Month: July 2011

Bending Nature to Our Will

So if you were to, say, go to Google Images and put in the word “square” you’ll end up with a screen full of images of this:





Square watermelons.

Why, you might ask? Well. The story goes that in Japan (you knew this had to be from Japan, right?) they don’t have much retail space in grocery stores. It’s hard to stock round or oblong watermelons because they are tough to stack and take up a lot of room.

Use a little ingenuity and bring on the square watermelon! Easy to stack, easy to store.

Making the melons square is fairly easy, just put the fruit in a box as it grows, the same way they get a pear in a bottle of brandy.





And for this special hand boxed hand-picked fruit, grocers charge 10,000 yen, or using today’s exchange rate, about $126. Yikes.

Why am I nattering on about square watermelons? Because today’s Theme Thursday just happens to be “square”, of course!




Details from BBC News.


Photos from all over the web, but these both come from Financial Hack.


A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

“But I have to tell you, when we were driving home, we were on some highway in Utah? That highway goes on forever! We were getting scared. The towns are like fifty miles apart!”

— my coworker talking about her family’s summer vacation to Bryce and Zion canyons in Utah.

So she said that and I laughed. A lot. Loudly.

She looked very offended. “It’s not funny, we were totally freaked out!”

Ah. That’s so cute. City kids. How utterly charming. I should know, I married one.

Speaking of the one I married, when we made the drive from Las Cruces to Albuquerque in the month of October a few years back, he was very adamant that we had to pack in quite a bit of water before we drove. Now, he’s not wrong. It’s just good thinking.

He also wanted blankets, flashlights and a first aid kit. We were venturing out into the desert and by god like the Boy Scout he used to be, we were going in prepared.

Again, nothing wrong with that. All very fair.

Except I used to drive that same 200 miles in the dead heat of August in a rickety old Mercury Bobcat with too many miles, not enough metal and every single little possession that I could cram inside. Well, everything except water, blankets and a flashlight.

I guess when you’re raised where towns are fifty miles (or a lot more) apart, these things don’t worry you.

Sure, one Thanksgiving I was driving back from Deming to Albuquerque and got caught in a really heavy snowstorm. So I got off the highway to a state road, put my Jeep in four wheel drive and drove slowly to the ranch home located at the bottom of Nogal Canyon. My friend’s folks live there and they took me in, gave me a hot meal and we played cards all night.

Once, south of El Paso, I got caught in a terrible rain and hail storm. So I pulled over to the side, listened to the radio and read a book.

Then there was the time I made the ride to Silver City in July and had to turn off the A/C and turn on the heater since my engine was starting to overheat as I climbed the hill in my very weak Dodge Shadow (now known as a Neon). I was a puddle of sweat by the time I got there, but it was nothing that a Route 44 from Sonic couldn’t cure.

Oddly enough, even on all the blisteringly hot days I hit the endless highways of New Mexico, I never broke down, never lost a tire, never had a reason to need a gallon of water and a blanket.

In February my best good friend drove me and my two godkids out to the Spaceport in Upham. We spent an hour or more on dirt roads with only cows to accompany us. I didn’t get worried. I didn’t get scared. What I did is feel calm. Really, really calm. Being where the eye can’t see another human (other than the people you chose to be with) is a very happy place for me.

So I apologized to my city friend. Then I advised she’s allowed to laugh at me when I slip off my nut over getting lost (again!) in San Francisco, and then I go the wrong way on that one section of California Ave while everyone honks and yells, and WHY IN THE $%^# can’t I make a left turn to get off Market Street!

It’s all about where you’re from, I guess.



The view from Upham. It’s a happy place.


Photo by Karen Fayeth, copyright 2010, and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right hand column of this page.


For the Love of a Good Cuppa

This year The Good Man and I had the chance to celebrate the Fourth of July with some good friends. There were six of us total (three couples), and we met at our friend’s house for a special treat.

One of our crew had just recently returned from a trip to Ethiopia. She and her husband are in process of adopting an adorable baby boy and she had to make a visit to work through the paperwork with the local courts.

While in country visiting her baby son and patiently working though the long process, she was treated on several occasions to the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

On our Fourth of July holiday, she wanted to share this ceremony with us, her friends.

About the coffee ceremony, here’s a quote from Ethiopian ambassador Haile-Giros Gessesse:


“Coffee has social value in our society. It is deep rooted in our culture. The coffee ceremony in local areas is used mainly for social gatherings. In the mornings and evenings parents, especially mothers gather together for a coffee ceremony and also use it as a platform for exchanging information in their surroundings. It is a means of communication. When people sit down they usually spend three hours finalizing the ceremony, starting with the preparation, and then roasting to brewing it.”

Our friend had hauled home a big bag of green coffee beans, water hulled (the good stuff) not fire hulled, and we sat outside in the beautiful sun while she told us about the ceremony.

First, she roasted the beans on the grill. We watched as she shook and swirled the pan, much like a slow Jiffy pop motion.

When we all agreed that it looked like the beans were at a good medium roast we all took in a whiff of the fantastic aroma from the pan.

We then took turns using a mortar and pestle to smash the beans down to a nice grind.

It was satisfying work to smash, smash, smash those crispy beans and release the beautiful scent and oils.

The grinds were then put into a French press and once brewed, a round of coffee was poured into six cups.

Yuuuummmm! It had a floral aroma and tasted so light and delicious. So amazing with just a touch of sugar and nothing else.

In keeping with tradition, we had three rounds of coffee while we discussed our lives, the news of the day, baseball, and got caught up with each other. This is part of the ceremony, the community, the support, the friendship.

Now, I love a great cup of coffee, but I rarely drink caffeinated coffee. After three cups I was ready to clean my house top to bottom, jog a thousand miles, and throw a 98mph fastball.

But it was a happy caffeinated high.

I was honored to be a part of the ceremony and I can hardly wait until our friends bring home their baby boy. I hope to we can continue to give him a sense of community and family…maybe even over a cuppa or two…or three.





Photo and quote from a CRIEnglish.com article by Wei Tong.


It’s an 80’s Kind of Thing

Last week the world witnessed what has now become something of a commonplace event, the launching of another Space Shuttle.

Despite the rather aging and ailing technology used to get the shuttle off the ground, it’s sort of amazing how well that ship has flown over the years. Yes, really well, even considering the two terrible tragedies of the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.

As the shuttle Atlantis lifted off on July 7, I couldn’t help but be both proud and sad. Proud that another shuttle successfully made it to orbit. Sad that it’s the last shuttle to fly.

As a kid from the 80’s, the Space Shuttle program was something of magic and dreams and technology and good ol’ American pride. I loved to watch each and every launch and applauded as that little dot disappeared into the endless blue. Then several days later it would appear again and our astronauts would come home and by god, we did it again!

Remember when the shuttle landed in New Mexico’s own White Sands in 1982? I sure do. That was a good day, seeing my home state on the big stage. We got the shuttle and got ‘er home safe too!

Sadly, over time and two tragedies and budget cuts and over-administration, the proud NASA tradition has faltered, yielding way to private space programs and astronauts hitching rides with other countries who have the time and money to keep a space program running.

It’s the end of an era which makes me more than a little wistful.

Here’s wishing the crew of the final Atlantis flight an easy, uneventful flight home.



The first shuttle launch, a ship called Columbia, in 1981.




Reuters/NASA photo from The Atlantic Monthly.


Round and Round

And the wheel goes round and round.
And the flame in our souls will never burn out.

– From “The Wheel” by Rosanne Cash

Round and round
What comes around goes around
I’ll tell you why

– From Round and Round, performed by Ratt


Yeah a little wide divergence in my choice of artists, but I’m trying to make a point.

A little hard to make a point in the middle of a blog post about round, eh?

Ba-dum-dum-*crash*

The point is, this concept of circular, round, spherical, wheel of fortune, karma, changing seasons, the big wheel keeps on turning is something that has intrigued artists, poets, philosophers and musicians for centuries.

So when yesterday’s Theme Thursday listed this week’s theme as round, well…I knew I’d surely have something to say about that.

Yup. Something deep. Meaningful. Profound.

Unh-huh.

Sure enough.

Profound.

Meaningful.

Insightful.

Right here. On this very blog.

Only…I got nothing.

I mean, I have ideas. A round of drinks, a round of golf, singing in rounds, that epic wheel of fate spinning round, the wheels on the bus go round and round, I ate too much and now I feel round, the earth is flat, no it’s round.

Sure. Plenty of ideas but nothing to say.

The minute hand travels around the clock. Hours days weeks months years pass by. It’s Friday again, the winter of my week. Time to look back on what I did, what I didn’t do and find a way to go dormant over the weekend. I need energy to fight the dragons when the wheel clicks ’round and it’s Monday again.

For the moment, the best I have to say about the word round is that it happens to be the shape of the cookie I’m about to ingest. While I munch, I will think about the meaning of life and the role chocolate chips have played in history.







Photo by kasey albano and used royalty free from stock.xchng.