Out of the Frying Pan

Everybody dance!

Ramping up for US Thanksgiving, get on your feet: The Original Gratitude Dance. And when you're done, check out gratefulness.org, where they're "building a worldwide Network for Grateful Living". HT Polly Smith for the video

Various things

• It's, er, piling on to mention this, but as much as Jay Cutler dissed the Bronco defense last year (he and everyone else), he has to be missing the Denver offensive line. Last year: one sack per 56 attempts; this year, one per 16 attempts (according to the Bear site last week. After today's "performance", the number is surely worse). Ouch.
• Some seriously foul soup was made in the kitchen today and I doubt that use of the passive will do much to conceal the perpetrator's identity. Let's leave it that the search continues for a good corn chowder recipe. The Mimi's wannabe recipes on the Web are wanting. Seriously.
• For the over-25 set, only, We Don't Need No (Formal) Education: Social Media and the Edupunk Initiative. See what you think.

Usually homemade soup works for dinner and supper. Thank you, Good Times, for rescuing supper.

The ninth floor, a diner, and the kitchen table

It was quite a good week for seeing different things in various places.

As the last photo shows, I'm having a lot of trouble with lighting, especially white balance. On a 30 second exposure, things are quite grim at the moment.

Quick stop at the Cathedral of Christ the Light

For months I've been interested in seeing the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland. Tuesday in the late afternoon I was able to do so. Things are somewhat in disarray because of organ construction. To me, that made it a unique opportunity to see the Cathedral as a work in progress.

Probably I'll change out these images, but I wanted to blog something right away about this beautiful space. Weekdays there are docent tours at 1 pm, according to a very nice woman at the information desk. That she and the man at the door, whom I assume is a security guard, were so gracious to someone wandering in late in the day is something I shall remember, at least as much as space.

9th floor at dusk, Tuesday

Warm temps, pure blue sky: perfect for touching down in Oakland for a day.

Musing: in my view, but not through a lens

Often it's not very hard to know the right thing to do; the hard thing is to do it.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen articulates a critical metric in intimate relationships. The other's quirks are not annoying to the lover; the other's quirks annoy infinitely the one who does not truly love. Watch for that, kids.

Janzen stayed fifteen years in a marriage that I can only describe as horrific and was, in the end, left by her husband, who seemed to be an abusive and controlling fellow who blamed the worst of his bad behavior on "bipolarity".

You already know what I think about that, but I'll reiterate that if any medical condition causes a person to act out, that person needs to seek out and follow an appropriate regime to get herself under control. Diabetes, high blood pressure, bipolar, OCD -- I've heard 'em all used by people who do not want to follow the rules for staying in bounds.

Janzen's husband thought that effective treatment for bipolar blunted his "edge" of creativity and energy. Damn right it did, I hope! He was evaluating his "edge" with a broken brain, a brain that wasn't taking in his impact on the world.

This woman's case was extreme and she wasn't willing to hear anything that might have been a criticism of her beloved. But you, you standing on the precipice of decision, do the right thing, whatever you know it to be. Go to school, change jobs (before you quit the one you have), have the baby, stay in the house or move, drop the girl and move on or move out, marry or leave, stay in touch or break cleanly, read the book or pass it along: commit.

Commitment begins with my knowing my values and then holding myself rigorously accountable: my diet, my doctor's appointments, my assignments, my housework, my doing what I can to add to the joy and safe intimate space for the ones I love.

This morning, sitting in this bleak and supposedly luxurious lounge, that is what I say to myself and, with tremendous compassion, to you. Have things right in your life. It isn't easy, but it's simple and you already know that.

I cannot say it better than William Stafford in The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune.

Encourage good fortune in your life, my friend. I am living to do the same.

Once again, Bob Sutton nails it

Life is a funny old thing, so I guess I can't rule out the possibility of ever meeting Bob Sutton. Sitting here on a snowy day in northern Colorado, behind on school work and befuddled about other work, it seems unlikely.

But maybe some day I'll get to hear him lecture. It would be a treat. I really admire the wide range of sources from which he takes in information and his straight talk about what it might mean. Take, for example, his blog entry from yesterday:

This research is also fascinating to me because it shows how, so often, when people say they are too busy, don't have enough money, or there will be resistance to change that these are excuses, or worse yet, negative self-fulfilling prophecies.

Read the entire entry. In various ways, it might save your life.

Flight stats you want to know

(DEN) Denver International Airport Delays

Al fresco, etc

It seems like Fall fell in about 10 minutes this year.

It's not a pumpkin

Watermelon carvings: "Anyone can learn to carve the melons and all it takes is a little patience..." Takashi Itoh's site has more photos, but they're smaller.

There's something quite wonderful about putting such effort into the utterly ephemeral.

Don't say it

An old gem from theofficelife.com, which promotes itself as "Your guide to surviving the corporate wasteland", is The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary. It includes definitions, at least as far as they can be known, for nuggets (a scary, almost scatological term, from way back in the day) such as visioning, resonate, core competencies, reach out, and plenty more.

But some terms included strike me as mighty useful: meta ignorance (being unaware of what you don't know); dog-fooding (forcing programmers to use their own product); shoot the puppy (take unpopular action, e.g. "We're cutting health benefits by 40%, but I don't want to be the one who announces shooting the puppy.").

See also the Beeb's 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate.HT, Bob Sutton

The boy in the balloon

Larimer County Sheriff hits the "Bullseye". When the link goes away, just choose "Up, Up and Away" from the Bulls-Eye issue drop down menu.

Ray told me

Five years ago or so, Ray Murphy passed two pieces of wisdom to me. One is that at my age (then about 52), he would have tried harder. The Skit Guys make that point here.

...and not forgetting Ray Stevens

Twiturm.com - Ray Stevens - Cooter Brown

Very, very funny. Kind of goes with Bar on A (previous post), except it's in third person.

Bar on A

I'll just go ahead and declare that these are Greg Holden days here. You've heard of YouTube sensation Julia Nunes. She backs Greg Holden on my all time favorite song of his (so far).

Mike Vitale: check him out

Another young singer/song writer: Mike Vitale in SoCal. Check out his preview of We've Been Down This Road Before and his fun blog. He seems not to hold much with blowing up whales; perhaps he's wise beyond his his years. Greg Holden recommends, which is probably all you need to know, one way or the other.

And speaking of musician's blogs, Greg Holden has a spot on blog entry about um getting stuck as an artist. I like his ideas for getting going again. (PS to Greg: cold coffee works almost every time.)

Encouraging good fortune

A poem by William Stafford, The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune, came to mind as I looked at these articles recently:

• a University of Michigan study shows a biological reason that the bonds of friendship improve mood;
• the title of this article bothers me a little; one that sits better with me is Overworking's overrated, may be detrimental. That, believe me, I know is true and the article certainly makes the case;
• An old article in the Telegraph by Robert Wiseman (great name!) describes what he learned in his investigation of "luck".

Little ways can encourage good fortune.

Ambivalent

That's how I feel about this one because there's a lot of new music I like a lot, e.g. my young friend Greg Holden, who just a year ago was bogged down in a job he didn't like on Regent Street. But, although much of "our" music was fit for the Muzak fodder it has become, some was purely great. You know?

Greg just wrapped up his first cross-country tour of the US. He fronted for Ingrid Michaelson, doing songs like this (but not this song; he posted it and apparently wrote it with Joey Ryan yesterday).

October wonderland

As in: we wonder what in the world is going on in the backyard...

And now, something guaranteed to offend

...unless, bold as brass just like me, you're laughing your head off at Dara Ó Briain and his take on mixed marriages, meaning Catholic and otherwise. Myself, I think they're problematic, straight up, but Ó Briain is awfully funny. Especially the bit about hymns: spot on. Some will not care for the language. I don't, but again...

Avoiding death by PowerPoint and other presentation Jobs

Say it with a long "o", like the Old Testament's lion of suffering, if a PowerPoint presentation has ever rendered you the next thing to comatose. Or say it with an "ah" in the middle, like the last name of the Apple legend. Either way, here are some items of interest:

• The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience - CIO senior editor Thomas Wailgum interviews Carmine Gallo, author of the new book.
• See also (or at least see) Gallo's 5 Ways to Ruin Your Next Presentation, also in CIO.
• And the UK blog presentation helper weighs in with 8 mistakes when creating Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Cool things from the US Geologic Survey

• This Dynamic Earth is what amounts to a textbook about plate techtonics - handily available as .pdf, too.
• EarthExplorer offers all kinds of views of just about anywhere on earth. The previews, which are certainly big enough for me, are available free.
• Natural Hazards Gateway - earthquakes, floods, tsunamis... so much more.
• Maps and atlases - tectonic maps, aeromagnetic maps, species distribution maps, much more. Reminds me of the motto of my favorite hardware store: If we don't have it, you don't need it.
• A page about topographic mapping
• A multimedia gallery
• Arctic Chronicles, a diary about the August 7 - September 16, 2009 joint US/Canadian survey of the Arctic's continental shelf.

And these are merely appetizers from the USGS site.

A short course in misery

Five steps to being absolutely miserable: a course you shouldn't miss!

Sliders

The range having at last arrived today, the kitchen's Inaugural Dinner has been served. I do things a little differently from Alton Brown, but his recipe is good for the gist of it.

Book quix, redux

A few years ago, I got Stranger in a Strange Land. I'm happier with this result, mainly because I so admire Barbara Tuchman.

You're The Guns of August!
by Barbara Tuchman
Though you're interested in war, what you really want to know is what causes war. You're out to expose imperialism, militarism, and nationalism for what they really are. Nevertheless, you're always living in the past and have a hard time dealing with what's going on today. You're also far more focused on Europe than anywhere else in the world. A fitting motto for you might be "Guns do kill, but so can diplomats."
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Hello, October

After dinner I asked DC, "Don't you wish you were you?" He's glad he is, he said. Me, too.

Saying "adieu" to September "à deux"

Why is the global warming debate over?

The debate has been over on other topics, too. Take, for instance, the fabrication and falsification of Ward Churchill's research about the US Army contaminating blankets with small pox in order to kill Native Americans. But on many topics -- the Shoah is not among these -- surely thoughtful people continue to collect and evaluate evidence, and allow their views to evolve accordingly.

Who got to decide that the debate about global warming is over?

Self portrait exhibit by Barry Kite

OK - one image some might not want your kids to see at the end, but the whole video is very, very funny.

Management mojo at Netflix

128 slides about Netflix corporate culture will probably raise the hackles of a lot of folks my age. It is aggressively Darwinian, which doesn't have a lot of sex appeal for us 50-somethings.

Comments about the slides are instructive and probably prove my point. HT, Bob Sutton

Bob Sutton nails it again

Okay, he's actually writing about somebody who has nailed it.

My kitchen: two hits and a miss

Starting the day with Br Lawrence and my Tiffany mug

This might happen if one bakes pizza without setting the timer and then decides to go into one's office.

But then again, a tortilleria in the neighborhood can rescue almost any dinner plan: quesadillas made with the still-warm corn tortillas, Rocky Ford cantaloupe, and Whole Foods cabbage crunch.

Jumpstart creativity

From O, that well-known resource for entrepreneurs and managers, The Mind Map: Six Steps to Get Your Creativity Flowing. But watch out for the funky design thing that suggests hitting "Next" rather than the orange karat in the box that contains the article.

Collaboration

The estimable Bob Sutton reviews a new book, Collaboration, by Morten Hansen. Hansen says that his research shows that "bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration."

Yeah, I have to say that empirical evidence has demonstrated that to me. Some of my greatest successes are the result of good ongoing collaborations with other "T-shaped" people: DC being first among the equals I work with these days.

A podcast about collaboration with Morten Hansen.

John Paul the Great goes to Powell Butte

Milliken, Colorado - 23 September 2006. We'd just passed streets with the names of my mother and her older sisters in this town, and it was flabbergasting to see this car on the railroad siding just as we were leaving the city limits.

Over Labor Day weekend, a retreat center in Powell Butte, Oregon was dedicated. The complex includes a conference center named for John Paul II.

This caught my eye because my mother was born in Powell Butte almost 86 years ago; it is where her father died of pneumonia only 4 years later.

Around death children were handled less delicately in those days. Throughout my life my mother spoke of her horror at being lifted up to view her father's body. It wasn't her daddy, she was quite sure, because this man had no moustache. The undertaker had cleaned him up. As far as I know, my mother never "viewed" again, even when her beloved husband died. Or maybe especially then.

Soon after her husband's death, my grandmother, several months pregnant, moved the family from the farm to Prineville. There she took a job in the laundry of the town's hotel and took in the spinster school teacher as a boarder. The teacher took as her project the conversion of my mother to right-handedness, ultimately but after many tears a hiding to nothing.

But, as is usual when I think of my parents, I digress. My father, who met my mother in Prineville (and eloped with her to Idaho, but that is a digression too far tonight), was fascinated by the Polish pope. When JP II returned to Poland for the first time after becoming pope, Dad was astonished that the multitudes who came to Eucharist knelt, right outdoors. He'd never seen anything like it. (Had any of us?)

John Paul the Great had much to do with my being guided to the Church. He helped to unstop my ears, a feat only slightly less miraculous than the toppling of Communism. So I am delighted that he is now a patron in my mother's birthplace.

Good and faithful servant

23 years ago now, the Rev. E. C. "Al" Ludwick died. I am one of just a few people still alive who remember him: my father. He was a minister of the Conservative Baptist Church; that's the actual name of the denomination in which he was ordained. By the time he died, though, his theology was broadly Christian.

Somebody mentioned recently that he must have been very upset when I was received by the Church. Honestly, not that I ever knew. Among the papers found in his office after the deaths of both my parents was some venomously anti-Catholic literature, but that was from many years before. It was buried in old things, things at which he obviously had not looked in many years. Several times a year he attended Mass with me and on the day of his burial, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a Mass was offered for him. He would have been beyond pleased that the Gospel of the day was John 3:13-17: God so loved the world...

There was an obvious epitaph for this man and it is the one I chose for his headstone: good and faithful servant. May he share his Master's joy forever.

A view from my office and a detail in the back garden

Mindset

We spend a lot of time trying to avoid failure. In fact, "not failing" is a target at which even some very small children know to aim. But, despite the grade or glowing performance appraisal, not failing is not the same as succeeding. And I think many of us know this without quite knowing how to adjust our aims.

Recently I read a book that has influenced my revisiting a number of ideas I held about intelligence, creativity, decision making and more. The subtitle of Mindset: The New Psychology of Successby Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University nearly put me off, but after just a few pages of this accessible and superbly researched book, I was hooked.

Take a look (or a listen) to:

• The Effort Effect by Marina Krakovsky is an extensive article about Carol Dweck and her work and it includes a link to a fine diagram by Nigel Holmes that further describes the differences in mindsets;
• Guy Kawaksaki blogged The "Effort Effect" and More on Professor Carol Dweck and Mindsets, which includes a YouTube with Professor Dweck and a link to a graphic that describes how fixed and growth mindsets differ from each other.
• Tech Nation's audio interview with Professor Dweck.

Even here on my personal blog where I sometimes mention favorite writers (usually in the mystery genre, of course), I don't think I recommend many books. This book is one I've given to friends including DC and even recommended to strangers. Without banging on too much, I really suggest you read it cover to cover.

Mercy, unrestrained

After presiding in choir at the Mass, Cardinal Seán O'Malley blogged:

As Archbishop of Boston, I considered it appropriate to represent the Church at this liturgy out of respect for the Senator, his family, those who attended the Mass and all those who were praying for the Senator and his family at this difficult time. We are people of faith and we believe in a loving and forgiving God from whom we seek mercy.

And Bishop Robert Morlino of the Diocese of Boston writes:

I’m afraid, however, that for not a few Catholics, the funeral rites for Senator Kennedy were a source of scandal — that is, quite literally, led them into sin. From not a few corners has come the question, “how on earth could Teddy Kennedy be buried from the Church?” There have also been expressions from some, that “whatever happens in Church, Senator Kennedy will now face justice, which will lead him inside the gates of Hell.”

The words of the cardinal and bishop are completely congruent with the gentle words of Cardinal McCarrick at Kennedy's graveside:

Sometimes, of course, we who were his friends and had affection for him would get mad at him when he roared at what we believed was the wrong side of an issue, but we always knew, and were always touched by, his passion for the underdog, for the rights of working people, for better education, for adequate health care for every American.

May we, too, one day be welcomed by the God who is rich in mercy and abounding in kindness.

At the end of the week

The Roman Catholic newspaper of Boston, The Pilot, reports on Ted Kennedy's funeral. Early in the week my inbox had a forwarded email of great, but not unexpected, vitriol about Kennedy. All I could think was, I do not want to be judged solely on the events of my life forty years ago... or even four.

Speaking of events long past, when ironing pillowcases this morning suddenly I remembered that one of my first chores was just that. My mother inspected things ceremoniously and I felt that I was at last -- at the age of seven or so -- being conducted onto the path leading to adulthood. Somehow I doubt that these days we allow seven year olds to iron.

If you've got some DIY energy and about fifty bucks (US) on your hands during this long weekend (Labor Day in the US), try Build a BBQ Smoker for Under $50. This would make particular sense to me if we were still in a part of the country with coho and chinook runs at this time of year. (I'm not much keen on salmon, so it's just something else I don't miss about the the beaver state.)

Compare and contrast the difference between photos on the boxes of micro-food and how the food actually looks after it has been nuked: Food in Real Life. Although it is instructive, it probably won't put me off my meal-in-a-box proclivities when I'm on my own.

And finally, let your mind take a whirl around a Möbius strip music box.

Little notes

• The Programming Language with the Happiest Users, except for the commenters, of course. Someone who knows just enough Perl to have created a lot of chaos in her world of years past and enough C++ to have really caused some problems -- well, that person is not going to comment.
• BlockChalk API - yet another way for me to introduce a little more havoc to my disordered world. HT O'Reilly Radar on both these items
• You want to be a dinosaur? Keep using tables strikes at the heart of my wondering whether to spend time re-developing literally hundreds of Web pages or to press ahead with new content development.
• And on a perhaps not unrelated note, Dumb Little Man has a nifty article on The Art of Changing Easily & Gracefully. It's a pretty good crash course in overcoming inertia.
• Finally, I vote with the folks who thought it was a, ahem, Richard move, but it's still pretty funny: a customer billed a sandwich shop for time wasted... and the sandwich shop paid up. Don't try this at home, kids.

Changes

The USCCB has prepared a site explaining the new edition of the Roman Missal and, crucially, offering examples of coming changes.

For some of us old dogs, it might have been easier to improve our Latin than to remember to say, in response to "The Lord be with you", "And with your spirit."

Some time back, I remember Cardinal George's saying that he expected to go to his grave still saying, "And also with you." Not because he's opposed at all to the changes -- indeed, he's done a great job of introducing the changes -- but just because, well, it's hard to change.

If you think you know the prayers of the Mass, it might be worth checking out the site to see how much you used to know.

Little road trip

We've been making up over a few weekends what it hasn't been possible to do for several years: get out of town with no particular aim except what we choose. This weekend's target, in easy distance if the traffic doesn't bite, was Vail.

As can happen on weekends in low season -- not exactly summer, but certainly not ski season -- a very good deal put this place in striking distance, cost-wise. Most of the year, forget it.

What I liked about Vail was the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. It isn't a manicured place, but it isn't quite wild. The effect is unexpectedly similar to an English garden.

The Eisenhower Tunnel was almost empty


...and the road to Leadville was pretty quiet, too.

It's the kind of weekend that can give a person cabin fever, until one sees the going prices for the cabins!

Christopher Kimball's blog

There are a couple of deletions to the Sundry sidebar (for instance, in what appears to be a permanent fbfw retrospective, I understand why I liked it when it launched almost 30 years ago).

But there's a notable addition: a link to Christopher Kimball's blog. The entries are relatively infrequent, but for me the photos and recipes make this one to follow. (Don't know who this guy is? Check out a Slate article.)

HBR's "Breakthrough Business Ideas for 2009"

The lead has a nifty TOC, so you might like to check it out. Some ideas were especially provocative to me:

• What You Need to Know About the Semantic Web, a basic but I think not really dumbed-down explanation;
• Now's the Time to Invest in Africa challenges investors, especially corporations, to take another look at the opportunities: The time is ripe for multinationals to rethink sub-Saharan opportunities and simultaneously to help the region achieve its promise by contributing much- needed capital, business skills, and global connections. , say Paul Collier and Jean-Louis Warnholz;
• Should You Outsource Your Brain? Call centers and decision making officeshore? Well, yeah. And while you're at it...
• get into cognitive exercise, which might better prepare you to...
• imagine architecture that challenges your body, if you can. The Web site is reversibledestiny.org: ARCHITECTURE AGAINST DEATH. HT, AGT whose link put me on to the HBR article;
• and finally, in a prick at the balloon of one's sense of self-importance, The Dynamics of Personal Influence, or Your Ripple in the Pond Might Not Be As Big As You Think;

Whew.

Divers

That's such a great word. It was one of my heartbeat words, which is to say that it is a word I probably heard from the time my heart began to beat:

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past...

Today's divers have rather less dignity than these words that begin the 107 word sentence that starts off the New Testament book of Hebrews.

First, a bumper-snicker sighted up in Fort Collins: Artificial intelligence is nothing compared to natural stupidity.

The peace agreement with my knees stipulates installation of an ADA commode. It's to be the fetchingly named UltraMax®, manufactured by Toto. My knees have an obnoxious sense of humor, but they do not have their own Internet connection, so I can speak freely of them here.

Leo Babauta has posted a beta version of his new book, Focus. He's using a wiki model, which means people are free to edit and even, one supposes, actually write.

Evernote, a means of information capture, looks interesting. One wonders about the privacy issues.

Finally, here's a blog entry on the difference between high and low income earners. Ultimately, the entry addresses in a fashion differences in opportunity, but it also tries to look at things that might be in a person's control. Interesting, even though I don't think I agree that these days a $100K salary is "high income".

"You can take the man out of Ardoyne..."

A year after the precipitous move of Passionist Father Aidan Troy from Ardoyne to Paris, see a Sunday Tribune article about how he's settling in at St Joseph's in Paris and how the people of Ardoyne haven't let him go. And yet,

The warmth the priest brought to Ardoyne is replicated in Paris: "I'm not half-hearted about this parish or its parishioners – they're super people. They deserve, and have got, a priest totally committed to them, not one battling to be transferred back to Belfast."

Field trip

The festivities of a long weekend centered around the eight hour (one way) drive to Salt Lake City. I wanted to visit Ikea and darned if DC didn't take me there less than 24 hours after his killer flight from Tel Aviv.

It might seem that four tanks of gas and two nights in a hotel would eat up any possible savings realized by an Ikea purchase, but... I had Marriott points and staying at a Salt Lake City Marriott-brand (Courtyard in Sandy) cost only 20,000 points for two nights! And the great thing about Marriott rewards is that they even cover tax!

DC visited the Cathedral, the only cathedral in the United States under the patronage of St Mary Magdalene (Flash panorama), and the Museum of Fine Arts.

Highpoint of the drive back today was turning south at Laramie onto 287 (instead of I-25 at Cheyenne) and passing Tie Siding, Wyoming. Thought-provoking sight: a pick-up towing an empty flat-bed trailer into one of the year-round fireworks emporiums, ubiquitous along the border.

We found a great, inexpensive furniture solution at Ikea, enjoyed a drive through the mountain West, had free and reasonably comfy lodging, tasted PacNW seafood at McGrath's, and came home tired but rested, if you know what I mean.

If you can't stand the question...

...complain to Amazon and seek censorship of a "Top 1000" reviewer.

Last week, again I ran into a book I thought might be of interest -- a book with a whole bunch of five star ratings. It's by Sheryl Canter and the book is called Normal Eating for Normal Weight.

Thankfully, I remembered to do what has become required due diligence: check the number of reviews written by individuals who awarded five stars. Alas most, in fact probably more than 75%, had never reviewed another single item, but for some reason moved themselves to review this book soon after its publication.

What's a potential buyer to do? Ask the reviewers: what gave you the idea of reviewing this book? why now?

And what's the writer to do? Seek censorship and, in fact, expulsion from the reviewer community of the person who dared to question her reviewers. After, of course, she has tracked down my private telephone number and misquoted and maligned my questions.

So what's a blogger to do? Ask whether a writer of this character is someone you want to trust on the topic she apparently attempts to address. Her behavior speaks for itself, regardless of how her book is touted and by whom.

I'm not happy with Amazon's boilerplate responses so far and I'll track what happens as I escalate.

Sundry

Front Range Food Gardener Carl Wilson has terrific tips and lots of photos. He's staff horticulturist for the CSU Extension office in Denver.

Right: just messing around.

Rocky Ford melons have come on and I saw an Olathe corn stand on the way into town today, too.

Remodelista relaunches in a couple of weeks. Meantime, there are some great reruns including links to great old posts like this: Cabin Vardehaugen, a polygonal-shaped family retreat...

Neena's is the lighting specialty shop I wish I'd found earlier in the summer's festivities.

And then there's this... HT, Mark: