arugula is the salad green of the moment.   It deserves to be, as it’s really healthy and tastes good.

Full disclosure;  I grow arugula here in North Texas.   It’s tasty and it’s good for you, and we nutrition aware types also call it roughage.

In this age of insane dissension, arugula has been tagged as elitist because it was brought up by President Obama during his campaign before Iowa farmers and media sensation seekers who weren’t up on salad greens.   As we all know now, the Obama family is very up on nutrition.

One of the stupider campaign ’08 narratives originated when then-candidate Barack Obama, making the point that increased produce prices at supermarkets didn’t translate to higher prices for growers, asked a group of Iowa farmers if they had been to Whole Foods to “see what they charge for arugula,” adding: “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.” Following the Republicans’ lead, media outletsseized on arugula as a symbol of Obama’s aloofness and detachment from the common man, who had never heard of this exotic leaf. Absent from the gleeful mockery and concerned hand-wringing over Obama’s supposed predilection for the peppery-tasting salad green was the fact that arugula, in addition to being grown and sold in Iowa, is proudly served at appropriately non-elitist eateries like the Olive Garden.

The innocent arugula is described as peppery, but I would prefer to call it flavorful, even spicey.   It seems that for less deeply foodie types, pepper is synonymous with spice.

Arugula has been showing up in the supermarkets I visit in little clear plastic containers right beside the rosemary and dill.   That does cost more than the lettuce, although not very much more in this age of prices going ballistic.   I have asked about how to use arugula as an herb in comments here, and have been told that it can be cooked too, just toss into the random quiche or meat dish.   I tried it, it is another way to add flavor to that chicken in cream sauce and omelette, too.

Arugula makes a terrific salad green, above all else.  Since it’s elitist, just throw in the odd truffle and go for it.