Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
Seasonal happenings
The first snow and winter storm of Winter 2019 finally arrive the second Saturday of January. In my experience, that’s a delay of nearly ten days from when we usually have snow or a winter storm or if nothing else bitter cold below zero temperatures and wind chills. The snow we received was wet and heavy, perfect for making a snowman but not so great for my back when I went out to shovel the driveway.
Almost two weeks into the new year and we finally saw some snow. So, I spent the entire weekend doing indoor activities (except for that one time I went out and shoveled the heavy wet perfect-for-snowman-making white stuff off of my driveway). Oh, and I did have to make a trip to the grocery store Sunday morning to pickup some missing ingredient items for the calzones I planned to make that afternoon.
The recipe I worked from can be found on page 186 of my favorite bread cookbook: The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. But you can find an online version of it at the King Arthur Flour website here: Calzone
The dough part of the recipe is actually found on page 176 and is called “Hearth Bread Pizza.” I use half of that recipe every time I make home-made pizza crust. This time I did the whole recipe, all six cups of flour, and opted to use my Kitchen-aid mixer with a dough hook until I got beyond the five cup range. I also did a full rise, not the no-rise option, which I usually do for thin crust pizza dough. Continue reading “Recipe Review: Calzones (4 stars)”
On any given Sunday, you’ll find me awake before sunrise. Old, very old, habits die-hard. I embrace being a morning person. Only causes an issue when I want to toast in the new year since I generally turn into a pumpkin around nine o’clock. Today was no different from any other weekend.
Yesterday was Twelfth Night, the official end to the Christmas season. When Dickens was a youth, Twelfth Night was ‘THE’ biggest day of the winter holiday in England. Between his Christmas Carol and Prince Albert’s importation of German Christmas traditions (namely the Christmas tree), Twelfth Night began to fade out of fashion during Dickens and Queen Victoria’s lifetimes.
I did not stay up late celebrating or hosting a Twelfth Night party. I had servers to upgrade and test bright and early on January 6th, also known as Epiphany.
I woke up before my alarm (I almost always do this; my alarm only woke me up once in the last six months) and got logged in and ready to upgrade a server. It went much smoother than the last time I tried, right before Christmas, and I was done within 20 minutes (leaving an hour forty minutes of my maintenance window unused). Server patch testing took another fifteen minutes so I was done ‘working’ before seven o’clock, still before sunrise.
Most Saturdays you can find me hanging out at my local library over the lunch hour. While it’s true I do devour books, I curb my appetite so that my favorite hard-working librarians can grab a bite to eat and catch up on their reading. I’ve been volunteering for four or five years now and I look forward to those two or three hours spent helping patrons find their next great book or movie.
Today, within five minutes of getting started at the circulation desk for the first half of my shift, a mother and a cute girl with a rainbow of flowers in her hair arrived to collect her gift basket. The girl had won one the baking basket, one of eight gift baskets donated as prizes for the winter reading program. I overheard one of the librarians mention that collectively adults and children read over two thousand books this winter. I only contributed twenty-two to that total.
Long winter nights.
Crisp clear skies.
Denser colder atmosphere.
These are a few of my favorite things during the winter months and they add up to darker skies and brighter stars. This weekend also has a few things going for it, astronomically, and also happens to be Twelfth Night (tomorrow, January 5th) and Epiphany (the day after) commemorating the journey of the Three Wise Men guided by a Star in the East.
Observing Highlights for this Weekend (courtesy of “The Sky This Week” at Astronomy.com):
Friday, January 4
Although people in the Northern Hemisphere experienced the shortest day of the year two weeks ago (at the winter solstice December 21), the Sun has continued to rise slightly later with each passing day. That trend stops this morning for those at 40° north latitude†. Tomorrow’s sunrise will arrive at the same time as today’s, but the Sun will come up two seconds earlier Sunday morning. This turnover point depends on latitude. If you live farther north, the switch occurred a few days ago; closer to the equator, the change won’t happen until later in January.
† I’m just 68 miles south of the Kansas-Nebraska border, which juxtaposes with the 40th parallel. Weird fact discovered this morning via Google Maps: The Kansas Highway that is literally a block west of my house (K-7) ends at the border and turns into 666 Avenue (see map screenshot below).
Continue reading “There’s a Star in the East”
I once aspired to be a poet. During my teens, I filled journals and notebooks with clumsy rhymes, attempting to paint with words and emotions. But by twenty, all my misty dreams of meter and rhyme faded before the rush of life’s dawn. I can’t remember the last time I wrote something creative. Even this blog is just a non-fiction autobiographical day-in-the-life outpouring, for the most part.
My poetic wellspring may have run dry or perhaps my muse is MIA; regardless, I still appreciate a well written verse or stanza. I was reminded of this when I joined the local chapter of the Tolkien Society. We have read Unfinished Tales in the last year as well as The Story of Kullervo and The Children of Húrin, which I listened to the audiobook narrated by the late Christopher Lee (highly recommended). I scoured local second-hand book stores and found paperback editions for the History of Middle-Earth (it is not currently available in ebook editions) including The Lays of Beleriand. I listened to podcasts and learned about alliterative verse, which is best appreciated when read aloud (as is true of most poetry).
1918 … at “the eleventh hour on the 11th day of the 11th month,” an eerie stillness fell across the battlefields of Europe.
Armistice Day, officially recognized by President Wilson in 1919, is still observed throughout the world with many stopping for a moment of silence at the 11th hour of this day to honor those who brought about the end of the “Great War.”
In 1954, after the return of veterans from both World War II and the Korean War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill rededicating Nov. 11 as Veterans Day and encouraged Americans to commit themselves to the cause of peace and to honor America’s veterans for their courage, honor, patriotism and sacrifice.
— Amistice Commemoration, National WWI Museum
It’s a Sunday afternoon. I’m depressing myself streaming tragic dramas while consuming dark chocolate and Chianti. Midway through my third creepy twisted love triangle, I found myself distracted and unfocused, missing entire scenes of the movie. I remembered something I promised my husband I would write about this month. And since he’s off visiting our daughter in the serene Pacific Northwest, I’m left with Rottweilers, wine, chocolate and an empty post page on my mostly neglected blog. I paused my mediocre excuse for a movie and grabbed my phone to research what was happening in September 1983 – the month I met the man I married.
I met my future husband at a bar called Backstage on the northeast side of Wichita, out near where the Cessna complex used to be. The song I remember the most from that evening was actually “Turn Me Loose” by Loverboy. But the song that dominated the summer charts was the Police’s “Every Breathe You Take” which finally fell to “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” by the Eurythmics at the end of August.
Ghandi won best picture that year, but I remember have fond memories of The Right Stuff and the fact that Sally Ride became the first female astronaut as a member of the Challenge crew that summer. And The FCC authorizes Motorola to begin testing cellular phone service in Chicago. Good thing I had an amateur radio license!
Continue reading “Sweet Dreams Are Made of Thirty-Five Years”
Signum University, 
the Mythgard Institute, 
and the Tolkien Society of Kansas City are proud to announce the inaugural MiddleMoot 2018, a one-day symposium addressing the role of Nature, Man, and Industrialization in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien on Saturday, October 6, 2018, at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. A mixture of paper presentations, panels, and discussions will be offered along with a keynote address by guest of honor Dr. Corey Olsen, “The Tolkien Professor.”
On his teaching website, The Tolkien Professor, Dr. Olsen brings his scholarship on Tolkien to the public, seeking to engage a wide and diverse audience in serious intellectual and literary conversation. His website features a series of detailed lectures on The Hobbit and recordings of the weekly meetings of the Silmarillion Seminar, which worked its way through the Silmarillion chapter by chapter, as well as more informal Q&A sessions with listeners. His book Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, was published by Houghton Mifflin in September 2012.
Cost is $40 per person, and will include a light breakfast (coffee and pastries), and gourmet boxed lunch. You can select your preferences on the registration page. Registration and information table opens at 8:30am with opening address to start at 9am.
If you wish to be considered for a paper, panel, or presentation at MiddleMoot, please send an abstract of less than 250 words to tolkiensocietykc@gmail.com on any of the above topics related to Nature, Man, or Industrialization (more information to follow on Signum website).
‘Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate.’
– J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 241
Official Signum page: https://signumuniversity.org/event/middlemoot-2018/
Once upon a time, I was the staff director of a Congressman’s office. He was a Republican. At that time, the Democrats held an overwhelming majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. 354 more words
via Lessons from History? — L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website
I woke up to the longest day of the year (summer solstice). I read through Modesitt’s latest blog post, which turned my longest day into perhaps my most frustrating one? Are we truly doomed to repeat history because we choose to ignore it?
I’m old enough to have seen the swing of politics from one abusive majority to another abusive majority of a different party, but most Americans either haven’t lived long enough to see it, don’t care so long as “their” party prevails, or have no idea what I’m talking about.
History would suggest that this kind of situation, unless defused, will only get worse. The only question may be whether we’re looking at a repeat of 1968 or 1861.
Do we really want another bloody brutal Civil War?
I don’t.
But I am not a Republican nor a Democrat and I voluntarily pursue lessons from history because I don’t wish to ‘rinse and repeat’ the mistakes of more predecessors.
I can only hope I’m not alone.
