Spam-a-lot

I feel so lucky. I got a personal email today from the Senate President of Nigeria. And also one from Mrs. Vicki Anu, my sister in the Lord. Or so she says.

F-ing spam mail.

Grr.

It's National Poetry Month

This one's for Dad and for Grisly Dan, our old drinking buddy at The Pub in Lake Park, Minnesota.

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Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am signaling you through the flames.
The North Pole is not where it used to be.
Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.
Civilization self-destructs.
Nemesis is knocking at the door.
What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.
If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....

Making Marie's Apple Pie

(all photos by Scott Snyder) 

On Monday, I had the pleasure of making Marie's wonderful Apple Crumble Pie - the recipe can be found on her blog, A Year From Oak Cottage. 

My dear husband and my mom Charlotte - my pie making assistant - LOVED this pie! Scott says it is better than my usual, and he was a pretty big fan of my previous apple pies. So I suppose I will be using Marie's recipe from now on! The only thing I added was a dash of ground cloves to the apple mixture and some pats of butter to dot the top of the apples once in the pie crust, but before the crumb topping was added.
These three top pictures are the before shots, with a delicious mound of crumbs toppling over in a blessed heap.
And this is the after. Browned beautifully. I cooked the pie on 375 Fahrenheit - about 25 minutes, then added foil to cover the outer crust, and cooked an additional 20ish minutes until I could hear the filling bubbling under the crumbs.
Deeeeee-licious! With Boston Vanilla Bean ice cream alongside, we had a slice of heaven on a Monday night. We enjoyed this pie while watching "Milk," a film I highly recommend.

Thanks for sharing your recipe, Marie! We all loved it!

~Ally

Dinner Gals Go Green

Saturday, we had another wonderful evening with the Dinner Gals - but this time, a new crowd! Melissa, Alli, and Laurel were unable to join us but two new members, Faith and Louise, joined me and Jesse for a great meeting.

I am thrilled that there are so many unexpected and interesting cross-interests. For example, we have several moms with young children - three out of four of us on Saturday have young sons! A couple of the gals are single. There are several gals who support themselves or their families with careers. And at least three of us are working on launching or surviving in our own businesses - Louise has a women's adventure travel company, Melissa is a wedding and child portraiture photographer, and I am working with Scott on selling his photography and working with my mom on a freelance writing and editing business. The tips we can share about entrepreneurship will be invaluable!

I am finding this group to be invigorating. After the meetings, I feel opened up and alive, ready to tackle new projects and inspired about making changes in my life. Particularly after discussing ways to "green" our lifestyles on Saturday, I am renewing my desire to make a difference on this planet of ours. My new goal: to get a few BPA(?)-free water bottles so I can stop buying the disposable kind (which I really love). I am also going to work on using my cloth bags for shopping. Louise said her grocery store doesn't even offer plastic bags any more, and is phasing out paper, so if you forget your reusable bags, you are outta luck! That's incentive.

We agreed last night that finding new friends with commonalities and differences is a blessing we all can use. What a joy to laugh for three and a half hours!

Off to collect some rainwater to water my plants! :)

Ally

p.s. Next meeting's topic will be: Finding Our Spirituality. What is your story? Where have you come from and where are you going? What types of spiritual practices do you incorporate into your daily life and how does that influence the rest of your life? What are you looking for in terms of nurturing your spiritual self?

Namaste

“Truly, life is one long hearkening unto my self and unto others, unto God. And it is really God who hearkens inside me. The most essential and the deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential and deepest in the other. God to God.”

Etty Hillesum,
An Interrupted Life

A Good List, by Brad Leithauser

A Good List
(Homage to Lorenz Hart)

Some nights, can't sleep, I draw up a list,
   Of everything I've never done wrong.
To look at me now, you might insist
   My list could hardly be long,
But I've stolen no gnomes from my neighbor’s yard,
Nor struck his dog, backing out my car.
Never ate my way up and down the Loire
   On a stranger's credit card.

I've never given a cop the slip,
   Stuffed stiffs in a gravel quarry,
Or silenced Cub Scouts on a first camping trip
   With an unspeakable ghost story.
Never lifted a vase from a museum foyer,
Or rifled a Turkish tourist's backpack.
Never cheated at golf. Or slipped out a blackjack
   And flattened a patent lawyer.

I never forged a lottery ticket,
   Took three on a two-for-one pass,
Or, as a child, toasted a cricket
   With a magnifying glass.
I never said "air" to mean "err," or obstructed
Justice, or defrauded a securities firm.
Never mulcted—so far as I understand the term.
   Or unjustly usufructed.

I never swindled a widow of all her stuff
   By means of a false deed and title
Or stood up and shouted, My God, that's enough!
   At a nephew’s piano recital.
Never practiced arson, even as a prank,
Brightened church-suppers with off-color jokes,
Concocted an archeological hoax—
   Or dumped bleach in a goldfish tank.

Never smoked opium. Or smuggled gold
   Across the Panamanian Isthmus.
Never hauled back and knocked a rival out cold,
   Or missed a family Christmas.
Never borrowed a book I intended to keep.
. . . My list, once started, continues to grow,
Which is all for the good, but just goes to show
   It's the good who do not sleep.

---

Today, an homage to a great American lyricist. The poem falls in the "Curves" section of Brad Leithauser's latest collection, whose fascinating organizing principle (and title) is Curves and Angles—the curves being the curves of the body, the fluid shapes of human concerns; the angles, the cooler, less flexible lines of the inanimate world. - The Borzoi Reader, Poem-A-Day

I'm sorry - how could I not?

Beware, you will possibly get sucked into multiple YouTube singing dog videos if you have nothing to do...especially if you are supposed to be going to the post office. (Ahem.)