The Broad View

Smile, everyone — it's 2009!

Happy New Year! And not a moment too soon.

We're updating our blogroll, sort of

For some time now I've wanted to re-organize our blogroll and today was the day to get started. However, Blogrolling is still undergoing its transition to ver. 2, so there's no editing available there.

This means I'm doing the lists item by item, in TypePad templates. (And to think — I could be cleaning out the garage or raking the lawn instead.)

Frankly, the point of this exercise is to make it easier for me to plow through the sites and sources I prefer, from one surface rather than via long lists of bookmarks. I hope you, too, will find the result a handy tool.

When well-intentioned folks go off the rails

Meet Sally. She's actually a salmon dressed up with cat ears and whiskers, but for the good folks at PETA she's my "sea kitty." I just created her at their "Save the Sea Kittens" website.

PETA, you see, wants the Department of Fish and Wildlife to stop promoting recreational fishing. Yes, you read that right. F&W's mandate, PETA says, is to protect fish, not to encourage an activity that causes them pain -- which I do not doubt they suffer when their mouths are pierced by an angler's hook.

But no one would ever purposely harm a kitty-cat, PETA says, so (borrowing a page from Lakoff?), when Mom or Dad suggests we take our rods and reels and waders and head down to the river 'cause the trout are running, they want us not to think of a fish but to think of a kitten and run screaming from our sadistic parent -- who knows, maybe even turn said parent in to the authorities for animal abuse.

Look, I'm as much a booster of free-range chickens and meadow-raised cows as the next gal. But one of the things that's been drilled into our heads by New Age foodies is to eat line-caught salmon, say, rather than the farmed kind; and it's also been drilled into our heads that fish is good for us, and we should eat plenty of it.

What, oh what, is one to do? Nothing for it, I guess, but to pray to my pagan god of the waters for guidance. And to make sure the neighbor's cat doesn't dip into my goldfish bowl.

Allegiance

I guess I've pretty much always known Left from Right.

When I was in kindergarten, at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the teacher decided out loud that I was the smartest kid in the class and gave me a job. I was to go around the semi-circle we formed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and correct anyone who had messed up putting the right hand over the heart. From time to time I did have to help some of my classmates make an adjustment, and this did not endear me to the humiliated objects of my attention. Being the smartest kid in the class is never a path to popularity among one's peers, and they only reluctantly tapped me when it came time to choose up sides for games in the playground. Eventually the teacher recognized her error and withdrew my mandate. Of course it was too late.

Funny thing about the Pledge back then. It did not include the words "under God." It went straight from "one nation" to "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Did you know that it was only in 1954 that "under God" was added, by an act of Congress signed by President Eisenhower? The argument at the time was that the phrase echoed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It was FDR, by the way, who instituted the hand-over-heart business -- in 1942.

Most people probably think that the way things are is the way they've always been. But they haven't and it's not. So there.

Kinky doings in the hinterland

Hmmm. Too much information?

Police Arrest Mich. Man For Car Wash Vacuum Sex

It really is the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

No one can remain immersed 24/7 in politics and economic Armageddon. I want to think about something happy today and one of the happiest thoughts in October is of Pumpkins.

The very word "pumpkin" is delightful. "Pump-" is so close to "plump" and "dumpling." The "-kin" is a cosy, endearing suffix, like Squirrel Nutkin. Pumpkin is from the Greek, "pepon", for large melon.

In my neighborhood, pumpkins lined up on porch steps are the first harbinger of Halloween. I love the ritual of carving the jack-o'-lanterns on Halloween morning and being impatient for dark and finally lighting them. These days I use battery-powered lights for safety, but I miss the smell of scorched pumpkin with real candles.

Baking a pumpkin pie can be easy as pie if you use canned puree or labor intensive if you start with a whole cheese pumpkin, one of the recommended varieties for pie-making. Google "pumpkin pie recipe" and choose from thousands. Every pumpkin recipe I've tried has been good, with the exception of a dreadful pumpkin cheesecake one Thanksgiving.

Pumpkins naturally signify the harvest's bounty. The large, heavy fruit are so richly colored, so substantial that they inspire Giant Pumpkin Contests at country fairs everywhere. Imagine spending an entire growing season coddling one mutant plant that grows more gargantuan by the hour until you need a forklift and a semi to transport the monster. A gallery of giant pumpkins is what inspired this post. Here is the contender for this year's record-breaker. At the time it was photographed, it weighed 1,878 lbs. with a circumference of 198 inches. It's growing at the rate of 11 lbs. per day. Now that's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

What Sarah Palin might look like if she were a Democrat

Gorgeous? Check. Designer glasses? Check. But...

I know quite well the young woman pictured in the ad and I can tell you this. She has spent a good deal of time abroad. She was brought up in a relatively affluent family in New York, where she was educated at private schools. She's a graduate of Cornell University. She's been a small-business owner and now has a managerial role in a publicly traded company that specializes in high-end home furnishings. She's as witty, as chic, as sophisticated, as cosmopolitan -- and as liberal -- as they come. And I have no doubt that she'd more than hold her own in a conversation with Katie Couric, or Joe Biden, or just about anyone else for that matter.

She does have one ability that might appeal to Palin's fan club. Some years ago, taking advantage of one of the enrichment experiences her parents were pleased to be able to offer her, she went on an Outward Bound adventure to the deep North -- in the course of which she learned to track moose by following their scat.

Did I fail to mention that she's my daughter? :-)

Baffoon

I don't know whether it was 1) a typo, 2) bad spelling or 3) a creative construction, but a commenter on this Floyd Norris post on his New York Times blog makes reference to our leaders as "uneducated baffoons." Since the writer also says "looser" when he means "loser" I'd have to go with 1) or 2), and if really pressed I'd say 2) -- because more and more on the web I see writers trying (without success) to spell words they have learned from listening, not reading.

Be that as it may, baffoon is, after all, a perfect meld of "buffoon" and "baboon" and as such I do believe it should take its place, proudly, in our political lexicon.

The rich are different from you and me

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

---F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Rich Boy,” 1926

The Swiss clockmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre is coming out with a watch with a touchscreen face. You press between the numerals 3 and 4 to lock your car, 8 and 9 to unlock it. That is, if your car is an Aston Martin DBS.

The watch is to be offered at $37,900 a pop, a mere trifle considering the $350,000 pricetag for the two-seater car.

Wonder if there's a market for the timekeeper-cum-car key trinket? Well, according to the Bloomberg article that introduced me to this marvel:

Sales of high-end models have shown the most resilience as demand for Swiss watches has slowed this year. Exports of timepieces costing more than 3,000 Swiss francs ($2,767) rose 15 percent in August after gains topped 20 percent in the previous five months.

Aston-Martin, just in case you didn't know, is owned by a consortium of Kuwaiti investment companies.

Isn't only one maid's room a little skimpy?

And not only that, for $40 million it's not even on a high floor (that's what "tree-top views" means in New York real estate-speak)...

...thus not all that desirable after all. Too bad!