War is over, if you want it

Best thing I've heard today: Gloria Allred canceled her press conference with her stunningly-attractive client, Rachel Uchitel, just as Uchitel was poised to Tell All about her "relationship" with Tiger Woods.

Scandalmongers everywhere sobbed; Gloria never lets us down. This is a first!

After the cancellation, Allred's daughter, Lisa Bloom (yes, intrepid Court-TV junkies and scandalmongers love Lisa almost as much as we love her mom), announced on several news networks that mom would never cancel a press conference, except for one reason: Mr Green has arrived.

Mr Green! Love it.

And I'd love to know what kind of Merry Christmas the Uchitel family will have this year; something tells me the presents under the tree will be first rate indeed.

~*~

More scandals! DEAD AIR can barely keep up. As Renee reported, actress Meredith Baxter has come out as gay.

I first became very interested in Baxter when she dated... David Cassidy! Yes, I kept careful track of all the Cassidy-women: Meredith, Susan Dey, Judy Strangis, Robin Millan, and his first wife, the totally fabulous Kay Lenz. Embarrassing but true.

Camille Paglia once wrote the following about Baxter, which I found rather puzzling at the time... but now, suddenly makes perfect sense:

Baxter's 1992 performance as a real-life San Diego murderess in the two parts of "The Betty Broderick Story," "A Woman Scorned" and "Her Final Fury," remains one of the most impressive pieces of work by an American actress in the last 20 years. Though I've watched rebroadcasts of that tense docudrama times without number, I still thrill with admiration at Baxter's tough energy, pinpoint vocal work and insight into both sexual relations and American character. "The Betty Broderick Story" should be required viewing at every acting school.

Um, say what?

Of course (it should go without saying!), I enjoyed the Betty Broderick mini-series as much as the next scandalmonger... but hey, Meredith Baxter isn't Meryl Streep, okay? I wondered if Paglia (with whom I share my special great love for Elizabeth) had gone off the deep-end, or was possibly in love with Baxter.

Ha! Was I right or what?

Now that we know, I am wondering if they have actually dated or possibly got real friendly on one of those hot lesbian cruises.

It's interesting that Paglia lets her emotions interfere with her critical sensibilities, although she loves to accuse feminists like Naomi Wolf of doing the same thing. Paglia is always proudly blathering that she has "a male brain"; I wonder if effusively gushing over her favorite lady-friends is what she means by that?

(giggle)

~*~

Raleigh Demonstrators against Cliffside, from October 29th demonstration. Photo courtesy of the Canary Coalition.


On a political note, Duke Energy is still attempting to destroy the Blue Ridge Mountains with a coal-burning power-plant, smack-dab in the middle of one of the most beautiful areas in the world. I have covered this previously, and the brawl continues, with protesters busted this week also.

Jeanne Brooks writes, accurately:

Although coal-burning power plants are the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., that’s not the only concern. In August, U.S. Geological Survey research tested fish in about 300 streams across the nation and found every fish contaminated with mercury.

The smoke-stack emissions of power plants are a major source of the mercury, the EPA said, along with trash burning and cement plants.

Tiny particulates, associated with heart attacks and asthma, among other medical problems, are another power plant emission.

Removing mountain tops by detonation in central Appalachian states like West Virginia and Kentucky to mine coal is an additional, and ugly, factor. The debris has ruined and buried miles of streams.

STOP CLIFFSIDE!

~*~

Pausing for unpaid commercial for the wonderful MOMMIE DOTS line by Augisa & Co. All of their vegan, cruelty-free skin-products are terrific, but this one deserves a special shout-out.

I just sent the awesome Mommie 2 Be Bellie Butta to my daughter, as her pregnant self expands. Bellie Butta is made of aloe, chamomile, lavender and organic coconut oil; highly recommended for you future-mamas out there.

~*~

Locally, the Sara Lee factory is closing and laying off 200 workers. Our warmest positive thoughts, deadhead vibes and heartfelt novenas are with all the folks losing jobs at Christmastime, which just makes me wanna cry:

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Officials with Sara Lee Corp. said 200 workers in South Carolina will lose their jobs when the company closes its bread factory in Greenville.

Sara Lee officials told the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg that they have to close the bakery in January because they lost a major customer.

Spokesman Mike Cummins said the plant makes frozen dough and bagels for the food service industry. Cummins said a few workers may be offered jobs at other plants, but the rest will get severance packages and help finding another job.

Sara Lee began operating the Greenville plant in 1984 after acquiring it from King's Hawaiian Bakery.

We are with you, folks, and wish you all the best.

~*~

And speaking of Christmas, as always, I am currently inundated with endless holiday music at my workplace. (My definitive Christmas music post is here!) However, I have noticed that John and Yoko's famous "Happy Christmas/War is Over" is pointedly NOT one of the songs being played over and over.

Hmm.

Maybe because the war isn't over?

(If you want it.)

~*~

Speaking of Christmas and capitalism, several different versions of the official DEAD AIR Christmas season kick-off tune have been yanked off YouTube already. Yes, boys and girls, The Grinch is alive and active and wants to CHEAT US OF OUR JAMS!

But I found one anyway, she snorted derisively. Listen now, before they yank this one too!

Come to think of it, they never play this one in public places either. ;)

Father Christmas - The Kinks

[via FoxyTunes / The Kinks]

Boiled peanuts, revisited!

Note: I've been getting a ton of hits on the boiled peanuts recipe (from 2008) and decided to reprint it here.

~*~

One of the greatest delicacies of the south is boiled peanuts. Now that it's football season, decided to blog the recipe.

Nothing tops sitting out in the bleachers of a high-school or college football game, county fair or concert, chomping away on these salty, delightful wonders! That's what it's all about, my friends!

I decided to use the Boiled Peanuts Recipe from What's Cooking America:

Judging from the many variations on recipes for boiled peanuts, there appears to be no wrong way to boil green [raw] peanuts. The important thing is the many tastings needed to determine when they are done. You must taste test the boiled peanuts for saltiness and firmness, as some people prefer soft nuts to firmer ones.

4 to 5 pounds green (raw) peanuts in shell
4 to 6 quarts water
1 cup plain salt (Daisy's NOTE: Some people use more. You will have to figure out what your salt-quotient is! Paula Deen recommends 1 1/2 cups of salt to 2-3 lbs green peanuts.)

Wash unshelled peanuts thoroughly in cold water until water runs clear; then soak in cool, clean water for approximately 30 minutes before cooking.

In a large pot, place soaked peanuts and cover completely with water. Add 1 cup of salt per gallon of water. Cook, covered, on high heat for 4 to 7 hours.

NOTE: the cooking time of boiled peanuts varies according to the maturity of the peanuts used and the variety of peanuts. The cooking time for a 'freshly pulled" or green peanut is shorter than for a peanut that has been stored for a time.

Boil the peanuts for about 4 hours, then taste. Taste again in 10 minutes, both for salt and texture. Keep cooking and tasting until the peanuts reach desired texture (when fully cooked, the texture of the peanut should be similar to that of a cooked dry pea or bean).

Remove from heat and drain peanuts after cooking or they will absorb salt and become over salted.

Peanuts may be eaten hot or at room temperature, or chilled in the refrigerator and eaten cold, shelling as you eat them.

Freezing boiled peanuts:
Prepare peanuts as indicated above. Drain, allow to cool, and freeze in airtight containers. They keep indefinitely.

The usual southern method is to eat them outside, where you can throw (or spit, if you're hard-core!) the empty shells on the ground.

Excellent for football Saturdays! Enjoy!

PS: This post was also inspired by Jackie's fantastic Peanut Butter post at The Vegan Diet!

Disability and Aging: A Response

Ideally, I would like to respond to this piece on the blog that originally posted it, FWD/Forward... but (sigh) I don't think that is too likely to happen.* I will instead post my reply here.

I believe the topic is extremely important (indeed, my incessant yowling may be one reason why there is a post on this topic in the first place) and I think more input, rather than less, is necessary and crucial for understanding.

~*~

FWD asked two older women to blog on the topic of disability and aging, Laurie Toby Edison and Debbie Notkin. Edison and Notkin work in publishing, are quite well-traveled, and live in what is possibly the most expensive city in the USA. I hope I don't have to make the obvious point that women with multiple published books to their credit are not typical older women; I assume they are well-educated and do not need to do hard physical work to live. For example, Edison's Wikipedia entry tells us: "Her family intended her for the academic intelligentsia." I will assume from this statement that Edison does not make her living standing on her feet all day (waitresses, nurses, retail) or doing continuous repetitive movements (factory, farm or garment workers). However, such work is the reality for most people in the world. And so, when I read the following, I get a bit confused:

We are 67 and 58, respectively, and both of us are able-bodied, and active. Not because “70 is the new 50″ but because our bodies work just fine.

And of course, this is fairly typical for women of their class, which is a very, very small percentage of the world's population. (Note: I used to type Workman's Comp claims, thousands and thousands of them, from everywhere, and I have never heard of an artsy-photographer making a Workman's Comp claim.)

My question: Why ask two older women who are proudly able-bodied to talk about disability and aging? I mean, shouldn't FWD maybe talk to women who identify as older and disabled? (This is a puzzling choice, unless it's because they don't know any other older women to ask to guest-blog, which is entirely likely.)

And let me be clear--Edison and Notkin's experience is interesting and vital, it's just that they seem to have decided that their experience is true for the remaining 95% of the world's population:

The stereotypical intersection between aging and disability is the cultural expectation that they are the same thing. Whether people are saying “After 40, it’s patch, patch, patch” or just looking surprised if a woman over 50 lifts a 50-pound box, the common assumption is that age and disability are irretrievably linked, just as youth and ability are perceived to be irretrievably linked. While 75-year-old marathon runners and charmingly fragile disabled teenagers both show up as role models, old people who walk to the grocery store and people in their young 20s who are frequently unable to leave their homes because of chronic pain are equally invisible.

[...]

These things, however, are not disabilities. Conflating age and disability is not only dishonest about the realities of aging, it is also disrespectful of the realities of disability. We can both go where we want to go, and get in to the buildings or transit vehicles when we get there. Neither of us is in the kind of pain (physical or mental) that keeps us from living able-bodied lives. To describe our minor aging issues as disabling would be to undercut and undervalue the real disabilities that people live with every day.

Minor?

In the health-supplement retail-business, it is not uncommon for me to meet working-class southerners and Latina immigrants under 30 who already have extensive job-related health problems. In fact, I don't know anyone who doesn't have these issues. My first varicose vein was at age 24. If you work hard all of your life, you will wear out. This is a GIVEN; it is a FACT. It's true for cars, for furniture, for roads, for televisions, for shoes, for umbrellas. It is equally true for people. There is simply no way you can bend a joint over and over a million times, and not have it wear out, just like your tires. After it wears out, it ceases to function, and it is... DISABLED.

Most people in the world must work hard to sustain life. I am not an exception; I am the mainstream. Therefore, most people, when they get old, have bodies that have worn out to the point of sustaining actual damage, yet they/we must function anyway, often in a great deal of pain. We are not as lucky as photographers who have published books. And hey, I don't mind if you are lucky enough to be exempt from hard work, but do not proclaim that your life is typical, when it simply is not. Your aging issues are "minor" because of the life you have been privileged enough to lead. The rest of us? Not so privileged. For most people in the world, aging is a painful process, and the process can start pretty early, depending on the kind of work they must do. (And their example is quite telling: No one looks "surprised" if I lift a 50-lb box, since I do it several times a day, every day. They look surprised on those days that I can't do it, actually.)

And so, we have older women blogging on aging and disability who start out by bragging about their good health, and then inform us that those little "minor" aging issues (!) are not important enough to be labeled disabilities. However, most working-class people around the world are not as fortunate and have always been required to do hard work.

Thus, MOST old people in the world become disabled. It is simply unavoidable.

Edison and Notkin continue:

At the same time, the stigma of aging (which is partially fear of death and partially the culture’s definition that beauty must be youthful) puts a disturbing spin on diseases and conditions which are associated with aging. If someone over 60 has mild to moderate arthritis, almost everyone (including her) will view it as evidence of her body’s degeneration and eventual demise, while if someone under 40 has mild to moderate arthritis, it will be just something she has to live with, and not evidence that she’s falling apart.

This is another deeply classist comment. I've always known I was falling apart (arthritis diagnosed at age 37), since I know that my arthritis was caused by overuse of those particular parts of my body. Most working-class people know that osteoarthritis (as opposed to rheumatoid arthritis) just comes with the territory, and fully realize it's a matter of WHEN, not IF, they should develop it. You simply can not wait tables for decades on a hard-tiled floor and not get arthritis/varicose veins/foot problems/etc.

The next time you go to a store or restaurant or Starbucks**, please be aware of the ages of the people who work there. You will notice a cut-off point (usually between 40-50) and very few visibly-old people will be employed there. What happened to them? Did they all just decide to quit? No, they WORE OUT. These jobs are ROUGH, and after a certain point, they become almost impossible. Older workers have to make the decision, at some juncture, to transition out... or apply for disability.

Edison and Notkin:

[One] of the major medical problems with aging is that people expect their aches and pains to be permanent, and thus don’t address them.

If they are due to the body wearing out, then the aches and pains ARE permanent. Degeneration of joints, tissues and organs is not reversible.

Edison and Notkin wind up:

It comes down to rejecting stereotypes: the two stereotypes of aging are the ever-increasing decrepitude and incapacity on the one hand and the cheerful, active grandparents in the Depends commercials on the other hand. Like stereotypes of disability, or of women, or of people of color, these are not true. The truth is much more layered, complicated, and different for every individual.

The truth is that most people in the world work very hard to earn a living, and for even longer hours than we work here in the USA. Immigrants tell me of their earlier lives in countries with no labor laws and no days off, ever. The Latino workers doing construction adjacent to my apartment complex, tell me of the copious "aches and pains" that they must work through, or risk deportation. The women who work in the textile mills tell me of their co-workers' first mesothelioma symptoms (often manifesting obscenely early in life)... and they worry, rightly, that they could be next.

For the working classes, aging MEANS disability. Period. They are synonymous. There is simply no way that one can work at physical labor for 5-6 decades without the body showing extensive signs of wear.

There is nothing in this world exempt from this rule.

~*~

On another note, it is thoroughly dismaying to me that a blog supposedly about feminism and disability, would bring in two older able-bodied feminists to authoritatively proclaim that aging and disability are unrelated, when for the majority of women in the world, this is not the case.(???) I can only surmise that FWD is not addressed to the majority of women in the USA or the world, and is basically directed to educated feminists of the professional-classes, a very small minority. And that's okay, but please be aware that the reality you describe (women of 58 and 67 who are relatively free of all signs of wear and tear), is not the experience of most older women in the world.

~*~

*As I said in this post, I have been banned from FWD for reasons never explained to me. I attempted to post three separate comments back on 11/18, all censored. Consequently, not bothering with that anymore.

**Starbucks seems to only hire people under 30 or so; I think it's an unwritten rule of some kind.

Wordless Wednesday: The Big Chicken

Apologies to my vegetarian/vegan readers! This is a famous landmark in Cobb County, Georgia, and this past weekend, I finally got a photo of it.

Of course, like everything else, it has it's own Wikipedia entry:

The Big Chicken is a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Marietta, Georgia, which features a 56-foot-tall (17 m) steel-sided structure designed in the appearance of a chicken rising up from the top of the building. It is located at the city's biggest intersection of Cobb Parkway (U.S. 41) and Roswell Road (former Georgia 120) and is a well-known landmark in the area.

The Big Chicken was built in 1956, and almost came down in 1993:

In January 1993, storm winds damaged the structure, and rather than tear it down KFC was forced by public outcry to re-erect the building. Among those who complained about the Big Chicken being torn down were pilots, who actually used the building as a reference point when approaching Atlanta and Dobbins Air Reserve Base.[...] The Big Chicken is commonly used as a landmark for driving directions. Locals will often include "make a [turn] at the Big Chicken", or "it's about X miles past the Big Chicken". Even prior to its geographic coordinates being added to Wikipedia, it was automatically marked on Google Maps.

It has also led to a small cottage industry of sorts, selling souvenirs emblazoned with the monument, including one sweatshirt showing Big Ben in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome, and of course, the Big Chicken in Marietta.

My next goal is to get me one of those shirts! :)

Can I ask for my vote back, Mr President?

Tonight, as President Barack Obama makes a mockery of his Nobel Peace Prize and decides to escalate the Afghanistan War, I take formal leave of the Democratic Party.

I am now, officially, out the door.

I am also reminded of Lyndon Johnson's famous speech defending our similar cranked-up intervention in that Southeast Asian debacle so very long ago... Deja Vu all over again.

I regret my vote already. I should never have trusted.

And I can't do any better than Keith Olbermann on MSNBC last night, addressing the president personally:

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton's hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

Text of Olbermann's entire commentary (with video) here.

More:

Where's that Endgame he promised us? (Huffington Post)

President Obama 'accelerates' 30,000 troops to Afghanistan (Politico)

Democrats Campaign Against Obama's Afghan Plan (The Nation)

Obama Approves More Troops for Afghanistan (CBS News)

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) compares Afghanistan troop increase to Vietnam (Politico)

I am sick over this, and very, very disappointed.

Your thoughts?