Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Kiva Micro Lending: Practical Charity, Measurable Benefit
Recent years have seen a new means of helping third-world populations better their living standards: micro lending, of the type done at Kiva. This is an easy and practical way to make a positive difference in the lives of people living in the world's poorer regions.
Basically, you open an account with the organization, and then peruse their list of applicants and select those to whom you would like to lend. These are generally people who have small businesses and are looking to expand or upgrade equipment. The amounts needed are small by our standards, but allow the applicants to improve their situations.
You make loans of as little as $25, and as the applicant repays the money (there is no interest), you can lend your balance out to others. The beauty of this process is that you can take a couple of hundred dollars and use it over and over to help out many people. Highly recommended.
Basically, you open an account with the organization, and then peruse their list of applicants and select those to whom you would like to lend. These are generally people who have small businesses and are looking to expand or upgrade equipment. The amounts needed are small by our standards, but allow the applicants to improve their situations.
You make loans of as little as $25, and as the applicant repays the money (there is no interest), you can lend your balance out to others. The beauty of this process is that you can take a couple of hundred dollars and use it over and over to help out many people. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
On Grandmas and Memories and Rectangular Poultry
Over at Margaret and Helen, there's a thread running off into infinity about grandma stories, due to the passing of Toot. I didn't want to post too extensively there, as there are currently close to 400 comments.
I remember very little about my paternal grandmother, who we called "Mama". My father grew up in Macon, but moved up to Milwaukee after a stint in the Navy to take a jobs with Allis-Chalmers. We visited her several times during my early childhood, and she and Papa came up to Milwaukee, too, but I was very young when she passed away. My memories are fragmentary, half a bespectacled face here, they warm, dry feel of her hand holding mine there, but little of a coherent nature. I remember a huge down bed in her house that my sisters and I played on, but was too tall for me to climb into: my oldest sister had to boost me up. I remember a broad boulevard in front of her house, or maybe just somewhere near, where I flew balsa wood planes. And I remember a small park nearby which to my delight had, as Bill Cosby put it, "one of those things, I don't know what they call it, but you sit on it and four of your friends spin you 'round and 'round for five minutes, and... then you throw up".
I was much more fortunate when it comes to my maternal grandmother. My mother's family was from here, and her parents lived just a few miles away.
Two things generally pop into my mind when I think of her. The first is a mix of Thanksgiving and Christmas meals: turkeys and hams and stuffing and gravy and pies and cakes and presents and lights - sort of a melange of Rockwellian dinners. I always assumed as a child that my grandmother was directing the kitchen work, and that my aunts were there to basically provide labor. That's how it's always done, right? Everyone's grandma is the best, most "from-scratch" cook they know.
Well, then I learned about "Square Chicken". It turns out that unlike most people's grandmothers, mine was not a kitchen virtuoso. The phrase was the prospective title of a book my mother and her siblings thought of compiling after she passed away, of some of her more, shall we say intriguing culinary exploits. It appears that one night she was thawing a block of chicken parts in the oven, and forgot she had put them in there. Hours later, noticing the oven light on, she opened the door to discover a solid, rectangular mass of chicken, well past it's prime. Don't know what she wound up serving that night, but the incident stuck in people's memory. Well, bless her, no one can be good at everything.
The second thing I think of is an image, a still frame, really, from when I was about six. I was up at my grandparent's lake home near Tomahawk, WI. It was the fourth of July weekend, and Grandma was being a pyro. She was born on the fifth, I gather that as a result her childhood birthday parties always involved a fair amount of ordnance. And she got "the good stuff" as we would say back then (now, almost anything is fair game in WI, but 30 years ago, all you could get legally were sparklers, smoke-bombs, small cones and fountains, etc). She had just lit the fuse of a "firecracker" - a cherry bomb by today's standards - and was running to get clear of the blast radius. She'd placed an empty tin can on it to see what damage she could cause. The look on her face is one of such fierce, unbridled, maniacal glee, it makes me pump my fist in the air just to think of it.
She was a loving, funny, intelligent, well-read, warm, highly educated, intriguing person: a conservative, devout Catholic housewife who could also spin hysterical stories about how she and her friends got around prohibition. She and my great aunt, her sister, knew where every speakeasy (umm... and whorehouse. Never asked how they knew that) in the city was, and most of the passwords you needed to get into them. She was wonderfully contradictory.
Miss you, grandma.
I remember very little about my paternal grandmother, who we called "Mama". My father grew up in Macon, but moved up to Milwaukee after a stint in the Navy to take a jobs with Allis-Chalmers. We visited her several times during my early childhood, and she and Papa came up to Milwaukee, too, but I was very young when she passed away. My memories are fragmentary, half a bespectacled face here, they warm, dry feel of her hand holding mine there, but little of a coherent nature. I remember a huge down bed in her house that my sisters and I played on, but was too tall for me to climb into: my oldest sister had to boost me up. I remember a broad boulevard in front of her house, or maybe just somewhere near, where I flew balsa wood planes. And I remember a small park nearby which to my delight had, as Bill Cosby put it, "one of those things, I don't know what they call it, but you sit on it and four of your friends spin you 'round and 'round for five minutes, and... then you throw up".
I was much more fortunate when it comes to my maternal grandmother. My mother's family was from here, and her parents lived just a few miles away.
Two things generally pop into my mind when I think of her. The first is a mix of Thanksgiving and Christmas meals: turkeys and hams and stuffing and gravy and pies and cakes and presents and lights - sort of a melange of Rockwellian dinners. I always assumed as a child that my grandmother was directing the kitchen work, and that my aunts were there to basically provide labor. That's how it's always done, right? Everyone's grandma is the best, most "from-scratch" cook they know.
Well, then I learned about "Square Chicken". It turns out that unlike most people's grandmothers, mine was not a kitchen virtuoso. The phrase was the prospective title of a book my mother and her siblings thought of compiling after she passed away, of some of her more, shall we say intriguing culinary exploits. It appears that one night she was thawing a block of chicken parts in the oven, and forgot she had put them in there. Hours later, noticing the oven light on, she opened the door to discover a solid, rectangular mass of chicken, well past it's prime. Don't know what she wound up serving that night, but the incident stuck in people's memory. Well, bless her, no one can be good at everything.
The second thing I think of is an image, a still frame, really, from when I was about six. I was up at my grandparent's lake home near Tomahawk, WI. It was the fourth of July weekend, and Grandma was being a pyro. She was born on the fifth, I gather that as a result her childhood birthday parties always involved a fair amount of ordnance. And she got "the good stuff" as we would say back then (now, almost anything is fair game in WI, but 30 years ago, all you could get legally were sparklers, smoke-bombs, small cones and fountains, etc). She had just lit the fuse of a "firecracker" - a cherry bomb by today's standards - and was running to get clear of the blast radius. She'd placed an empty tin can on it to see what damage she could cause. The look on her face is one of such fierce, unbridled, maniacal glee, it makes me pump my fist in the air just to think of it.
She was a loving, funny, intelligent, well-read, warm, highly educated, intriguing person: a conservative, devout Catholic housewife who could also spin hysterical stories about how she and her friends got around prohibition. She and my great aunt, her sister, knew where every speakeasy (umm... and whorehouse. Never asked how they knew that) in the city was, and most of the passwords you needed to get into them. She was wonderfully contradictory.
Miss you, grandma.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Happy Cephalopod Appreciation day!
October 10th is International Cephalopod Appreciation day. Hug your favorite squid!
Some links of interest:
The digital Cuttlefish
SquidSquid
CephBase
Some links of interest:
The digital Cuttlefish
SquidSquid
CephBase
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Been There So Long, I Got to Callin' it Home
Back from the cottage again: it's getting on time to close it up for the season. Last few nights were downright chilly. Nice weekend, though: aside from the one huge downpour. Most everyone has packed it in already, so I pretty much had the place to myself.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
More Tim Minchin
Continuing on my somewhat maudlin mood for the day: a Tim Minchin clip that I had not previously seen.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Getting Schooled by My Dad
As I explained in the last post, I was brought up on a golf course. My dad started me on the game when I was about 6. He's a mechanical engineer, and a very intelligent and curious man. He loves to learn everything at an atomic level. As such, when he learned to golf, he took lessons and made sure he knew exactly what to do in every situation: how to place his feet, how to open or close the club face, etc.
He did his best to impart this knowledge to me. I retained some, but lost a lot.
So yesterday I went golfing with him for the first time since I was in my twenties. He was golfing for the first time in 15+ years. As is the tradition at our golf resort, we didn't technically keep score. But I watched him and guestimated his score.
And I was damned impressed.
Many guys my age use these huge, balloon-sized drivers so that they can swing really hard and still hit the ball straight. I've never used one, partly because I can't generate a lot of club-head speed (due to some past surgeries), and partly because I think that it's kind of cheating. Be that as it may, my father hits a low-profile driver, smaller than my own, I think.
I have 36 years on this man. I've been golfing during the last 15 years. But I only out-drove him over 9 holes by an average of about 5 yards. WTF. And he hit it at least as straight as I did. This guy was on fire, and right out of the chute after a decade-plus-long absence from the game. Watching him hit was frankly amazing. He putted me straight into the ground
I used to chafe at his constant attempts to correct my swing. Now I'm thinking I should hire him as an instuctor.
He did his best to impart this knowledge to me. I retained some, but lost a lot.
So yesterday I went golfing with him for the first time since I was in my twenties. He was golfing for the first time in 15+ years. As is the tradition at our golf resort, we didn't technically keep score. But I watched him and guestimated his score.
And I was damned impressed.
Many guys my age use these huge, balloon-sized drivers so that they can swing really hard and still hit the ball straight. I've never used one, partly because I can't generate a lot of club-head speed (due to some past surgeries), and partly because I think that it's kind of cheating. Be that as it may, my father hits a low-profile driver, smaller than my own, I think.
I have 36 years on this man. I've been golfing during the last 15 years. But I only out-drove him over 9 holes by an average of about 5 yards. WTF. And he hit it at least as straight as I did. This guy was on fire, and right out of the chute after a decade-plus-long absence from the game. Watching him hit was frankly amazing. He putted me straight into the ground
I used to chafe at his constant attempts to correct my swing. Now I'm thinking I should hire him as an instuctor.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Reliving a Bit of my Childhood
I've recently been waxing a bit nostalgic for the summers of my childhood. This has been brought about, in part, by a blog called Free Range Kids, which I stumbled across, though I've forgotten how. Basically, it advocates giving your kids some free rein, rather than riding herd on them 24-7 the way so many people do these days. This is something I've thought about quite often in the last 2 decades, as I saw those around me placing their children in more structured, restricted environments than I had to deal with as a child. Then again, few children even when I was young had the opportunities to run at will that my siblings and I had.
My sisters and I grew up on the western edge of Milwaukee, near its border with Wauwatosa. Our parents also rented a summer cottage near a town called Eagle, about 45 minutes away. The cottage was a grand, musty behemoth drowsing between a run-down golf course and a beautiful, if somewhat weedy, spring-fed lake. Three other families rented it with ours, and each had at least 2 children in our age range. Total, there were 11 kids in our cottage, and another half-dozen in the neighboring cottages.
The Old Cottage
When in town, we roamed the neighborhood much like most children of that time were allowed to do. No one obsessed over abductions and other such slim dangers: we didn't have a sensationalist media shoving that stuff in our faces every evening. We regularly rode our bikes to the local dime store or the community pool. We checked in every few hours, but as long as our parents knew our general whereabouts, were relatively unsupervised.
When we were at the cottage, however, we were really free. We woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, and then disappeared. Sometimes up onto the derelict links to run, sometimes into the woods to build forts and slay dragons. The only restriction on us was that we couldn't go in the lake without an adult present. We came back when we were hungry, when we got a scraped knee, or to get a parent to take us swimming.
By the time I was 13, the cottage had gotten too small for us: 19 in a 5 bedroom house only works when lots of the people are small. So we relinquished our rental. The other 3 families continued to rent at other cottages at the resort, but my family decided to take an annual summer vacation instead. That was 27 years ago.
Recently, my younger sisters started renting there again, and this year I am, too. I went out to meet the landlady and check out the place Monday. It was bittersweet. A lot was as I remember it: The musty smell of the cottages, the old clubhouse with the trunk of a tree growing right up out of the middle of the great-room floor and into the ceiling, the spring house where we used to get our drinking water (the tap water was awful). But so much had changed: the road into the resort has been paved, taking away a bit of the going-back-in-time feel you used to have upon getting there. The clubhouse tree, which was still alive when I was young, has now been cut off at ceiling level and the roof hole closed: only the trunk remains, for tradition's sake. The golf course has been rehabilitated, and gets far more traffic. And the spring house water is now non-potable, likely contaminated by gunk from area farms and developments.
What has not changed is the isolated, self-contained, communal atmosphere. Everybody knows everybody. People wander around and visit, like folks did in decades past: and the people you visit probably have an ice-cold pitcher of daiquiris made up and waiting for you. Everything slows down to a cheerful amble.
And the children get to run. Without helmets.
.
My sisters and I grew up on the western edge of Milwaukee, near its border with Wauwatosa. Our parents also rented a summer cottage near a town called Eagle, about 45 minutes away. The cottage was a grand, musty behemoth drowsing between a run-down golf course and a beautiful, if somewhat weedy, spring-fed lake. Three other families rented it with ours, and each had at least 2 children in our age range. Total, there were 11 kids in our cottage, and another half-dozen in the neighboring cottages.
The Old CottageWhen in town, we roamed the neighborhood much like most children of that time were allowed to do. No one obsessed over abductions and other such slim dangers: we didn't have a sensationalist media shoving that stuff in our faces every evening. We regularly rode our bikes to the local dime store or the community pool. We checked in every few hours, but as long as our parents knew our general whereabouts, were relatively unsupervised.
When we were at the cottage, however, we were really free. We woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, and then disappeared. Sometimes up onto the derelict links to run, sometimes into the woods to build forts and slay dragons. The only restriction on us was that we couldn't go in the lake without an adult present. We came back when we were hungry, when we got a scraped knee, or to get a parent to take us swimming.
By the time I was 13, the cottage had gotten too small for us: 19 in a 5 bedroom house only works when lots of the people are small. So we relinquished our rental. The other 3 families continued to rent at other cottages at the resort, but my family decided to take an annual summer vacation instead. That was 27 years ago.
Recently, my younger sisters started renting there again, and this year I am, too. I went out to meet the landlady and check out the place Monday. It was bittersweet. A lot was as I remember it: The musty smell of the cottages, the old clubhouse with the trunk of a tree growing right up out of the middle of the great-room floor and into the ceiling, the spring house where we used to get our drinking water (the tap water was awful). But so much had changed: the road into the resort has been paved, taking away a bit of the going-back-in-time feel you used to have upon getting there. The clubhouse tree, which was still alive when I was young, has now been cut off at ceiling level and the roof hole closed: only the trunk remains, for tradition's sake. The golf course has been rehabilitated, and gets far more traffic. And the spring house water is now non-potable, likely contaminated by gunk from area farms and developments.
What has not changed is the isolated, self-contained, communal atmosphere. Everybody knows everybody. People wander around and visit, like folks did in decades past: and the people you visit probably have an ice-cold pitcher of daiquiris made up and waiting for you. Everything slows down to a cheerful amble.
And the children get to run. Without helmets.
.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Today we are 40
Hippo birdie to meese.
Think I'll go with Sheryl Crow on this one: it's the "new 30"! Really!
Think I'll go with Sheryl Crow on this one: it's the "new 30"! Really!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tight Lines!
FINALLY! Fishing season is here again. I thought winter was never going to let go. While it wasn't particularly cold this year, we had more snow than we've ever had in one year as long as I've been around. The ice just went out on area lakes two weeks ago.
The Milwaukee River is still too high to fish, but the Menomonee is down and the steelhead are running. Had no luck yesterday, but I'm gonna try to get into one today before the rain gets here.
The Milwaukee River is still too high to fish, but the Menomonee is down and the steelhead are running. Had no luck yesterday, but I'm gonna try to get into one today before the rain gets here.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
So What the Hell's a "Spidergrackle"?
Sooner or later, I'm sure someone's going to ask me about the name. It's nothing very clever or interesting, I'm afraid, but if you really want to know...
WARNING: BORING POST AHEAD. DO NOT READ WHILE OPERATING HEAVY EQUIPMENT, AS IT MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS.
Once upon a time in the land of Yahoo, there lived a bunch of trolls. The trolls lived in message boards attached to the news of Yahoo, and fed off of each others' maladjusted personalities. Most of the message boards were full of bad trolls, spewing racist hatred, creationist propaganda, and endlessly recycled insults. No one liked them, and they didn't much like each other, but spewing insults made them happy, so there they stayed.
But there was a special section of the boards attached to the odd and amusing news, which was inhabited by a race of clever, fun loving trolls who liked to joke and make up dirty limericks. These trolls staked the Oddly Enough boards out as their territory, and viciously defended it from anyone who used terms like "RepubliTurds" or "DemoCraps", or people who typed all in CAPS, or posted religious fundamentalist malarkey.
And all were happy, for a time.
One of the things the trolls liked to do was make up silly names related to the news story the board was attached to. In 2003, a Canadian company announced that they had made goats which produced spider-silk in their milk. It was considered a tremendous advance in genetic engineering, but the trolls just thought it was a great source of humor. One of the trolls was quick, and created the ID "Spidergoat". Many jokes based on a Spiderman theme followed.
Then a few years later, a story was posted titled "Hostile Grackles Attack people in Houston". All of the trolls began modifying their names to incoerporate the word "grackle". "Yahilda" became "GrackenHilda", "Midnite_Thundar" became "Midnite_grackle", and, as you may have guessed, "Spidergoat" became "Spidergrackle".
Then one day, an evil, pansy-assed lawyer got flamed by the bad trolls on the news boards and threatened to sue the king of the land of Yahoo for mental anguish or some such bullshit, and the king had no choice but to evict all of the trolls from the kingdom. And the trolls were sad.
They wandered the interwebs for a few years, settling here and there in small groups, but nowhere were they as happy as they had been in Yahoo, so they faded away.
One troll, however, had become attached to his name, and opened a blog using it. And that, more or less, is the story. Don't think they'll be making a movie of it any time soon, do you?
Hey! Wake up!
Once upon a time in the land of Yahoo, there lived a bunch of trolls. The trolls lived in message boards attached to the news of Yahoo, and fed off of each others' maladjusted personalities. Most of the message boards were full of bad trolls, spewing racist hatred, creationist propaganda, and endlessly recycled insults. No one liked them, and they didn't much like each other, but spewing insults made them happy, so there they stayed.
But there was a special section of the boards attached to the odd and amusing news, which was inhabited by a race of clever, fun loving trolls who liked to joke and make up dirty limericks. These trolls staked the Oddly Enough boards out as their territory, and viciously defended it from anyone who used terms like "RepubliTurds" or "DemoCraps", or people who typed all in CAPS, or posted religious fundamentalist malarkey.
And all were happy, for a time.
One of the things the trolls liked to do was make up silly names related to the news story the board was attached to. In 2003, a Canadian company announced that they had made goats which produced spider-silk in their milk. It was considered a tremendous advance in genetic engineering, but the trolls just thought it was a great source of humor. One of the trolls was quick, and created the ID "Spidergoat". Many jokes based on a Spiderman theme followed.
Then a few years later, a story was posted titled "Hostile Grackles Attack people in Houston". All of the trolls began modifying their names to incoerporate the word "grackle". "Yahilda" became "GrackenHilda", "Midnite_Thundar" became "Midnite_grackle", and, as you may have guessed, "Spidergoat" became "Spidergrackle".
Then one day, an evil, pansy-assed lawyer got flamed by the bad trolls on the news boards and threatened to sue the king of the land of Yahoo for mental anguish or some such bullshit, and the king had no choice but to evict all of the trolls from the kingdom. And the trolls were sad.
They wandered the interwebs for a few years, settling here and there in small groups, but nowhere were they as happy as they had been in Yahoo, so they faded away.
One troll, however, had become attached to his name, and opened a blog using it. And that, more or less, is the story. Don't think they'll be making a movie of it any time soon, do you?
Hey! Wake up!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Woohoo! Let it Snow!
The weatherfolk did overestimate what we'd get (surprise, surprise), but we still got a pretty good dumping last night. This has been a good winter for those who make their living by the plow. Good for the water level in lake Michigan, good for winter sports (I'm a x-country ski-er
m'self), good for the water table levels, and most of all good for the trout streams!
m'self), good for the water table levels, and most of all good for the trout streams!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Hello.
Not sure what I started this for: a lark, I guess. I've never been one to put myself forward much.
I live in Milwaukee, as I have for almost all of my life. I'm currently between jobs, though I plan to re-enter the workforce shortly.
I live in Milwaukee, as I have for almost all of my life. I'm currently between jobs, though I plan to re-enter the workforce shortly.
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