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Merle Haggard: The Last Outlaw
Waylon's gone. Cash has been laid to rest. But Merle Haggard stands as country's remaining black-hat rebel, the last man singing for the underdog. At 68, as he readies himself for a new record and a date with the Stones, he is still proud and pissed off
Merle Haggard doesn't want to tell his story anymore. "They don't want to hear about the easy part, the good days that you did," he says. "They want to hear about the places they haven't been. The pain they haven't felt."
And if he should be persuaded to share himself one more time...well, in his sixty-eight years he has never been the kind of man to approach anything with half a heart. But it hurts. On the third morning I've made my way to the modest hillside house in the idyllic Northern California countryside near Lake Shasta, where he lives on 200 acres with his fifth wife, Theresa, and two teenage children, it turns out that he has tried to cancel my visit, but the message hasn't reached me. He invites me in anyway.
"This is why I don't do these things," he says. "It's like revisiting an old wound and pulling the bandage off and scraping the scab off. It's too emotional. When you ask about a man's leg and then you ask about his dick...it's like squeezing an orange."
"It gets highly emotional for him," Theresa explains.
"God, highly emotional is not the word," says Haggard. "It's something else besides emotional. It's deeper than that.... Fuck, yesterday evening when I got done, man, I felt like I'd fucking been in jail again."
This fall Merle will release a new album. I don't think anybody is quite sure how many have come before it; his first came out in 1965, and by 1974 he was already releasing the thirtieth (called, with delightful insouciance, Merle Haggard Presents His 30th Album). Within them, he has laid down one of the last great living catalogs of country-music songs that did perhaps the hardest and most wonderful thing a song can do—join together a handful of simple, commonplace words in a way that somehow makes them new and true and eternal, their wisdom and poetry hidden in plain sight.
Not all of his greatest songs dealt with troubles—he has written with majesty about love and dignity and gratitude and pride and standing up for what you believe in—but trouble and heartache certainly felt like his most natural neighborhoods: how life is hard, how hearts break easier than they mend, and how it sometimes seems as though everything but loneliness will abandon you, of anger looking for its rightful home, of wanting to stay but knowing there's something just as deep within a certain kind of man that forever tugs at him to leave.
When Haggard first became famous, in the '60s, he was best known as the man who sang songs about wanderers, fugitives, and the terminally luckless.
"I hate to be that easy to figure out," he says now when reminded of this. "But it's probably true.... I sometimes feel like I'm standing up for the people that don't have the nerve to stand up for themselves. I just enjoyed winning for the loser. I'd never been around anything except losers my whole life."
I ask him whether he wrote so many sad and angry songs because he was sad and angry or because that's what he was good at.
"I had been sad and angry," he reflects, "and now I was composed and in a position to do good for the sad and angry."
As Merle Haggard sits there in his favorite rocking chair, facing a giant flatscreen TV silently showing the news, it is stirring to think how far he was traveled, not just through time but through history. When Merle Haggard's parents moved from Oklahoma to California in 1935, two years before his birth, they were part of the great Dust Bowl migration westward. They settled into a converted railroad boxcar on the outskirts of Bakersfield, and his father got a job on the Santa Fe railroad. The first thing of consequence Haggard remembers is going to choose a puppy for his third birthday—a fox terrier called Jack, who would live nineteen years and die while Haggard was in San Quentin prison. From early on, he liked music. He remembers noticing that his mother didn't approve of the people close to the family who played music. To her, entertainers were rebels and heathens. His father didn't approve of entertainers, either, on the surface, but in his expression young Merle sometimes detected another story: maybe that of a would-be musician and rebel who had been steered straight by a strong, sensible woman. "I think they were interesting to me because I'd seen that look in his eye," says Haggard. "I didn't know what it was about."
"I just enjoyed winning for the loser. I'd never been around anything except losers my whole life."
When he was 9, the life he knew and the love crumbled away. That Wednesday night, Merle had been to a prayer meeting with his mother. He was annoyed that his mother was with him, because he liked turning over garbage cans with his friends on the way home. Near the house, he went ahead of her, and so it was Merle who found his father in his big chair, tears on his cheeks, half paralyzed from a stroke. By June he was dead.
Haggard has always identified his father's death as the event that set him on a different path, the one that would first lead him to prison, but he says that only just recently did it strike him exactly how it has shaped his life since then. It came to him while he was watching a TV documentary about Kirk and Michael Douglas. "I think what I've always looked for in life is my father's approval," he says. "I think that was the biggest thing I was robbed of. And it took me down many paths. It motivates you to do what I did...whatever you have to do, looking for approval. Always making a new record, always writing another song. Who knows? It may have inspired everything."
On a shelf in Merle Haggard's living room is an Amtrak conductor's cap. On the other flat surfaces are old model trains. Haggard spends a little time one morning discussing a bod model train with his 13-year-old son, Ben, in technical terms that leave me behind in seconds. Trains have long been an obsession of Haggard's, in life and in song. In the '70s, he had a model train set reputed to be worth a quarter of a million, which still exists somewhere on shtiks property. He even released an album in 1976 called My Love Affair with Trains, which included the song "No More Trains to Ride":
Born the son of a railroad man
Who rode 'em until he died
I'd like to live like my daddy did
But there's no more trains to ride.
It was the first sign that there was something within Haggard that would have to bust out. "I was 11years old when I first hopped a freight train," he recalls. "Didn't go far. Went about a hundred miles, and they arrested me in Fresno." He soon was off again. "I grew up beside the railroad track," he says, "and the way to leave town was on a train. All we knew was that there was something out there that was intriguing about being on your own. And it was really calling to me at an early age. I had excuses—I could say, Well, my mother was left with me to raise—but that wasn't the reason. It was just some inner yearning, that I didn't really understand then and probably can't explain now, caused me to jump those freights in search of something."
The irony was that he was allowed to ride for free on the Santa Fe railroad after his father's death, but whenever the spirit took him to ride the rails, that never crossed his mind as an option. "I never really enjoyed those rides I took on the passenger train," he says. "They were just: So what? Ho him. What I was after wasn't on those passenger trains."
I met Merle Haggard for the first time this April, backstage at the Beacon Theatre in New York. He was on tour with Bob Dylan and had just played a sprightly set of old and new songs in the swinging country jazz style he now favors, spiced with banter, much of it alluding to the passing of time. "We've been on the road for forty years," he tells the audience. "We're the only band I know that uses nurses instead of roadies." (Such things are jokes and not jokes, too. His editorial page on merlehaggard.com has spirited defense of the Dixie Chicks' freedom to say what they want, even if he doesn't agree with it, followed by a note of thanks to his dentist.)
Any chance I might have to speak properly with Haggard at the Beacon disappears when, thirty seconds after I have introduced myself, I am followed through the door by the 89-year-old guitarist Les Paul, who, understandably, takes preference. As Haggard picks at some raw vegetables and dip off a plastic plate, they talk about Oklahoma in the oldest of days. There's something greatly touching in the way Haggard, now the senior of nearly everyone he meets, defers to Les Paul as his elder. (He'll later describe this meeting as "like finally getting to meet one of your favorite uncles.") They huddle close, speaking quietly. Haggard nods, and the next thing I hear him say is, "By the time you get close to the answers, it's nearly all over."
When he was 14, a Texas lady introduced Merle to a life at its fullest. He had hitched there with a friend. At a brothel in Amarillo, he was turned down because of his youth, until an older, more stately woman in an electric-pink dress stepped forward. She announced, "I'll babysit with him," and soon it was done.
"It's a fond memory, it is," he says. He reminisces how before he and his friend went to the brothel, they'd been shopping: "I went to a hockshop and bought some secondhand cowboy boots—figured if I'm in Texas, I'd better put on some boots. That was 1951, and I've been wearing cowboy boots ever since." (Today's are faded green ostrich. "The ostrich don't like it," he says, "but everybody else does.")
"It was an interesting day. A lot of people say, 'I can't remember anything anymore,' and really I can't, but there are certain things that you can't get out of your mind. I guess they're there because you want them in there. Exquisite times."
I ask him whether he was a different person when he walked out of the brothel than he had been hen he walked in.
He conceders this a moment. "Not really," he decides. "I think the cowboy boots affected me more. I mean, the gal just affirmed what I already knew, but the cowboy boots made a new man out of me."
The way Merle Haggard has always told it, his rebelliousness and slippage into teenage criminality and the escalating punishments he received formed a kind of toxic spiral that dragged him deeper into trouble. He says that it was the correctional facilities he was sent to as a youth that really sent him in the wrong direction: "You start off with a truancy problem, and they send you to jail with big-time criminals. Pretty soon your idols become Jesse James and Bonnie Parker and John Dillinger, rather than Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali." When he describes the horrors of these places in detail, I remark that it's surprising he's not more angry. "Oh, I'm pretty angry, Chris," he says. "I've always been angry."
"You start off with a truancy problem, and they send you to jail with big-time criminals. Pretty soon your idols become Jesse James and John Dillinger."
Not long fate the young Merle Haggard started being locked up, he started escaping. In total, he says, he would escape seventeen times from various institutions. At times, he jumped fences, broke through doors, risked his life leaping farther than men should leap. But sometimes he simply picked a moment when he could just go. "I noticed early on that people looked right at you and didn't see you," he says. "If you just walked the right speed, you could almost walk right through them."
Perhaps that's how he imagined it could continue: mess up, be sent away for a bit, escape, e sent away for a bit longer, get out, repeat. But then, right before he reached 21, after an incident where he drunkenly tried to break into a restaurant that was still open and the arresting officers also found a stolen check-printing machine in his car, after which he compounded everything by escaping from the local jail, he discovered that this time he had messed up badly enough to be sent to San Quentin.
His offense carried a sentence of between six months and fifteen years inside, but Haggard says that in those days they didn't tell you how long you would serve, and that was the worst thing of all. As he put it in his first autobiography: "God, that does something to a man's mind that never heals up right." He was there for three years. In the same book, he referred to witnessing "horrors too terrible to think about, much less talk about," though in his writings he has given enough detail—"I watched one man kill another over a simple insult"; "sometimes when I lay in my bunk I could hear men crying out in pain from being raped by other inmates"; "I saw a black man burned to death on a ladder.... The five-hundred-gallon vat of starch he was checking boiled over on him, burning his black skin completely white"—that you pray there was little more.
During his stay, he was sent to solitary for seven days when he was found drunk. Luckily, the guards didn't seem to realize that it was Haggard who had been brewing beer from oranges, sugar, and yeast and selling it around the prison for cigarettes. "We called it orange beer," he says, "and it tasted like orange beer."
Many of his biggest early hits, like "Branded Man," "Sing Me Back Home," and "Mama Tried," alluded to a criminal past, but Haggard maintains that the real-life backdrop to these songs was unknown to the public until he appeared oh Johnny Cash's TV show. Cash tried to convince him that people should know and would like him more if they did. Haggard wasn't sure. Cash at least had a good if hokey way of bringing up the subject. On camera he suggested to Haggard that he felt he had seen him before, and the conversation naturally led to the first time they had been under the same roof. When Cash had first played in San Quentin on January 1, 1959, Haggard had been in the audience.
Though Haggard would briefly go back to jail—for five days the press never found out about, in Sacramento in 1967, for driving without a license, which he remembers felt "like five years"—once the hits started, these were golden years. "All I had to do was pay attention, you know," he recalls. "Show up and sing. All the doors were open. Everyone had a smiling, agreeable attitude. Friends and thieves alike, you know." Then, in 1969, came the song that would become Haggard's biggest pop hit, "Okie from Muskogee," and that would change his career once more. "It probably set it back about forty years," he mutters.
There are, says Haggard, "about seventeen hundred ways to take that song," and over his career he has alternately endorsed and sidestepped most of them. In it, the narrator he was thinking of—I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee—was some version of his father. On the surface, and to some extent beneath it, the song was a celebration of traditional conservative American values at a time of great turbulence—short-haired, drug-free Americans who believe in the flag, don't burn their draft cards, and are proud to be square if square is what they are.
But Haggard says he regretted the song almost immediately. He feels, with reason, that it pushed away a part of his audience and that it brought him attention he never wanted; the segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace, presumably sniffing a kindred spirit, made overtures to him, albeit ones that were rejected. If there were two paths his career could have taken from there, the one he had chosen was cemented by his next single. He had suggested a song called "Irma Jackson," a thoughtful tale of an interracial romance, but he was argued out of it. Instead, he released "The Fightin' Side of Me"—a wonderful, defiant roar of a song, but one that helped fix him in the public imagination as the champion of angry, proud conservatives who had had enough:
When they're runnin' down our country, man,
They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.
These days, Haggard seems to reduce much of the fuss about "Okie from Muskogee" to its position on marijuana, perhaps because it is the part of the song his subsequent life most completely disavowed. We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, the song begins, and at the time, this was true for Haggard: He had smoked it neither there nor anywhere else. He didn't until he was 41, when he was advised to do so by a physician. "I didn't like the way it made me feel at first," he says, "so they coad me and showed me." Soon the cure took hold. "The only thing they didn't tell me," he says, "was how habit-forming it was."
Often, returning for an encore on that recent tour, Bob Dylan would lean down to the microphone above his keyboard and sing these words:
The warden led a prisoner
Down the hallway to his doom...
The song, "Sing Me Back Home," is one of Haggard's—perhaps his finest. It draws on his time in San Quentin and his experience with death-row prisoners: a dark and beautiful hymn about the power of song to release you from even the most awful and unavoidable here and how. Haggard says that Dylan asked him before their first date together, "I've got it in my show—do you do it every night?"
"I said, 'I don't do it at all when Bob Dylan's doing it,' " says Haggard. "It's hard to sing, anyway. It's hard for me. It requires you to go there in your mind, to get there—and to be part of what you're singing about is somewhat painful. You've got to climb inside it all."
Haggard laughs wryly when I ask whether Dylan explained anything about why he had chosen the song. "Not only did he not tell me anything," says Haggard, "I don't know of anybody that's ever met him that he's ever said anything to. He does not let anybody see his hold cards. He has his hold cards close to his chest."
I tell Haggard that I read on the internet how, on Haggard's birthday, Dylan walked into his celebration and handed him a present in a crinkled Whole Foods grocery bag. This, it turns out, is true.
"He said, 'Happy birthday,' placed it in my hands very carefully, and turned around and walked off. That was it."
Haggard's recollection of what was in the bag is that it was a fifth of Crown Royal whisky and something like a Bob Dylan T-shirt. "It was very nice, the gift," he says, "but the presentation was worth a million dollars. It was like Marlon Brando walking in and saying happy birthday."
Haggard shouts toward the kitchen to confirm the contents of the bag with Theresa. A good thing he does; her memory is somewhat different.
"He gave you a sheriff's badge," she says. "He gave you a lure about this big"—her fingers are far apart—"and a copy of his book, signed...."
"Wasn't there a T-shirt and a fifth of Crown Royal or something like that?"
"Who gave me that? Someone gave me that."
"I don't know. He signed the book, a really nice thing it says in there. A really great compliment. And that lure—I don't know if he knows anything about fishing, but it's about this big, for pike fishing."
"There's some connotation about that lure, I think," says Haggard.
"Oh, and then he gave you some cowboy chocolates," says Theresa. "It was original. Oh, and I know what else he gave you. He gave you two magazines. One for real old antique classic cars."
"I didn't remember that was in there," says Merle to Theresa. "Thank you for your mind." He turns to me, smiling, and says, mock-apologetically, "I may not know anything, Chris."
Merle Haggard remembers the '70s, in a fashion. "God," he sighs, "it went by like it was about two weeks long.... then it was the '80s, and the '80s flew by...."
"I'm tired of singing'okie from muskogee.' I'm tired of the whole gig. Somewhere around my age, people begin to feel insignificant and unnecessarty"
When I ask him about partying too much along the way, he swiftly corrects me. "I never did party too much, "he says. "There were periods of my life where I was in between wives, when there was a flamboyant lifestyle that was debatable as to whether anybody should have had that much fun. And you know, the Lord knows all about it, and I'm sure that I'll have to pay for it all. But there was a period of time that went by in my life that I doubt that there were many people on the face of the earth in any period of the past or in the future that enjoyed their life much more than I did."
That having been said, there were five months in 1983 when Haggard, as he puts it, "spun off pretty bad." he had been jilted by a woman who he thought loved him, and his response was to buy $2,000 of cocaine and retire hurt to his houseboat. "For about five months there, man, I had quite a party," he recalls. "And different famous people came in and out of that party and saw the condition of it, and I'm sure a lot of them figured I'd never survive." Haggard says he snapped out of it when he realized that he had been on his houseboat naked with some good-looking woman for five days and had yet to have sex with her, though that was what they were both there for. He says he never did cocaine again.
He mentions a few things he considers to be mistakes over the years. He thinks he shouldn't have walked out of rehearsals for The Ed Sullivan Show just because they kept making him dance through tulips and look gay. Maybe he shouldn't have turned down a series of six movies with Burt Reynolds, one of which was Smokey and the Bandit. He certainly shouldn't have accepted the advice he was given in the early '70s to sell the twenty-five burger franchises he owned from a chain expanding out of Ohio for the $265,000 he had paid for them; Wendy's ended up doing pretty well after that.
In the midmorning of the second day, members of his band started drifting into his living room, where they rehearse, forming a circle that curves outward from Haggard and his favorite chair. Haggard tells one of them that he had a cigar yesterday, his first tobacco in nearly fifteen years. He had been listening to Coast to Coast AM, where a guy was talking about the medical benefits of tobacco in a good cigar without pesticides. Haggard thought he and Theresa should test whether it was true. It tasted good and gave them both a little lift, and he's been hankering for it today. "It opened up a whole can of worms," he says. "Old friend was trying to get back in. Like an old donkey coming through a new door again."
Haggard first came through this part of California in 1953, when he was 16, running away to Oregon with a girl he had met that day, making love all the way on the train. he saw Lake Shasta in the moonlight, and it stayed with him. haggard settled up here in 1977, but for most of the next ten years, he lived on his houseboat on Lake Shasta. he and Theresa moved off the boat in 1989 because their daughter had started to walk and the water worried them. At first they moved into a cabin on the back end of the property—a cabin Haggard didn't even know he owned; the first time he went to see it, there was a cow standing in the front room.
They've had trouble with mold over the years at various houses on the property, but he clearly loves it here and talks passionately about how he has fashioned the land as a sanctuary for animals and birds. It is also the home of his inspiration, as he explained to a visiting IRS agent. He says that after he walked the agent around and detailed how each bit of the landscape had fed into his songs, the IRS agreed it should be a tax write-off and told him that their visit had cost them $93,000.
Today, Haggard asks the band to listen to a scratchy old Bob Willis boogie tune from the 1940s, and then they try to duplicate it, his eyes lighting up whenever they come close. After a few more songs, they break. We talk about UFOs; Merle is a firm believer in these and in various conspiracy theories, and he espouses a kind of random, angry libertarian politics. Eventually, I ask what is the most important thing aliens might learn if they listened to Merle Haggard records.
"That I'm a contrary old son of a bitch, I guess," he says.
He, in turn, has a question for me.
"Do you like peach pie?" he asks. "Let's have peach pie."
Haggard was married for the first time before he went to San Quentin. It was a marriage full of tempestuous incidents, including the time his wife Leona jumped out of the car at fifty miles an hour after he moved to hit her. The marriage didn't survive a terrible day that ended with Haggard choking Leona after she'd taunted him in front of a new boyfriend. ("I remember thinking in my mind: Well, I know where I'll be going—I'll be going to death row, San Quentin. But I was so upset with her.... The I came back to reality.") he was married three more times before he met Theresa. She was dating his guitarist at the time, Clint Strong, but Haggard says that Strong was rude to her, and so he felt justified in asking Theresa to meet him in his hotel room after a show and telling Strong to go away when he came banging on the door. If his behavior was poor, his instincts were good—it is a night that has lasted twenty-one years so far.
I ask Haggard what, over the years, five marriages have taught him.
"It's kind of like the study they did on the largemouth bass," he replies. "Some students from a university put 140 largemouth bass in a lake down in Southern California and had an implant in each one of them, and they tracked their habits for one year. And, for example, they had this big roped-off cove just to the right of the launching ramp, and this big fourteen-pound largemouth stayed in there for six days a week and on Mondays, when there was no traffic, came out to feed. Then most of the fish stayed along the shore, like most people live in New York, but some bass went straight out into the middle of the lake and lived about seven feet underwater their entire lives. So what it showed was absolutely nothing. That bass are like people, and what makes them so interesting to fish for in America is because they're unpredictable. I don't know any more about women that I did to begin with."
Over the years, San Quentin has returned to him—and he to it— in his nightmares. For a while, he had thought he was finally past them, but he had another about fifteen months ago. "It was always the same dream," he says. "I was back in jail, and I really didn't know what for. But I was back there again, and I knew nobody would understand why I was there. I had known the taste of freedom, and now I was back again. I had somehow stumbled."
Was the dream really specific?
"Oh, it was an awful feeling. It's like being lost, like being in a railroad station with your parents and being 4 years old, and you look around and they're not there. It can't be described—it's the most horrible feeling in the world. You, without any help. No one can help you. Once again you've screwed up, and you're behind bars, and anybody that cares can't get to you... That incarceration, that awful feeling that comes from losing one's freedom. Not having the right to be heard. You can scream all night and beat on the walls and rack the bars with a tin cup...and nobody will come."
That last morning, it is a more fragile Haggard who sits with me. Some of it is my fault, churning up the sediments he would rather have stayed settled. "When you become my age, hopefully your life will be worth as much to someone else—they'll come and ask you the things you're asking me," he says. "And only then will you know what I"m going through." Some of it is the way he has been feeling. Yesterday, in the middle of a meal, he began to notice something he has felt seven or eight times before in recent years, a kind of stomach disorder that makes him shake inside and his eyes twitch.
I don't ask many questions today. I think he figures that as I'm here, he might as well explain how it really is.
"You know, I woke up this morning in a wimpy mood," he says. "Men don't like to be wimps. But I have reached the point, it's really sad to mention, I have reached the point where... They always say you'll know when it's time. Speaking of the place in your life when you finally say: Do you want to die on a highway or do you want to die in bed? I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of singing 'Okie from Muskogee.' I'm tired of the whole gig. Somewhere around my age, people begin to feel insignificant and small and unnecessary and not so much in demand." There is plenty of work out there for him, but its attraction is waning. "I guess I've come to a point in my life where...I hate to admit fear. I hate to even admit fear's part of my reasoning. But I have some dementia that's coming around, and there's a bit of a nervous tic—I don't know what that's about; I guess it's growing old. And I don't feel as bulletproof as I should feel.... I've traveled all over the world without a seat belt for forty-two years. Forty-three. And I'm a bit of a gambler and have a feel for odds. The odds are really against me."
He says nearly all his heroes are dead. He tried to call the remaining two—Johnny Gimble and Gordon Terry, both fiddle players— this morning, but he couldn't get hold of either. He says he feels like a guy who just watched the Titanic sink, and almost everybody he knows is dead. And he's asking himself, Why should I swim anymore?
I ask what he most cherishes the idea of doing if he stays at home.
"Doing is out of the picture," he says. "When you get to a certain age, you reach a place where you say, Look, I'm all right. I'm not in pain unless I have to do something. Anything I do—if I have to get up and walk over there— it hurts. When you get old, everything that you take for granted goes away, and it's not by choice. And it finally boils down to how much pain can you stand?" He says that it has hurt onstage for a while now. "I could probably let my hair fall out, and quit dyeing my hair, and just go on out there and look stupid and finally fall onstage. The only thing is, I'd be the one who loses. If I go ahead and stay onstage until I become totally senile, well, I don't know, it seems to me somewhat silly. Wy not stop when you're still knocking people out? Why wait until you get knocked out? The last few years, I've been faking it. I've been in pain. The pains of growing old, I guess. The only thing I attribute it to."
I say that surely he'll carry on making records, but he says he needs to stay in shape to do that, and that he's hardly written any songs this year. "I've recorded an album that I've put forth my very best on, and it's truly good," he says of his latest, Chicago Wind, "but I don't think there's a hit song on it. In fact, I'm sure there's not. It's all good, but I don't believe they're of the quality to pull me out of the aging slump. I thought maybe there would be a song like 'All of Me' for me, coming in the later years like it did for Frank Sinatra. I'm beginning to doubt that'll happen. I spent just about all the extra energy I had on this last project." His voice cracks. "These are very sad words. But they're honest." This is what he wants to say. "You know, I'm not young anymore. And I don't like it. I don't like it."
There's a steel and sadness in his face, a proud combination of force and frailty; whatever the gracious opposite of serenity is, that is what Merle Haggard oozes. He smiles. "There comes a time when you can't do it anymore. It's a double-edged sword: if I can manage to get over the wispiness and continue to go, I'll probably live longer and probably enjoy it. But I'm at that pivot point in my life where I can swing that way and give my last bit of strength to the music of my life, or I can give it to my little family here." He gestures toward the open kitchen, empty now, but through which his wife and children are constantly flowing, past the post on which their heights over the years have been marked. "And music has supported my little family; my little family knows what music means to me. I am music. Music is me, and I am music. But which one is which? Which one do you favor in the latter moments?"
One of the band members wanders in. "We're doing the last of the article here," Haggard tells him. "It's maybe the article that'll put me on the goddamned shelf." He laughs. "They're gonna jump on Chris, say, 'What did you do—kill fucking Haggard?' "
It is as the random business of the day encroaches upon him that his mood seems to lighten, or at least to leave wispiness far behind. First there's a fuss about a fence being cut and some building being done on the property—"If you want to bust somebody's head, go ahead," he encourages a man who works for him—and then some concern about the 1,200 crawfish being delivered to his ponds this morning. The phone rings. He is being asked to do something for those who suffered in a local fire. "Well, I don't do autographs," he tells the caller, "but I will play and sing and try to raise some money for you—that's what I do." He hands the call over to Theresa. His attitude seems to be that he doesn't much want to play an extra concert but that he wouldn't dream of not doing it. When Theresa is done on the phone, Haggard tells her, "Satan is in charge of fires, he's in charge of harming those people up there, and he's in charge of that call. We're gonna surprise his ass. What an asshole. Goddamn the Devil in Jesus's name."
The news that really gets him going is that his goats have been at the outside of his tour bus overnight, ripping the rub rails off. He's out of his chair. Those goats have picked the wrong man on the wrong day. "The sun won't set on the same problem," he says. "These goats will be out of our life. I'm trued of that fucking shit."
As I prepare to leave, Haggard's son is putting gel in his hair, and somehow Haggard gets encouraged by his son and wife to join in. Soon his hair is spiking outward in every direction, and he sits in a rocking chair with a goofy grin, like some kind of hillbilly Einstein. More band members walk in, each offering a double take and then looking bemused. "We're going punk rock," he announces. That is how I leave him: his hair heading into heaven, a wink in his eye, and a final word of explanation. "I am not an ordinarily man," he declares.
When I arrive this last morning, there is a sheet of paper lying by Haggard's chair. It is the lyric to one of the songs he has written this year, a song to which Toby Keith, the current superstar of country, will be adding his vocal alongside Haggard's this afternoon in Nashville. Haggard wrote it quickly this spring with Bob Dylan in mind: "He was on my mind. I'd just met him. We'd just gone into the first venue, and I asked him for a song. I wanted a great Bob Dylan song to record myself. And he said to me, 'I don't write anymore—I don't have any more songs.' And in some strange way that inspired it. I thought, Well, I'll go write the song that I wanted him to write."
He lifts his guitar onto his lap and starts. It's a song of measured hope, humility, and the inevitable:
But there's one common thread in the scheme of it all.
Some of us fly, all of us fall.
Afterward, he will ask me whether I think this song could be a hit. It's the only one he thinks might have a chance. There's nothing I know about how the country charts work in 2005, but I hope I know a little bit more about songs and about how beauty and about honesty, and about why this one has played over and over in my head ever since.
Some play it smart.... I had a ball.
Some of us fly, all of us fall.
"I looked at it," he tells me, "and I couldn't tell what it was about."
For now, Merle Haggard is still flying. Sure, it gets harder to stay aloft. And sure, he can see the ground below, a little clearer and closer each year, patiently waiting for him. But long may it have to wait. Long may we hear the cantankerous flapping of his wings, and the whisper of truth he gives to the wind. And long may it be before even Merle Haggard has to fall in final, glorious protest.


text: LearnedHand wrote: »I'm a published writer and have a very unique and interesting writing style. I'm also sharp and witty. My profile is well-written and hilarious. My messages are likewise brilliant. And I've been doing this stuff for...four or five years. I know what "works" in terms of good internet dating writing. "Works" in the sense of leading to a "date" with a human female.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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If there is a shoe that belongs in every wardrobe, every season, it is Converse. An indisputable footwear legend, a pair of Converse will take you a long way. Crafted from black suede, these One Star sneakers feature a lace-up front fastening, a round toe, a star motif to the sides and a flat rubber sole.
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The Converse Rubber Company was founded in 1908 by Marquis M. Converse in the US. Initially, only making galoshes and seasonal shoes. In 1915 the company decided to make athletic shoes to enable year-round production. As basketball evolved, their basketball shoe became popular when high school basketball star Chuck Taylor began wearing them. In 1921 his signature was added to the design. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Converse faced considerable competition from other shoe manufacturers and began developing aesthetically-oriented models, still highly profitable today.
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text:
Sick of the Health Policy and finance stuff? Me too. Here's a nice freakshow case for your enjoyment.
You are looking at an x-ray of a man's abdomen. He refused to say what the items in his pelvis were or how they had come to be present there. You can see that the lower one appears to be a glass, perhaps a small tumbler, and that it is broken. He presented to the ER because he was passing blood. I do not know what the other item is -- it does not look like glass. I believe that the gentleman wound up with a diverting colostomy; I have not had a chance to talk to the surgeon who assumed care of this patient. I will post an update when the second item has been positively identified.
Yet another reminder that a rectum is a privilege, not a right.
02 August 2008
Enough Boring Stuff
Sick of the Health Policy and finance stuff? Me too. Here's a nice freakshow case for your enjoyment.
Posted by shadowfax at 6:00 AM
3 comments:
I'm appreciating the benefits of vanilla sex.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous8/07/2008 8:19 PM
CC: Rectal bleeding and pain.ReplyDelete
Me (MD): Have any foreign bodies been inserted?
Patient: No foreign bodies. Only Americans.
- Anonymous8/09/2008 4:08 PM
Candle and glass candle holder! Painful!ReplyDelete


text:
Miguel Bosé Charms Crowd at International Song Festival VINA DEL MAR, CHILE, April 30, 2008 — Widely considered to be the most important music event in Latin America, the Viña del Mar International Song Festival drew capacity crowds this year to the Quinta Vergara Amphitheatre to hear dozens of performers, including Shure endorser Miguel Bosé. Marking three decades as a popular entertainer at this, the 49th annual engagement of the festival, Bosé took to the stage using aUHF-R Wireless System (UR2/Beta 58) delivered to the site by Amexco, the Shure Distributor in Chile. One of many performers relying upon Shure products at the event, Bosé was joined onstage by a legion of other crowd favorites, including Calle 13 (UR2/SM58), Marco Antonio Solis (UR2/KSM9), Chayanne (UR2/KSM9), and Peter Frampton (SM58 wired). Televised live, by Santiago, Chile based Canal 13, the festival chose Shure microphones based upon its need for rock-solid reliability and acoustic quality. "The festival required the use of more than 50 wireless channels, including microphones, in-ear monitor systems and intercom systems," said Roberto Herzberg, Chief Audio Engineer for Canal 13. "The amount of wireless systems exhausted all available frequencies, but Shure helped us organize the frequency chaos using Wireless Workbench 5.0, which also helped us monitor the microphone audio levels, battery status, monitor the RF noise floor and measure RF signal strength at each antenna." José Rivas, Shure's Director of Marketing and Sales, International Americas, and Gabe Benitez, Regional Portfolio Manager, assisted Amexco with the systems and helped Canal 13 coordinate RF for the broadcast. "The six nights of the festival were really quite magical," Benitez said shortly after the stage was struck and thoughts were already being given to the 50th anniversary shows next year. "Given the amount of wireless required for the event, there was no guarantee that this would be the case at the outset, but fortunately we had the Shure products and talent to make sure that everything was perfect."
Shure Hits A High Note At Vina Del Mar
Contact Public Relations:
Shure Incorporated
Attn: Allison Dolegowski
Telephone: (312) 736 6000
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Hollywood loves biopics, even if audiences don't, so much so that there are currently THREE Lance Armstrong projects in development, plus an Alex Gibney documentary from Sony Pictures Classic. One of the three non-docs has even cast a lead, Ben Foster, who'll play Armstrong in a film from High Fidelity director Stephen Frears. They're trying to start shooting the currently untitled film by the fall. Guys, do me a favor, in the meantime, no one tell Ashton Kutcher about the other projects.
From Toljda.com:
There are two other dramatic projects on Armstrong [besides the aforementioned Frears one] at studios which seemed to have gotten a good head start on Frears. Warner Bros has been working on an untitled project from Atlas Entertainment scripted by Side Effects writer Scott Z. Burns to be directed by Jay Roach, the helmer of celebrated fact-based films Game Change and Recount. The package includes the life rights of Tyler Hamilton, the Olympic gold medalist, NCAA champion and Armstrong teammate on the US Postal Service Team who was menaced by Armstrong after he took to 60 Minutes to break the code of silence. Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot partners JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk are working on a movie about the disgraced bicycle racer, based on the HarperCollins book Cycle Of Lies: The Fall Of Lance Armstrong by New York Times sportwriter Juliet Macur. Not sure how far this one has gotten, but there were rumors that Abrams has discussed the project with Bradley Cooper, who might play Armstrong.
Let's see… one based on a book written by a former teammate who hates Lance Armstrong, and the other called "Cycle of Lies." Gee, I wonder what aspects of the story those will focus on…
I've never quite understood all the interest in the Lance Armstrong story and the backlash. He cheated in a sport where everyone was cheating, and he did it better than everyone else so he won. Am I missing anything? It seems like people in the media greatly overestimated how much the public would actually care about A. cycling and B. performance enhancing drugs. Speaking for myself, I'm not going to care about cycling unless every rider is on a dangerous cocktail of HGH, PCP, and a number of experimental psychadelics. "Excite Bike," they could call it.
As for Ben Foster, hey, it sounds fine. He's good in basically everything he does. Still, I would've been interested to see Daniel Day-Lewis in the role, if only to watch him go full method and have a testicle removed.
[pictures via Getty – Mandal Ngan and Ilya S. Savenok]


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August 22, 2006
Community service is nothing new for the 270 freshman joining the Wabash community. Most of the recently-graduated high school standouts incorporated serving their community into their high school activities.
The freshman class spread out across Crawfordsville Monday, as is tradition, to assist 18 different organizations. Students could be found painting the iron fence around Lane Place. More young men were working at Lew Wallace study, landscaping at the 4-H Fairgrounds and Old Jail Museum, painting indoors at the Athena Center and many other service opportunities.
See photo album from day's work by clicking here.
Many of the freshman talked about community Christmas programs, food banks, school activities and retirement centers as focus of their community service during their high school years.
"This is a good way to get acquainted with the community and figure out where we're going to be living for the next four years," said Philip Towne, a freshman from Bluffton, Ind. "It helps us get the picture that we belong here and it's great to give a helping hand."
The hand was sure appreciated by the food bank volunteers.
"This is just tremendous help because it gets all of our food here at the Methodist Church," said coordinator Flora Wilson. "Most of our volunteers are retired people and unable to lift these heavy boxes."
Outside line the church's basement steps a line of freshmen handed the heavy boxes of canned goods from man to man and placed them on the pantry's shelves.
The freshman guys at the Nazarene Church just down the street had the chance to do a little destruction. They tore out an interior wall to make way for some remodeling. Mike Uhl '76 is the church's pastor.
"The last couple days have been kind of slow," said Bryce Shellman from Albion. "It's good to get out and do something. A lot of the other groups had easier service jobs but I think this is more fun."
A freshman rally with door prizes was Monday's night's highlight. The new class continues with orientation activities through Thursday's first day of classes.
In photos: In photo above: Philip Towne hands a box down the steps at the Methodist Church. On homepage: Daniel King, at left, prepares to hand a box of food off to the next man in the line of freshmen moving canned goods for the local food bank. On student page: Jasper Small, Arcadia, helps take out a wall at the Nazarene Church.


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text:
Game of Thrones Khal and Khaleesi Robes
It Is Sewn
- Cotton terrycloth robes with Khal or Khaleesi embroidered in gold thread
- A ThinkGeek creation and exclusive!
- Great for relaxing after a long day of riding or reading GoT
She commanded her handmaids to prepare her a bath. Doreah built a fire outside the tent, while Irri and Jhiqui fetched the big copper tub - another bride gift - from the packhorses and carried water from the pool. When the bath was steaming, Irri helped her into it and climbed in after her.
"Have you ever seen a dragon?" she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui sluiced sand from her hair.
- Daenerys, A Game of Thrones
We cannot see Drogo asking his khalasar to carry these across the plains for him and his lady, so we have to assume they were stolen from the Hilton Vaes Dothrak. Although, if they're carrying a big copper tub....
After a hard day, relax in Dothraki style with these Khal and Khaleesi robes which ensure others know to pay you due respect (or they might get their gold crown the hard way). 100% cotton, these fluffy white robes are a true luxury, featuring crisp woven cuffs and gold thread for the embroidery, reminiscent of the extravagance you'd expect from a more decadent lifestyle *cough* Lannisters *cough*.
(shoulder seam to wrist)
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- Cotton terrycloth robes with Khal or Khaleesi embroidered in gold thread
- A ThinkGeek creation and exclusive!
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- Hanging loop for convenience
- Belt loops to hold sash
- Woven cotton cuffs for a crisp look
- Materials: 100% cotton
- Care Instructions: Machine wash cold; tumble dry low
- Imported


text:
January 11, 2008
EventfulTestCase: a FlexUnit extension for testing event dispatching
NOTE: The extension described in this post has now been incorporated into FlexUnit 3. The syntax has changed slightly, but the concepts described in this post remain. This feature is not yet available in FlexUnit 4, which is a major update, but work is underway to provide even better support for unit testing the event dispatching behavior of your classes.
IntroductionThe events that a class dispatches form an important part of its contract with clients, yet for one reason or another they are seldom tested. Perhaps this is because event declarations are optional in Flex and specified as metadata, or perhaps it is because the FlexUnit assertions were mostly ported from JUnit and not tailored specifically to Flex. In either case, programming mistakes and design flaws in event logic can have far-reaching consequences, effecting any dependent event listeners and the classes beyond them.
To illustrate the importance of event testing, consider the case of a NuclearReactor class that dispatches temperatureChange events to indicate the effect of adding fuel. Perhaps we also have a MeltdownAlert class that listens for these events in order to raise an alert whenever a boundary temperature is crossed. The melodrama should make it obvious: if the NuclearReactor has a bug that prevents it dispatching events in the expected manner, the MeltdownAlert will never trigger and a catastrophe will unfold.
So it is clearly important to ensure event dispatching logic is correct. To promote the best-practice of unit testing the dispatch of events, I have written a small extension to the FlexUnit TestCase class that makes it easy: EventfulTestCase. This is a new base class for any tests that involve the dispatch of events. It supports both standard Flash events and also Cairngorm events.
The following ActionScript source files accompany this post:
- EventfulTestCase.as - the FlexUnit TestCase extension.
- EventListener.as - a helper class required by EventfulTestCase.as
- CairngormEventSource.as - optional class only needed for testing Cairngorm event dispatching
Writing Eventful Test Cases
The process of writing an eventful test case involves first recording the expected events, then performing the action under test, and finally asserting that the expected events occurred. EventfulTestCase defines three kinds of functions to help with this:
- expect functions - used to record the events that are expected to occur during the test case.
- assert functions - used to assert that the expected events actually occurred.
- actual event getters - used to access the actual events that were heard so that more specific assertions can be carried out.
Example 1: testing the dispatch of normal events
Shown below is a simple example which asserts that the temperatureChanges event is dispatched when the addPlutonium() function is called.
public function testAddPlutonium() : void { // record the expected event expectEvent( reactor, TemperatureChangeEvent.TEMPERATURE_CHANGE ); // perform the action that is being tested reactor.addPlutonium( plutonium ); // assert that the expected events occurred assertExpectedEventsOccurred( "The temperature change event was not dispatched." ); }
If the expected event is not dispatched, the test case will fail and the developer will be presented with a failure message to assist in debugging. In this case, the message might look like: "The temperature change event was not dispatched. Expected events <temperatureChangedEvent> but heard events <reactorStoppedEvent>". Now the developer knows that the addPlutonium() function contains a logical error which causes the wrong event to be dispatched.
Example 2: testing the dispatch of Cairngorm events
The next example is a little more complex and asserts that two Cairngorm events have occurred. Since Cairngorm events are dispatched through the CairngormEventDispatcher singleton instead of a regular Flex EventDispatcher, the CairngormEventSource adapter class must be used as the event source.
public function testRefreshPlutoniumStocks() : void { // record the expected events expectEvents( CairngormEventSource.instance, // adapter for Cairngorm events GetLocalPlutoniumStocksEvent.EVENT_NAME, GetNationalPlutoniumStocksEvent.EVENT_NAME ); // perform the action that is being tested reactor.refreshPlutoniumStocks(); // assert that the expected events occurred assertExpectedEventsOccurred( "The Cairngorm events to fetch local and national " + "plutonium stocks were not dispatched." ); }
Example 3: performing more detailed assertions
The final example builds on the first, demonstrating how to use the actual event getters for performing more detailed assertions.
public function testAddPlutonium() : void { // record the expected event expectEvent( reactor, TemperatureChangeEvent.TEMPERATURE_CHANGE ); // perform the action that is being tested reactor.addPlutonium( plutonium ); // assert that the expected events occurred assertExpectedEventsOccurred( "The temperature change event was not dispatched." ); // assert on the details of the actual event var temperatureChangeEvent : TemperatureChangeEvent = TemperatureChangeEvent( lastActualEvent ); var expectedTemperature : Number = 550; assertEquals( "The expected temperature change did not occur.", expectedTemperature, temperatureChangeEvent.temperature ); }
Known Limitations
EventfulTestCase only listens for the expected events and cannot hear unexpected events. The consequence of this is limited detail in the test failure messages. Only the expected events that actually occurred can be reported. The reason for this limitation is that the Flex framework does not enable us to listen to unspecified event types. In other words, we need to register listeners explicitly for each type of event that we want to listen to. One work-around would be to override the dispatchEvent() function of the EventListener framework class, but that would be overly intrusive. This limitation is not severe since the failure messages that can be provided are still reasonably useful.
It should also be noted that EventfulTestCase relies on the fact that most event dispatching takes place synchronously in Flex. When a function dispatches an event, we can be sure that any registered listeners will hear that event synchronously before the function continues and returns. In Flex applications, asynchronicity is typically confined to the I/O operations performed by the Flash Player, and these sit outside the normal realm of unit testing. It is usually possible to mock genuinely asynchronous behaviour, so that the class in question can be tested synchronously. When this is not the case, or for integration testing purposes, a more sophisticated solution is required.
The bugs and design flaws associated with event dispatching often slip the net when unit testing, allowing them to lurk in the deep and strike later. The EventfulTestCase extension helps to prevent this by making it quick and easy to test event dispatching. The process involves three stages: recording expectations, performing actions and asserting that the events occurred. As we attempt to build bigger and better Flex applications, we must test more thoroughly to ensure our success, and this must include testing events.
Posted by tsugden at 10:28 PM | Comments (7)


text:
Science Friday® is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Science Friday® and SciFri® are registered service marks of Science Friday, Inc. Site design by Pentagram; engineering by Mediapolis.
Choreographer Elizabeth Streb pushes the boundaries of Newtonian physics—with dance. In her show Forces, dancers fly, fall, and collide in mid-air. No wonder the "action architect" has her share of scientist fans, among them, big-thinking particle physicist Lisa Randall.
Click on the video below to see a few scenes from Forces:


text:
This Performance Accessories Body Lift Kit is designed to lift your Jeep Wrangler by placing 1" blocks between the body & frame. Included are extremely durable body lift block's that are constructed of a high grade reinforced nylon along with extended body bolts, required hardware and brackets. All bolts are grade 5 zinc plated for maximum strength and corrosion protection.
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All News
Only CBS
Latest Headlines
Margaret Brennan On Hosting Face The Nation, President Trump & 2020 Election
The host of Face The Nation discusses what it's like to interview President Trump and what to expect in the 2020 election cycle.
CBS News: President Donald Trump Live Blog
President Donald J. Trump will address the nation this evening from the Oval Office.
Ray Dunaway
Sound off Connecticut
All Sports
Red Sox
Featured Sports
Best Fits For NFL Free Agent Quarterbacks: Where Will Nick Foles, Teddy Bridgewater End Up?
Nick Foles and Teddy Bridgewater are the headliners of the QB free agent class. Where should they end up?
WWE Roster Changes, As NXT Takes Over Raw And SmackDown
WWE is in the midst of a major roster shakeup, as a second wave of NXT wrestlers are being called up to RAW and SmackDown.
UConn Football vs USF (11/4/2017)
UConn Football v. Tulsa [10/21/17]
Top Spots
Latest Headlines
Best Family Events For Easter In Connecticut
The somber days of Lent end with the celebration of Easter, a holiday wrapped in symbols of spring and new life. This year, Easter Sunday falls on April 1, and family-orientated celebrations will be held throughout Connecticut. Most events involve eggs, decorating them, rolling them and hunting for them — activities to entertain and delight the young and not so young. You can expect to find the Easter Bunny, a symbol of abundant life, playing a central role in this round-up of local Easter celebrations.
Best Ways To Celebrate St. Patrick's Day In Connecticut
Spring is ushered in each year with St. Patrick's Day and the wearing of the green. On March 17, everyone is Irish and ready to raise a pint to honor Ireland's patron saint. Parades, Celtic music and traditional Irish food make up the St. Patrick's Day celebrations throughout the state. Here's our roundup of not-to-miss St. Pat's events in Connecticut.
Best Locally-Owned Coffee Shops In Connecticut
Whenever you need a java fix, a Starbucks is usually close by, but you should first look for one of the state's many locally-owned coffeehouses.
Best Ways To Support Connecticut's Local Art Scene
Politics come and go, but art remains the enduring expression of who we are. Artistic communities thrive throughout Connecticut, strengthening local economies and uniting people of diverse backgrounds.
Best Crafty Classes In Connecticut
Learning a new skill, connecting with and focusing on a creative project, will deepen your self-awareness, develop your problem-solving skills, build your brain power with new neural pathways and reward you with a sense of satisfaction at having created something new. Reaping these benefits can start with registration in a class or workshop at one of these Connecticut art centers.
Best Healthy Breakfasts In Connecticut
Here are the best places to begin your morning.
Valentine's Day 2019: The Best Romantic Destinations In America
Looking for the most romantic locations in the America? Check out the most romantic destinations in America!
Best Beach Vacations On The Atlantic
A look at five of the best beach vacations with widest range of things to do and places to stay along the Atlantic Coast.
Treat Mom To A B&B Fit For A Queen
Treat your mother to a B&B fit for a queen this Mother's Day.
Explore America's Castles
These are five of the finest castles in America to explore for that next big vacation.
Best Art Museums In The Southwest
Many of America's best art museums can be found in the American Southwest.
CBS Entertainment
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WWE Insiders Pick Backlash
WWE insiders break down the WWE's upcoming Backlash pay-per-view, which brings together many of RAW and SmackDown's biggest stars.
WWE Backlash Overshadowed By CM Punk, NFL This Weekend
WWE's Backlash live event is stacked with strong matchups, even if it gets upstaged CM Punk's UFC debut and the NFL's opening weekend.


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Expiration Date Verification
From MACS
Expiration Date Verification:
What it is: A request for the expiration date of a subscription, usually received from agencies on a form letter.
How to process: Look up the subscription in question, put the expiration date on the form and fax to company-fax number may be on the back of the form.
You may also send the information by email if they provide an email address-if replying by email be sure to include their ID number or purchase order number and the subscriber information so that they can identify the response they are receiving.


text:
Precision Marketing needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 118 designs submitted by 46 freelance designers.
Looking for a top-notch logo for a top-notch company!
Precision Marketing Solutions, Inc.
Looking for a logo for our company - Precision Marketing Solutions, Inc. We provide a variety of marketing services to ecommerce sites, traditional companies and non-profits. We'd like a modern "web 2.0" look that conveys professionalism and innovation.
- Our full name is Precision Marketing Solutions, Inc, though that usually gets reduced to "Precision Marketing" and we own the URL so logo may look better with shortened name.
- We are open on color, but do want a modern, somewhat edgy feel.
- We will need final arkwork delivered in web and print formats.
- No huge objections here, but will want to reproduce logo in a number of mediums, so please keep that in mind.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Bryanna Clark Grogan's Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 21st Century Table: The kitchen journal of a vegan food writer.. I'm on Facebook and Twitter (see links in sidebar at right).
Saturday, February 17, 2007
I had a hankering for biscuits and gravy this morning, but didn't have much time. (Biscuits and gravy are a Southern US dish which I did NOT grow up with, but have come to enjoy very much.) I decided to try making biscuits from my homemade vegan, partly wholegrain pancake mix, which I had blogged about a couple of weeks, ago. I tried making them with less fat and also with oil instead of a solid fat, but they were much lighter and tastier this way:
2 cups Bryanna's Vegan All-American "Buttermilk" Pancake Mix
2 Tbs COLD vegan butter(try my homemade palm oil-free vegan Buttah)
1 Tbs lemon juice plus
10 Tbs soy or nut milk (2/3 c. liquid all together)
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Dump the mix into a bowl and cut in the cold vegan butter with two forks, or a pastry cutter until the mixture is like crumbs.
Mix together the lemon juice and milk. Pour into the mix and mix briefly with a fork.
Place the dough on a lightly-floured piece of cooking parchment and fold one side over the other, then repeat. Roll out to about 1/2" thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter. You can re-roll the scraps, but handle them gently so they don't get tough. Place on a baking sheet. Bake 12 minutes. Serve hot.
Servings: 8
Yield: 8 biscuits
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per biscuit): 132.3 calories; 38% calories from fat; 5.7g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 178.4mg sodium; 135.8mg potassium; 17.6g carbohydrates; 2.2g fiber; 1.5g sugar; 15.4g net carbs; 3.3g protein; 2.7 points.
Cooking Tips
Use about 3/4 cup lquid in total and drop spoonfuls close together in a nonstick baking pan.
For the gravy, I usually make a vegan "milk gravy" with some kind of vegan "chicken" or "sausage" in it. I had, for some reason, picked up a box of Bisto Traditional Gravy Mix last time I shopped. It's made for use with poultry and meat gravies, but the actual mix is vegan. It's a British product, but we have it here in Canada in most supermarkets. I was in a hurry, so I decided to try it with the biscuits, and it worked out very well! I have never used a gravy mix before! There are other brands with better ingredients, perhaps that would work in this recipe, but you might have to tinker with the amount of mix and you probably won't need to use the vegan broth powder.
Also good on toast! NOTE: I used Soy Curl "crumbs" in this-- the little pieces at the bottom of the bag. Just soaked them in hot vegan chicken-style broth and drained them.
2 1/2 cups soymilk or other nondairy milk
3 1/2 Tbs Bisto Traditional Gravy Mix (for poultry) (this is a vegan product-- see text above for info and alternatives)
2 tsp dark Asian sesame oil
1/2 Tbs vegan "chicken-style" broth powder (you may not need this with the alternative mixes listed above) or broth paste
1 cup ready-to-eat chopped vegan chicken sub (such as reconstituted Soy Curls) or vegan sausage, crumbled and browned
Mix the milk, Bisto, sesame oil, broth powder together with a whisk. Pour into a small skillet or medium saucepan and whisk constantly over high heat until it thickens and boils.
Remove from heat and stir in the chicken substitute. Serve hot over split biscuits.
Servings: 5
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 98.8 calories; 29% calories from fat; 3.3g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 625.1mg sodium; 263.8mg potassium; 10.6g carbohydrates; 0.7g fiber; 4.7g sugar; 9.9g net carbs; 8.1g protein; 2.1 points.
I tried a cappuccino with Almond Breeze-- the foam is nice, but the coffee is creamier with soymilk.
"Our gang", Sinéad, Ringo, and Tina waiting on the stairs like they do every morning, for us to come up and feed them!
5 comments:
Your cat pictures are just adorable. I love the way the gray and white cat looks like he is laying his head on the step. He's probably thinking they're never going to come, we may starve to death. LOL!I also like the winter picture of you walking down your lane in the snow. I've gone back and looked at it many times, it's such a relaxing winter picture.
Thanks for all you do, DebL
- Sun Feb 18, 12:12:00 PM PST
- bazu said...
I too love biscuits and gravy- your picture looks so delicious! Your cats are adorable- and so polite! Ours don't wait on the steps, they come into the room and meow until we give up and feed them. =)
- Tue Feb 20, 03:09:00 PM PST
- Celeste said...
Glad to see I'm not the only one who must serve a pride of cats!
- Tue Feb 20, 07:11:00 PM PST
Note to self:
Never read Bryanna's blog when hungry!
Off to scrounge something to eat! ;)
- Wed May 09, 02:36:00 PM PDT
- Lucille said...
I'm so glad I just had lunch! The biscuits and gravy look so good. Your cats are so sweet and patient. My daughter's cats jump on her bed at either four or five in the morning.
- Mon Feb 17, 11:02:00 AM PST


text:
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
John Royal deconstructs a myth
Has anyone ever seen a ballpark, anywhere, that is so laden with advertising? The "Fowl" polls and the Landry Crawford Boxes? The only space on the outfield wall that isn't plastered with advertising is the old-fashioned scoreboard in left field. No matter where one looks, there's advertising...
...And only a cheap bastard like McLane would forbid fans from bringing in their own food. The Astros are the only team in the major leagues that forbids its fans from bringing their own food...
...It's well-known that Drayton McLane is a cheap bastard because he was more than willing to endanger the lives of players, families, management, and umpires just because he didn't want to lose the projected revenue from a game against the Chicago Cubs in September of 2008...
...Repeat all you want that Drayton McLane being a cheap bastard is just a myth. Repeat it all that you want, but that still doesn't make it true. McLane's about as cheap as they come, and it's the Houston fans who continue to suffer as a result.
I can't refute any of that.
3 comments:
- Joe said...
WAAAA? You can bring your own food? SCREW YOU DRAYTON. PUTTING A FLASK IN MY BOOT.
- May 4, 2010 at 9:58 AM
- Reuben said...
Drayton has done some "cheap", money-conscious things, yes. But, and while I don't agree with his approach to draft budgetting, or food policy, etc.; it's silly to call him a "cheap bastard." McLane could be better, yes - but the Astros could do a lot worse than Drayton McLane as an owner.
By the way, if Royal thinks the Astros are the only team with sponsored lineup readings, scores, etc., and ads all around the ballpark, he really isn't paying attention.
- May 5, 2010 at 8:42 AM
- Kathy Amen said...
I'm not sure *all* the other ML parks allow your own food, but I know several that do. And it's really nice, plus it encourages entrepreneurship in the form of street food in the neighborhoods of these parks.
- May 5, 2010 at 9:22 AM


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I would like to join the others by thanking the PGA for convening this meeting and by expressing gratitude to the SG for his address and for his report devoted to State Responsibility and Prevention. In addition, allow me to greet the SG's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, Ms. Jennifer Welsh, and to thank the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Mr. Adama Dieng, for his work on this topic and in the preparation of this report.
Estonia alignsitself with the EU statement delivered earlier.
In addition I would like to make the following remarks:
I am pleased that we have the opportunity to continue our positive dialogue here in this forum by acknowledging that R2P is a concept that deserves our full attention. The question today is not on the concept as such, but rather on common principles of its implementation-- how to prevent or react to crimes that have occurred because the principles of the R2P were compromised or disregarded. While all pillars of the concept should receive equal and balanced attention, too often the world's attention is caught only once the third pillar is under consideration. Governments only come under real pressure to get involved once atrocious crimes have been committed and even then, rarely act. Thus, while the third pillar is of utmost importance, more attention should be drawn to the first two pillars. In this respect, Estonia considers it of utmost importance that perpetrators of international crimes are held accountable. A failure to fight impunity deprives the concept of R2P of a favorable future. In this regard, Estonia firmly believes that R2P and the International Criminal Court complement each other as both contribute to ending impunity. For us, supporting the work and aims of the ICC and preventing atrocity crimes are a priority. Achieving universality of the ICC's Rome Statute is an important step in the enforcement of the R2P principles, as only universal ratification of the Statute can ensure accountability for international crimes, wherever they are being committed. Likewise, within the UN system the Human Rights Council has the essential function of drawing attention to emergencies that might give rise to atrocity crimes. Estonia, as member of the Council, is committed to working proactively towards the fulfillment of its mandate and is actively engaged in the Council deliberations on accountability for serious violations of human rights and other atrocities.
Unfortunately, the crisis in Syria shows us the real consequences of not taking the R2P seriously. Such crises do not occur overnight and taking the right measures earlier could have helped prevent the extent to which the situation has deepened. If we are to give strength and meaning to the words and concepts discussed today, we must acknowledge the failure to act in Syria and the necessary steps that must be taken to bring an end to the crisis and accountability for the crimes committed.
As a part of the three pillars concept, the international community must assist or take collective action in a timely and decisive manner if the state itself is under stress. This is our responsibility as an international community. We cannot stay inactive when atrocity crimes are being committed. Therefore, in January this year Estonia co-signed the letter initiated by Switzerland sent to the Security Council, asking the Council to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC. My delegation is convinced that given the current situation in Syria mandating a referral to the ICC would add momentum to a process of accountability in Syria.
My delegation recognizes the importance of taking structural and operational measures to reduce the risk of atrocities. A State can protect itself from these crimes by creating a strong and balanced society based on the rule of law. What makes a strong and balanced society depends of course on many different factors and differs from state to state. Thus, it is very much up to the societies themselves and their leaders how to construct such a society so long as they honor human rights in the process.
In working to prevent atrocity crimes the importance of ensuring constitutional guarantees to citizens should be highlighted. Constitutional rights create a solid foundation on which a state can function in a just and peaceful manner, thereby reducing the risk of atrocity crimes. However, it is not enough to guarantee such constitutional rights if they are not supported by an effective and independent judiciary with accountability for those who commit offences against the law. The significance of applying the rule of law and good governance are essential elements when discussing prevention and R2P.
Lastly, in the prevention of atrocity crimes Estonia acknowledges that partnerships strengthen efforts, whether these are national, regional or international. Through collaboration, States are able to share ideas and experiences, thereby supporting efforts in prevention. We should also not forget that it is the primary duty of every state to exercise criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes. Unfortunately, national investigations and prosecutions of atrocity crimes remain rare and while the ICC is a court of last resort, it is an important institution for those situations where national jurisdictions are unable or unwilling to act. To avoid overburdening the Court however, it is of utmost importance that States support and assist one another to investigate and prosecute these crimes. Such support can be provided through helping States adopt the necessary national legislation for enacting the Responsibility to Protect.


text:
There is a man who was at the centre of the first WrestleMania and has been a part of every one thereafter, even if it's in a backstage capacity. Yes, Vince McMahon is the mastermind behind the sports entertainment revolution, but he wasn't in the middle of the ring at that first show. Rather, it was long time WWE employee Howard Finkel who assumed the ring announcing duties that night.
In person, Howard Finkel is an engaging and positive person. His love for wrestling is evident when he discusses the business. "Wrestling is my life. I bleed WWE, I wear WWE," Finkel said at the Niagara Falls Sport Expo, where he signed autographs and posed with fans.
His start in the business came about when he was a part-time usher at the New Haven Connecticut Coliseum in 1975. "Back when it (New Haven Connecticut Coliseum) was operating, the WWWF came in, then they went away and didn't come back," recalled Finkel.
At that time the World Wide Wrestling Federation was run by Vincent J. McMahon, the father of the current owner, Vincent K. McMahon. In a time before widespread cable television, the McMahons didn't think that their product was being shown in the New Haven, Connecticut, area and didn't think that promoting shows would be profitable. In 1975 there was a UHF television station from Long Island with a signal that came across to Long Island Sound and into the New Haven area clearly.
Finkel recalled that it was his devotion to wrestling that got him noticed. "I was a big fan. I went to the building manager and said, 'Mr. Smith, do you realize that the WWWF is on every week in this area?'" remembered Finkel. His employer phoned the WWWF office and told Vincent K. McMahon of his employee's observation. "He said to Vince, 'I gotta tell ya, there's somebody who works for me who is an absolute nut about you guys, and that is Howard Finkel. He told me that your show comes on over the air here as clear as a bell and I found out for myself as well.'"
The WWWF decided to take a chance and run the shows again in New Haven. The younger McMahon also wanted to meet the observant usher. "I met Vince on that evening in the summer of 1975 and he was very appreciative of my telling Mr. Smith about my situation and he found out that I was a very ardent fan of the product and before everything was done and said goodbye to him he gave me his phone number," said Finkel with a smile.
"And that was like, 'Oh my God, I got Vince McMahon's phone number!' It was amazing and one thing lead to another and I told him I did some public address announcing and things of that nature back in the old high school days. He was willing to give me an opportunity as a ring announcer."
On April 1, 1980, Finkel was hired by the WWWF as a full-time employee, and has been there as it morphed into the WWF and then WWE. "It has been a wonderful ride ever since and it shows no signs of ending and I don't want it to," emphasized Finkel.
When Vince K. McMahon began to organize the details of the first WrestleMania, Finkel was involved in the meetings. "So when the idea (WrestleMania) was presented to me I was ready for it," said Finkel with enthusiasm. "We started in 1984, a lot of things happened. The precursor was 1983 because we started expanding. Vince had a vision to go global. So, anything that came our way, my impression was let's go, I want to make this the best thing we can possibly do."
WrestleMania has become a brand that is recognizable throughout the world. The name "WrestleMania" has become synonymous with excellence and entertainment. But where did the name come from? "Back in 1984 there were many meetings going on to try and get the ship that we were painting launched," recalled Finkel. "With the visions of Vince McMahon we were going to try and establish ourselves not only as a sport but in the entertainment as well. So, a meeting was held to cross the t's and dot the I's. When it came time to come up with a name, what could we call this event?"
Finkel remembered the impression and mayhem that the Beatles created in 1964 and played with the idea. "This was 1984, so I said 20 years ago four guys from Liverpool came across the shores to the United States and made a phenomenal impression on everybody. They called that Beatlemania. So I said, 'There was Beatlemania. Why can't there be WrestleMania?'" The rest is history.
Being involved in 30 WrestleManias in some form or fashion is an impressive streak that Finkel is proud of. He has three WrestleMania moments that have made an indelible impression on his memory.
The first one is the very first WrestleMania in 1985. "That was the acid test. We didn't know where we were going but we were on our way," said Finkel. "We had, in my estimation, we showed the entertainment industry with the personalities that we had. What we in the wrestling industry knew how to present. The mix was flawless. The hybrid worked. I will always remember the first one because that set the bar for where we wanted to go beyond."
His second moment was from 1987, WrestleMania III from the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan. "How can you not include that as one of your favourite moments?" questioned Finkel. "We had WrestleMania I and WrestleMania II. They say good things come in threes. It was not good, it was awesome."
The crowd at the event amazed the veteran announcer. "When you are in the ring in front of 93,173 people announcing it was the thrill of a lifetime. I cherish that moment dearly. That was a major statement that was made." The sea of humanity and that excitement of the matches between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat made the event unforgettable.
For a man that has never donned tights and wrestling boots, it was particularly satisfying. "It's a rare club of individuals who have made that Hall of Fame and knowing that I have and still to this day continue to give everything I have no matter what I do in this company that is something that will always, always, be the epitome of greatness for me."
Today Finkel works for WWE.com and dispenses his Finkel facts to the staff when they need historical information. He has appeared on camera at every WrestleMania and if there is one streak that will not be beaten or broken it is his.
Caleb Smith was thrilled to meet the "Fink". He is a volunteer coach for Niagara Flag Rugby and registration is open. Go to www.niagaraflagrugby.com.


text:
evilolive needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 33 designs submitted by 10 freelance designers.
Need a logo for a running and triathlon coaching company targeting women who want to run or compete in triathlons but have reservations. Motivational, Fit, Athletic, and Modern define the company.
Active Souls
Triathlon Coach and Life Coach just starting out in Business needs a logo designed for web and print materials. I am a 40ish, conservative woman who has a passion for marathons and triathlons. The company is meant to encourage women to try (or "tri") something that they have always wanted to do but need a little direction.
I am very partial to natural colors and tend to like things simple and conservative. Which is why I need help. I want something modern and maybe a little edgy that has a young, active feel to it.
Triathlon is swim, bike, and run but I also want to convey a "life balance" and non-intimidating company.
- Logo with company name Active Souls
- Modern, trendy, edgy
- Muted, natural colors
- Targets 30+ women who are not athletic but want to get in shape through running or triathlons
- Winning designer must include .eps and .ai files upon design finalization
- Nothing too frilly, girly, or "cute"
- No Bold Colors (I especially hate Red and and Yellow)
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Henri T. de Hahn - Professor of Architecture
Professor Henri T. de Hahn is the head of the department of architecture at Cal Poly. He currently teaches architecture, cultural landscapes and urban preservation.
How do architects shape the world?
Architects create public spaces that express a dynamic urban life and model ideal civic activities.
Professor de Hahn Does:
Urban Preservation
Cultural Landscapes
Swiss Architecture
Position Professor & Architecture Department Head
Phone 805-756-1316
Fax 805-756-1500
Email email@example.com
Office 05-218
Office Hours 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (please contact department)
Web Page http://gallery.me.com/henridehahn#gallery
De Hahn serves as a member on the California Architecture Foundation Board of Regents.
The Cooper Union, New York, 1986
M.Arch, EPF-Lausanne, Switzerland, 1985
The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), New York, 1983
B.S., College Saint Michel, Fribourg Switzerland, 1979
Teaching Experience
Professor, Architecture Department, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, 2006–present
Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington 1987–2006
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, ETH-Zürich, 1993–96
Visiting Lecturer, Art Center College of Design, Vevey 1993–96
State of Vaud, Switzerland, 1985
International Associate AIA, 2010–present
Vernacular Architectural Forum (VAF), 2000–present
The Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA), 1985–present
SIA, State of Vaud, 1985–present
National Trust for Historic Preservation, Member, 1996–present
Montreal native Henri T. de Hahn moved with his family to Vienna, Austria, at a young age, and at nine to Switzerland. After graduating from the College St-Michel in Fribourg with a B.S., de Hahn was trained as an architect at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, completing an M.Arch in 1985. He studied under distinguished faculty member Robert Slutzky and completed his thesis under Pierre von Meiss. During his studies he interned for a year with Atelier Cube in Lausanne, Switzerland, and attended his fifth year at The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York City under the tutelage of George Ranalli, Diana Agrest, and Anthony Vidler. Upon completion of his degree, de Hahn studied a year at The Cooper Union under Raimund Abraham and interned at a New York firm working on a number of renovation projects.
In 1987, de Hahn was invited by Anthony Eardley to join the faculty as a lecturer and later became an Assistant and Associate Professor at the College of Architecture, University of Kentucky. Between 1993–96 he taught in Switzerland in the Architecture Department at the ETH-Zürich, and at the Art Center in Vevey while working with the architectural firm Musy et Vallotton Architectes in Lausanne. After his return to the United States, he focused his teaching and research agenda on an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving strategies between the departments of architecture, historic preservation and interior design. During his nineteen years at Kentucky, he held several administrative positions and completed a number of architectural projects under his firm Atelier de Hahn in conjunction with his wife Tracee de Hahn.
In August 2006, de Hahn was appointed Department Head and Professor of the Architecture Department of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Under his leadership, the Department advanced the core curriculum, expanded the interdisciplinary approach to design; diversified its off-campus programs, including international exchange programs, professional and co-op studios; established a robust publication series; and developed a number of strategies pertaining to a culture of giving among alumni and industry partners.
De Hahn is a registered architect in Switzerland, and member of the Swiss Society of Architects (SIA), REG A, International Associate AIA, and numerous professional societies both in Europe and America.
De Hahn's scholarly activities have brought his interest towards a reevaluation of modernist theories by working on projects that emphasize contemporary architecture within a cultural urban context. A variety of interests ranging from building types to the transference of vernacular structures to high architecture as well as the tectonic of materials and their construction have, in the last decade led de Hahn towards a renewed interest in a realistic/visionary theoretical underpinning of his work. This has brought him to explore projects of at a larger scale through which he wishes to develop an urban architecture understood as Land Art. Recent research has brought de Hahn to investigate the mapping of the city as an analogous principle of settlement.
Select Scholarship
This project is a landscape for the restoration and renovation of the historic 1824 African Cemetery No.2 in Lexington, Kentucky. Conceived as two parts (Cemetery/Research Center), the project explores a theme central to architecture: building in the landscape and the landscape as building.
This project emerges from the cemetery's neglect, the memory of slavery, 19th century railroad engineering, and renewed prejudices and vandalism against the burial ground.
In the cemetery's eight acres, 5,000 horizontal commemorative stones will mark the known and the unknown graves of Buffalo soldiers, community leaders and citizens. An open-air Entrance Pavilion is a microcosm of the cemetery as well as a metaphor of the possible activities: chapel, museum, retreat, and learning.
The Research Center, located west on the reclaimed cemetery land, is a modified city block; an insert imagememory of the Land Ordinance Act. The new grounds and the roof of the research center become a series of Belvederes. Thematic gardens explore historical themes of African American agrarian activities and compliment the adjacent landscape of the existing cemetery.
Contemporary public architecture must by a dynamic force in today's field of preservation and urban communities, and offer to the less privilege of the inner cities of America a place for the expression of a model of life and civic activities. African Cemetery seeks to revitalize public activities located on the North side of Lexington.
ICOMOS International Council on Monuments and Sites: http://www.international.icomos.org
Architects Without Borders: http://www.architectswithoutborders.com/
The Architectural League of New York: http://www.archleague.org/
National Trust for Historic Preservation: http://www.nationaltrust.org/
Netherlands Architecture Institute: http://www.nai.nl/
Swissnex: http://www.swissnex.org/
World Monuments Fund: http://www.wmf.org/


text:
The Rings of Akhaten (that's pronounced AK-A-TEN if you were wondering) is a science-fiction filled, fun-packed emotional rollercoaster of an episode. The pre-title sequence is quite confusing, which we probably won't get our heads around fully until the end of the series, but it starts with a 1981 hit song Ghost Town which introduces us to two characters, Dave Oswald and Ellie Oswald (nee Ravenwood), Clara's parents. It appears the Doctor has been stalking them throughout history, watching 'The Impossible Girl' grow up....but why?
We start off after the pre-title sequence pretty much where we left off in the previous episode, except a day later (presumably 7pm, as promised) and welcome aboard Clara Oswald, official TARDIS traveler Where does the Doctor take her first? The Pyramid of the Rings of Akhaten, a place he has visited in his very first incarnation with his Grand-daughter, Susan, which a great reference to the Classic Doctor Who. Again, no fault with the acting of any of the cast or guest cast, it was clearly done with 100% effort which cannot be faulted.
The element of music in this episode stood tall against everything else, with a slight variation of Clara's Theme helped us hear Ellie's Theme, and both the musical elements which where a significant part in the plot were just amazing, specifically the final piece, ''Wake Up''. Murray Gold needs to be congratulated on such great creations on this series!