My heart breaks tonight. I have four daughters. Dear Lord, I have four daughters. What do you do? I’m going to take this to my family council this week. I have insulated myself in a world of Twinkies and DVDs. This from The Economist.
More: Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as brides, The Bride Price.
When you live where we do, you cannot hope to landscape likes folks in a warm suburb. First of all, at 6,000 feet with a min temp of -30 Fahrenheit you can’t grow a lot of warmer climate plants. Second, the deer seem to eat everything else you do grow. So we’ve been looking and I think I’ve found a tree to add.
I actually found it earlier when I was biking around the beautiful Round Valley and had to stop and go back to revel in the delicious fragrance. But I didn’t know what it was at the time. I do now.
It’s the black chokecherry.
It grows naturally up here. Has beautiful fragrant blossoms in the spring. And it produces fruit that can be made into a delicious syrup. Oh, the raccoons like it as well.
Now when you eat the raw berry, unless you eat it late in the fall, you’re in for an astringent, alum after-punch. But we picked the berries up a canyon behind our town after the first frosts. In fact, many of our berries were wrinkled. They just fine raw. Even Lilia, my pickiest eater, enjoyed them.
We picked about 1.25 gallon ice cream buckets of the stuff. Then we followed this recepie and made about 4 quarts of syrup.
It’s absolutely delicious on pancakes.
Diana Rowland of MagicDistrict.wordpress.com invited me to guest blog. I was happy to provide “Testicles and the Zing Life.”
Testicles do not taste like chicken.
I know this thing. At least the ones taken from cattle don’t. But this Nobel prize-winning discovery is not what’s important. What’s important is why I know this. Read more.
Enjoy!
A huge part of science fiction and fantasy is the art. I’m always amazed at how powerful a cover can be. In fact, I remember buying the Thomas Covenant series because of those covers. I hated the hero. He drove me nuts. But those covers (and the other cool things) made up for it. So when I saw Isaac Stewart’s cover reviews, I had one of those V-8 moments. Of course, there should be reviews of cover art. There must be. And these are the most insightful AND funny reviews of cover art I’ve ever seen.
One of my personal flaws is my monkey fascination. I am interested in too many things. For example, when I was at the university I wanted to major in English, History, Dutch, Art, and graduate with Honors.
Um, no. That didn’t work. They finally wrote me a letter and said 220 credits was more than enough. And I would graduate the next semester with whatever degree I could cobble together.
Of course, then I started my Masters of Accountancy and Information Systems program. (Some people never learn.)
When I was in my Masters program I started an investment club, wrote fiction, and wanted to start a FSBO home business as well as a write a non-fiction book with 4 collaborators. Oh yeah, and I was supposed to be Mr. Mom with two kids at the time while my wife put me through school.
All this did was stress my marriage to the point that my wife was considering giving me the pink slip. Of course, being so involved in so many projects I had no idea I was in danger of being layed off.
No, over the years I’ve learned that simplicity and focus is divine. It’s good to say no to the million things that vie for my attention, even the many noble causes. It’s smart to put a lot of effort into a few things. Become an expert in one area.
In business, I’ve watched some friends focus, focus, focus. They’ve put in their time and have become very successful at what they do. They’ve worked hard. . . at one thing. On the other hand, you have those of us who haven’t yet been able to give up that danged monkey brain. (Although I will give myself credit–for the last five years I’ve been trying to reduce. Trying to focus. I’m failing spectacularly. But I figure sooner or later my efforts will pay off.)
The multitasking myth shows up not only in the general activities we engage in, but also in learning. I heard this NPR story on myth of multitasking and thought I’d share.
Maybe less really is more.
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That’s pretty amazing stuff. People live in such a different worlds than us. Really, we’re amazingly blessed. What are you going to do with it in family council?
I don’t know yet. I’ll present it and see what ideas we come up with to help.