Author Archives: Tata

Nights Are Getting Strange

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May 11th would have been Dad’s 69th birthday. A few weeks ago, Dad’s third wife Darla agreed to take her camera and wander the shores of Lake Ontario where she lives. She has a keen eye for the absurd and often sends pictures of her cats on safari and houses losing their land masses. Yesterday, Darla sent pictures of her floral friends, and the timing couldn’t have been better for me, since this week only foliage has seemed sane.

Via Rikyrah at Jack & Jill Politics, we find a statement wrong on so many – oh, just read it already:

Marco Rubio says deport all the immigrants

That’s child of Cuban immigrants Marco Rubio, and he kept talking.

Rubio explained that he is against letting illegals become legal:

Rubio also rejected the notion of a “path to citizenship” or “amnesty,” despite “the human stories.”

“There are going to be stories of very young kids that were brought to this country at a very young age who don’t even speak Spanish that are going to be sent back to Nicaragua or some other place. And it’s gonna feel weird and I understand that,” he said, suggesting that those hardships would be a price worth paying.

Hah! That’s a quote from Marco Rubio, son of Cuban refugees. Cubans were, for decades, welcome to settle in America without visas or papers or anything, and they are still allowed to enter the the U.S. via Mexico without fear of being deported.

But Nicaraguans? Ugh, no. Marco Rubio says GO HOME.

What the fuck does that mean? Those kids pay a price and it’s worth it – to whom?

Violets and forget-me-nots on a Canadian lawn contribute more to the world than selfish pricks like Marco Rubio. Here’s hoping Rubio finds himself asking for directions in Arizona, because in Maricopa County, Rubio’s just another brown man on the border. Those hardships would absolutely be a price worth paying.

You Fell Into the Water And Down

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When Martin Yan famously declares that if he can cook you can, too, he is adorably full of shit. Now, when I tell you something is so easy you can do it, you should laugh, “Oh look, doofus has spoken.”

I hate crowds.

Okay okay okay the bag of masa for tamales says MASA PARA TAMALES on it, and you should buy and use that one only. It has directions on the side, which is good even for people like me who can’t follow recipes to save their lives. The directions call for lard. I infused olive oil with annatto seeds. The directions call for salt as the only seasoning. I added ground cumin, fennel seed, chili powder. The directions call for water or stock. I used fancypants organic chicken broth. I had that. I’m not ashamed to admit it. It tastes good.

Mise en place.

Once you mix up the masa, you have to let it sit for a few minutes. You will be tempted to skip this step because HEY! DELICIOUS TAMALES! but don’t. File your nails. Call Dial-A-Horoscope. Lament not going to the prom. Or you could take out your frozen banana leaves and cut approximately 8″ x 8″ square pieces and an equal number of thin strips. Plop about 1/3-1/2 cup of masa on the top sheet. Pretty, eh? Already, you feel like aces.

Masa, chicken, pepper strips.

Tamales are super great for using up small amounts of leftovers. I diced two chicken thighs, added a bit of leftover gravy and tossed in some chili powder, herbs and pepper. In the back of the fridge, I found two pepper hulls left in an aging jar and because I put vegetables in everything, I sliced ’em up all cute. The colors are really something, aren’t they?

More masa.

On top of your colorful concoction, plop another bit of masa. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Now, imagine the banana leaf is aluminum foil with a spine along one edge. You’re going to fold the banana leaf the same way you would any food pouch-thingy. Take the spine in one hand, match it with the opposite edge and fold down to the surface of the masa. Then take the loose, rolled ends and fold them under.

The bow is showing off.

You can either place the package into a steamer as-is or tie the whole thing securely with a thin strip of banana leaf. I’ve made them with and without the ties and it’s fine either way. These little bundles smell good and feel heavy in the hand. In the proportions I make them one, maybe two, will be sufficient for dinner. Knowing that, when you see eight or nine in a steamer basket, you feel good.

It's like a steamer full of chickeny luuuuuv.

Steam for an hour. Yes, an hour. Argue with your mother. Wash your car. Call your insurance company about that last bill. Or you can set the table, make a salad, clean up your kitchen and make it all look easy. After an hour, put the tamales on a plate and serve them. Because we are brave and love delicious everything, you can serve it with plain yogurt or salsa or hoisin sauce or sliced mangoes or guacamole or crumbled queso fresco or cole slaw or ANYTHING YOU LOVE. I regret all the years I didn’t know I could make tamales for myself. You must try it. The hardest part was finding the right masa mix, but after I found it, the rest was easy and really inexpensive. If I can do it, you can, too!

Through the Streets While Everyone Sleeps

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Cats: dangly.

These pictures were in a little folder from the first months Pete and I were seeing each other, when Topaz perched on the highest surfaces she could find and played Bagheera. The kittens loved the wooden ladder as a scratching post and indoor tree, which I had forgotten until I saw these pictures again. What possessed me to put that ladder in the basement where the pussycats cannot climb it and fly through the air?

Cats: kitteny.

I don’t believe in God, but I see ghosts. I don’t believe people are inherently good, but almost everyone deserves a second chance. This week, I decided I firmly believe that good people work for the common good and people who work against that common good are not just apolitical or differently motivated or whatever euphemism you please, but actually bad people. As starter beliefs go in this corrupt and deeply selfish time, it’s not going to make me a lot of friends who aren’t covered with fur, but there my popularity is wildly secure.

Topaz: panthery.

Look, I do three stupid things before breakfast and the day I don’t shoot my mouth off has not yet come, so I’m far from a paragon of any virtue but the easy kind, but I am saying we all have to do better. The disastrous gas and oil leak in the Gulf is weeks from being capped and already our representatives are saying no energy bill will make it through Congress with or without expanded offshore drilling – which is to say no energy bill will pass without offshore drilling, because the Democrats will cave to their corporate masters before we have even assessed the spill’s true damage to our planet. That is not good enough.

Cat: radioactive.

Sweetpea, who has become a fourteen pound handful, developed a new habit last week: while I am eating dinner, she leaps on the table’s other end and sits next to my water glass. She wants nothing more than my undivided attention, so I bump foreheads with her. In the Pussycat Lexicon, this means we love each other. You’ve seen lions bump foreheads affectionately on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I’m scared of lions, and I want to finish my dinner.

Drusy: curiousy.

Today’s WikiHow was How To Thicken Soup. Perhaps it is because I am 900 years old, an age at which smokin’ hotness assumes new meaning, that simple solutions to common problems appeal to me. Children, I say, toss a couple of starchy diced potatoes into that watery soup and simmer. Or make a slurry by adding a few tablespoons of cold water to a few teaspoons of cornstarch, stir, then simmer in your soup. Or get some arrowroot and follow directions on the package. Or start with a roux in the first place and what’s the matter with you? You’re grounded.

Topaz: shiny.

Last summer, a friend asked how we would find each other in a convention center in Pittsburgh. Obviously, I said, you’ll listen for me to Wimoweh at the top of my lungs and follow the sound of people calling for Security. I didn’t end up in Pittsburgh, but it turns out I’d Wimowehed in public before. Sweetpea licks my hand, testing me for doneness and unsatisfied with the results.

That A Woman Can Be Tough

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Where's Panky? You cannot see him!

David Dayen spills some very bad news:

Understand what we have here. There’s a fiscal commission operating partially in secret, without transcripts or recordings, planning to drop recommendations on Congress in the middle of a lame-duck session, with each leader in the House and Senate promising a vote on the recommendations. Unlike the Conrad-Gregg commission upon which this was modeled, the executive order on the fiscal commission does not mandate a super-majority requirement in each chamber of Congress for passage. It does mandate the need for agreement from 14 of the 18 commission members for passage of any recommendation, but the commission is stacked with people who want to target entitlement spending rather than any balanced proposal.

Even those supposedly defending bedrock programs like Social Security and Medicare on the commission, like the SEIU’s Andy Stern, have expressed a desire to at least open the retirement program to add-on private stock accounts:

“I agree with many Commissioners who have said that all entitlement programs should be on the table. We should include tax entitlements in that conversation… This Commission should examine our country’s entire retirement security system, private and public. Taxpayer dollars are spent in a multitude of ways, not just on Social Security, with the aim of producing retirement security. Yet, many Americans retire with anything but security. We should include as part of our agenda ideas for strengthening the private parts of the retirement security system, reviewing both the adequacy and the solvency of the Social Security system, and the possibility of universal add-on retirement accounts.

Add-on private accounts are an idea direct from the DLC in the late 1990s, when Bruce Reed, who co-wrote a domestic policy book with Rahm Emanuel, was involved with the group.

We have a commission pre-disposed to those types of ideas, operating partially in secret, foisting recommendations on Congress in December, without a super-majority obstacle to overcome in the House or the Senate (although the filibuster would presumably still be in play should a Democrat actually want to protect people from safety net cuts).

An House aide told me that the commission is deliberately trying to “keep the public from weighing in until the last possible moment.” They aren’t delivering public hearings outside of Washington, claiming that they don’t have a budget, but that could be deliberate as well, because it allows them to have billionaire hedge fund manager Pete Peterson provide the commission with staff and fold the conversation into his deficit mania “America Speaks” tour. It’s quite a public/private partnership going on.

Privatization of Social Security and Medicare – or trusting Wall Street with healthcare and pensions -is as brilliant an idea as trusting Halliburton and BP with an entire coastline. How stupid do you have to be not to get that?

Go On Shining, Shining Like Brand New

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Somewhere, a ceramic spider is out of a job.

Today, Pete and I arrived at the garden center as the clouds burst and torrential rain sent huge carts of flowers sailing across the parking lot. Pete chased one down as I pushed a cart back onto a sidewalk. Hollow-eyed employees, hair dripping onto their faces, apologized to us. When I smiled, they did not smile back. We wondered what’d just happened as rain pounded the canvas roof. We stared around and stared at each other for a few minutes before remembering why we’d come: window boxes and containers. Our space is very limited. We make the most of it with containers we can move from place to place, plant and re-plant, and I’d run out of containers that fit into the window box frames. On a lark, we picked up two strawberry plants we hope won’t join the Choir Invisible like their predecessors, which we refer to as mulch. One of Pete’s clients gave him two odd urns. When the skies cleared this evening, I transplanted the strawberries into the urns and placed them on our front steps.

Later this week, it’ll be time to start the second set of seeds for lettuces, chard, spinach, sorrel and herbs for when the first set has been picked, bolted or suffered some disaster. You can’t rule out incursions by groundhogs or mysterious blight, so: containers, compost, potting soil, seeds. I growl at squirrels.

Because the Night Belongs

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I bet it sounds like the ocean.

This morning, I opened every window and dodged cats scrambling for prime positions from which to Why-I-Oughta snickering squirrels. We took our coffees and sat on the porch. The air was still. Sunlight dappled the lawns. For the first time in months, I was warm enough without footie pajamas, a slanky and ear muffs. Two loads of laundry dried on the line. Tomorrow, we install window boxes, lettuces in containers, a summer state of mind.

If This Land’s Still Made

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How big a fucking bottle of Dawn will it take to wash away “an event of national significance?”

Answer: a bottle the size of Australia.

Here’s what’s being done to capture the oil:

Chemical dispersants: About 100,000 gallons of chemical dispersant has been dropped from the air into the Gulf, where it breaks up the oil slick into smaller droplets. The droplets then get mixed into the water, where they are subjected to ocean currents and natural degradation processes, according to the Minerals Management Service (MMS). “This potentially exposes the water column and near shore shallow bottom-dwelling organisms to oil,” according to MMS.

Soapy soap soap.

Skimmers: Once broken up, skimming vessels come in and collect what’s left. The droplets are collected in drums and some of that material gets cleaned and recycled. The rest is “properly disposed,” Mendenhall said. But skimmers can only capture about 10 percent of the volume of spilled oil, according to Charlie Henry of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Controlled burn: On Wednesday, BP and the Coast Guard, along with other agencies, conducted an in-situ burn in which they used a fireproof boom to corral dense parts of the oil spill, moving it to another location and then burning it.

Soapy!

In general, burning is probably the most effective method for cleaning up heavy oil like that leaking in the Gulf, according to said Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University. But it has drawbacks. When you burn near the coast, you have to destroy wildlife, and offshore burning is harder to do.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do, this is trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t work,” Overton said. And news reports suggest since the oil is really an oil-water mix, burning actually might not do the trick.

Collection domes: BP has also started to put together a subsea oil collection system, and when used will be the first time this shallow-water technology has been adapted for the deep water. The oil leaks in the Gulf are nearly a mile down. It is expected to be ready for deployment within the next four weeks, according to BP.

When ready, here’s how the oil-spill technology would work: The dome would be placed on the seabed to capture the leaking oil. This oil would then be pumped up to surface vessels that could collect the oil and take it away. Similar systems have been used in shallow water, but never at depth of 5,000 feet. The Coast Guard has said the construction could take two to four weeks.

New method: However, Thursday afternoon officials said they might try an experimental oil-dispersal method that would involve releasing chemicals from under the water. “We were notified that this technique might be more effective in spreading the dispersant at the source on the riser than by using aircraft to spread it on the sea,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s Chief Operating Officer.

Soap

Leftover oil

As for what happens to the “dispersed oil,” that doesn’t get skimmed off or burned off or otherwise collected, “We’re told it disperses naturally. It eventually breaks up and evaporates. There are different ways, but we’re told it just kind of goes away,” U.S. Coast Guard’s Mendenhall said.

Bacteria can also help degrade most components of oil.

Soapy soap.

But not all oils are created equally. At first, reports suggested the oil leaking into the Gulf was standard Louisiana crude oil, a type of oil that biodegrades pretty well, Overton said. But sample testing revealed that the leaking oil was a different type, one that contains a very high concentration of components that don’t degrade easily, called asphaltenes, according to Overton. He estimates that the concentration of these asphaltic components could be as high as 50 percent in this oil spill, while in other types of crude oil it might be as low as 1 or 2 percent.

“That is bad, bad news, because this oil is going to be very slow to degrade,” Overton said today.

Soapy soapy soap soap soap.

Some of the oil sinks to the sea bottom, where it can get buried into an anaerobic zone where there’s no oxygen. Oil in these zones stays in a chemically reduced form and doesn’t degrade as much, Overton said. But, he added, there’s not much life down there to be contaminated.

The oil slick could reach the Mississippi Delta coast as early as Friday, so at least some oil will hit shore. A satellite image of the slick taken Thursday showed it was almost touching the delta.

Image: NASA/Terra

There Is No Other Troy

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When I left my house this morning, it was a cold spring day. Two miles later, it was winter again as I hiked from the parking deck to the library. I was only dressed for one season, and underdressed without a Sherpa.

Plastic slipcover filled with lettuce sprouts, occasional Italians.

A weekend or two ago, Pete took this picture on a warm, sunny morning before we experienced daily variations on raw, with spotty raw, followed by cold, wet, windy and – you guessed it – raw. Over the weekend, we’d planned to get up early, don silly outfits and pedal around our hometown in support of the local food bank, but the idea of giving ourselves pneumonia for charity lacked a certain broad appeal. You will be pleased to know we were wracked with guilt as we ate really delicious bagels in our cozy dining room instead.

But there is a time for everything, though some things like spring and understanding for Sinead O’Connor take longer to arrive than one might hope. Sinead was always right: the Church hierarchy was covering up the abuse of children. This week, she returned to American television with the story no one wanted to hear 20 years ago, and now, we must listen.

[T]he Vatican is – it‘s a 15th century organization. It‘s a medieval organization. And what we‘re seeing is the battle between medieval thinking and 21st century thinking.

If they want to survive into the 21st century, they‘re going to have to become a 21st century business, which means that they are, first of all, those who have brought the Holy Spirit and Catholicism into total disrepute should be fired.

Whoever was involved in the cover-up of child abuse and therefore endangering children should be fired. The pope should be fired or should stand down. There should be a criminal investigation of the Vatican and of the pope.

They should all get out and let us in the 21st century choose who we think is fit to run our church because it is ours. It‘s not theirs. It shouldn‘t be any more of this black smoke, white smoke nonsense, you know, it‘s them and us.

It‘s our church. We need to reclaim it and we need to have it run by people who actually believe in God.

This is the person American Catholics punished?

Yes, yes it was. Her career was destroyed, and she will never trust us again, but even that is not important.

[O]n behalf of all the Irish survivors, they and I and anyone involved in the campaign is so, so grateful to the American media. Because, you know, you all have leapt in just at the right moment.

After Pope Benedict‘s letter came – that‘s why I then wrote to the “Washington Post.” I was disgusted by this letter, which actually referred to the priests, the bishops who covered up as being a “well-intentioned” desire to protect the church.

What on earth was well-intentioned about it? The letters are a study in the art of lying. It suggests that the Irish hierarchy were acting independently of the Vatican.

The letter and their actions have not punished at all those people who were accomplices by silence to the crime of child abuse. None of them have been fired. It looks very bad that the pope hasn‘t fired all of them and said, “How dare you bring us into disrepute.”

That looks like the house of the Holy Spirit has become a haven for moral criminals. But as I say, just at the right moment, America stepped in, the “New York Times” piece. “Boston Globe” also stepped in.

And now, a lot of the victims – I was just sitting with some of them this morning. They were saying, you know, almost with tears in their eyes, sitting back, saying, “We‘ve waited 40 years now, trying to bang the door down here. And now, we can sit down and relax because the American media have taken it on board.”

And it‘s their baby now for want of a better – pardon the pun, you know. But we‘re enormously grateful in Ireland for what the American media are doing because we know the Americans don‘t take any nonsense and they don‘t take any prisoners.

And there‘s no way the Vatican are going to get off the hook now that the Americans are after you. So thank you very much.

The Phoenix rises from the flame. And we will learn.