Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Dolls in Valentine Colors

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Dolls in Valentine Colors: Pink and red, white lace, pale lavenders, purple passion, the colors of Valentine's day abound this time of year.  The Story of St. Vale...

Doctoring Hamburger Helper

On a cold, depressingly frigid evening full of clouds and snows, I made dinner.  I had success. As I told my husband, Suzy Homemaker, I'm not, but I try.  He told me to stop complaining.  Was I?  Anyway,  I try, and tonight, tried well.  I followed the directions on the box, but cut up mushrooms in the browned hamburger, mix, hot water and milk.  I added a pat of butter, and stirred in about a tablespoon of real sour cream.  I also used real milk.  It was delicious.  Let it simmer covered twelve minutes, not ten.


Add bread and butter; I used white sliced, not very health conscious perhaps, but it was good.  Also, it was on sale, $.50 for a one pound loaf.  I made a salad of mixed baby greens, avocado, and queen green olives, stuffed, drizzled with ranch dressing and topped with won ton strips.  Final side dish was cottage cheese with chives.   Nice dinner for a cold night.


Stay warm.

Public Domain

Snowed in and Save the Food

Once again, it's been one of those days.  We are laid waste by snow, ice, freezing rain, you name it.  Below zero temps and wind chills, snow and more snow and more snow.  We have more or less been stuck inside for two days, and of course, it could be much worse.

I got stuck four times today; needed help twice.  At least three neighbors followed in my wake.  My husband had to come get me with his big On guard Security Truck.    He was right; I shouldn't have gone out, but I had errands and things to check on.

The trees had robins frolicking in them, and another had a red headed woodpecker.  All of them were chirping.  My squirrels were waiting for their daily dose of cat food.  I was using a generic store brand, but I have to go to meow mix.  They aren't that fond of the generic brand.  It was too cold for me, but I felt sorry of them.  I keep a basket with towels, and other little places of shelter under my carport for whatever might need it.  So far, I know a fox sleeps there sometimes. It is too cold for them to stray far from their den, too.

Lately, I commiserate with the wild things out there.  I have been feeling trapped and cold, and I don't like it.  

They are hard to see but there are robins frolicking in the snow iced trees.

On another subject, I noticed the Save the Food.com commercials and went to their website.  They offer tips on meal planning and also recipes. One section is "stems, bones, and everything in between."  There are tips for using cheese rinds and overripe fruit, browning food and stale food, even sour milk.

It's worth a shot; I hate waste, and do my best not to.  I share food with my friends, cook food to freeze, but again, if it is something that could really make us sick, I don't cook with it.  I know people with food that's over five years old in the freezer or fridge, and they think nothing of it.  They make applesauce with wormy apples, leave food overnight in the oven and eat it.  I don't do that.  I hold to, "when in doubt,"throw it out."

So, stay safe, don't slip.  Use a broom to sweep the snow, or a snow thrower, or hire someone. Don't become a heart attack stat.  A few years ago, when my dad first got sick, I tried to shovel.  I felt my asthma coming on and couldn't breathe, but I didn't stop.  I turned around and there stood my neighbor's son.  I jumped. "Mom said I had to help you."  He was sixty at the time. So, we shoveled a while.  "Are you OK," he said?  "Yeah, it's just this asthma."  "I know," he said, I have a stint.

"PUT THE SHOVEL DOWN!!!!"

I went inside and called the snow removal service. 

Be safe.

American Doll and Toy Museum: Hellenic Muses a la Poupee

American Doll and Toy Museum: Hellenic Muses a la Poupee: Greek dolls have been influenced by many cultures, mixing with, and creating doll simultaneously with, Greek artists. A doll shaped ...

The Murder Room

An interesting point of where literature and criminology intersect:  From The Murder Room:  “But it was Vidocq’s remarkable story of redemption and his belief in the redemption of others that touched Fleischer most deeply. The chief cop of Paris was a great friend of the poor and said he would never arrest a man for stealing bread to feed his family.   Vidocq was Hugo’s model for Javert, the relentless detective in Les Miserables, as well as for Valjean, the excon who reforms and seeks redemption for  his deeds” (Capuzzo 135).  Vidocq was a criminal who became a detective, and who formed an agency even before Pinkerton.  He is considered a father of modern criminology.  This well researched book by Michael Capuzzo tells the story of The Vidocq Society, named in his honor, and of three remarkable criminologists who lead the pack of those who would solve the most unsolvable of crimes.

The Orchid Sale; Till Jan. 23d

I love Logee's, and I love orchids, all of them!  I constantly  go to orchid shows, and I've tried to raise them, but alas, they don't like me.  I have lovely silk examples, and I have jewelry.  As close as I'll get, I supposed.  My church decorates the Epitaphio, or tomb of Jesus, every Easter, and Orchids are the crowning glory.  If you are special,  you get an orchid at the end of the liturgy.  Everyone else gets a carnation or some greenery.  One year, my friend, and our son's godfather, was directing choir.  He got an orchid, and at the end of the liturgy, he placed it in my hands.  I was very touched.


Another friend, also a musician, has an enviable collection, just fantastic.  He's the star of the orchid show!  I can gaze from afar, and Logee's has some nice examples at their online sale, till Jan. 23d.  I've had good luck ordering from them:


https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Logee-s-Orchid-Sale.html?soid=1011343087080&aid=7M16EdlDOWI

Public Domain

Fossils

Mississippi Fossils

 

Public Domain

I have always loved old things, preferring them to the new and the shiny. I take it to heart that more and more of our old buildings are being imploded for the sake of progress, The Armory, Lincoln School, Audubon School, The Huber Home, have all been victims.   Eyesores, some have called them, dangerous buildings, accidents waiting to happen.  History, I say, that will never be repeated or enjoyed again, like the cafeteria on the mezzanine of McCabe’s Department store or the ice cream counter at Pitcher’s on 30^th in Rock Island.

There are some landmarks, though, that can’t be bulldozed.  They will find their way into our consciousness, even in a disaster.  Cases in point; the fossils found along the shores of our own Mississippi.  Paleontologists will tell you that these fossils, by definition, evidence of prehistoric life, become exposed when the River’s water levels drop, or after the waters of a great flood have receded.  See, they will find us, come “hell or high-water.”
 

They also show up where you least expect them; trilobites and fossil ferns showed up in the limestone rock borders of my parent’s garden in Rock Island.  Huge rocks encrusted with fossils with exotic names like Cladopora, Cephalpods, Anthozoa, Platyrachella, Productella-they made a home for a water snake that slithered out when I lifted up his rock roof to see the fossils close up. Twenty five years ago or so, they showed up at the gift shop of the Putnam, pre-IMAX, and in the sands near the Cordoba Nuclear plant, where we fieldtripped for Summer Biology in 1975.

Our fossil landmarks are far older than the demolished school buildings amid whose walls our teachers first introduced them to us.  They hail from the Devonian Period of prehistory, between 410 and 360 million years ago.  Appropriately, many of these were marine animals, and fish

Later ,the  new kids on the block appeared during the Ice Age, the wooly mammoth, giant ground sloth, the land animals, ancient at 10,000 to 2 million  years old, but familiar.  They coincided with us, with the humans, who learned later to destroy so well.  Fossils humble us, these often tiny pieces of prehistory.  They have already outlasted us; they lived in some form or another for hundreds of millions years.  We have only lived in this Valley for some 10-fiftenn thousand years.   If by chance my fossilized remains should survive a million years, and some archaeologist in the far distant future finds me, I hope I have that little fossil fern and the trilobite clutched in my bony hand.  And I hope I’m part of prehistory lesson that’s taught in a school that isn’t in danger of being demolished.

 

 

January 2019 Skyward

A most interesting post from dr. David Levy, discoverer of more comets than anyone.  In particular, he is the discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy Comet, and my name translates to Shoemaker.  Dr. Levy also holds a PhD in English, with Shakespeare as his specialty.  My PhD is in English literature as well; he is a passionate, renowned astronomer, and a kindred spirit for us:

Skyward

January 2019

          For those of us who were alive back then, where were you on Christmas Eve, in the year 1968?   I remember exactly where I was.  Sitting in front of my family’s television, we were watching a surreal scene on TV.  There was a camera peering through a triangular-shaped window on a spacecraft called Apollo 8, out of which was a view of mountains, plains, and craters.  And at the bottom of the screen were the words, “Live from the Moon”.  I have a feeling that most of you, if you were living then, were watching too. The Apollo 8 Christmas eve broadcast was the most watched television program in the world up to that time.  The announcer on our station, Walter Cronkite, was not saying much.  Occasionally he would update us as to what part of the Moon the spacecraft was looking at, but most of the time, the view on the screen said it all.  And it was magical.

The year 1968 was a terrible year for the most part.  In April, Martin Luther King was murdered outside his hotel room in Memphis, and just two months later in Los Angeles, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated.  And two months after that, the Democratic National Convention disintegrated into a riot on the streets of Chicago, with “The whole world watching.” That November, Richard Nixon won a close national election.  Then came Christmas Eve. 

 

Earthrise Apollo 8, David Levy owner

Apollo 8 was not intended to head for the Moon.  The Saturn 5 rocket, as tall as a 36-floor building, had never been flown with humans aboard.  The NASA picture that accompanies this article, in fact, shows Wernher Von Braun, the man who designed the Saturn 5, utterly dwarfed by five engines so large that one could set up housekeeping in each of them. (The other picture is astronaut Bill Anders' epochal “Earthrise”.) The Saturn 5’s unmanned test flights had been beset b8y several minor problems, and the Lunar Module, which was intended to land two astronauts on the Moon and return them to the command vehicle, was not yet ready for flight testing. But in August, 1968,  George Low, Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program office, came up with an ingenious idea: NASA could fly a manned Saturn 5 with only the Command module.  If the launch was successful, it could then proceed to orbit the Moon.

After some debate and a lot of tense moments, Apollo 8 launched on the winter solstice, December 21, 1968.  About two hours later, a simple message was radioed:  “Apollo 8:  You are go for TLI.”  After the trans-lunar injection, Apollo 8, with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, was on its way to a Christmas eve rendezvous with the Moon, there was nothing left to do but travel and wait.

For me, by far the most memorable part was the astronauts’ Christmas eve message:

“We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.”  Then each astronaut read from the book of Genesis.  Our family was spellbound as we listended to these words.  But it was the ending that really turned the year 1968 from one of tragedy to one of promise and hope:

“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas—and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

von Braun and Saturn 5