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N.Y.'s Grimm: Labor's GOP ally
He has a 44 percent AFL-CIO voting score and has slammed President Barack Obama repeatedly. A legal inquiry into his campaign finances has made headlines for months.
Yet Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who came into office in the tea party wave of 2010, has remained a favorite for some segments of the union movement, boosting his prospects in a key swing district in a blue state – the kind of place where Democrats must win to have any shot at winning the House next year.
The Staten Island Republican has, for the past two years, been a favorite of the buildings and trade unions. But he's also gotten a boost from the silence of the AFL-CIO, which declined to take a position in his campaign against Democratic candidate Mark Murphy in 2012.
( Also on POLITICO: AFL-CIO targets GOP on immigration)
But some of the individual labor groups within the AFL-CIO are free to take a position in campaigns even if the umbrella group declines to. In the case of Staten Island, some have – including the Mason Tenders District Council's PAC is supporting Grimm.
Grimm is one of the Republicans who've benefited from a split within labor – with buildings trades peeling off from other groups. That was the case in New Jersey, where Republican Gov. Chris Chrisie won their support for his budgets over the past few years.
Still, some unions point to elements of Grimm's record that are less friendly to labor's traditional priorities – such as his support for the House GOP budgets over the past several years, which Democrats have denounced as draconian. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has called the budgets "devastating."
And national Democrats have pounded Grimm over an ongoing federal probe into his campaign finances, which earlier this year resulted in a plea deal involving one of the congressman's fundraisers.
"I think it's a terrible mistake," said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, of union support for Grimm. "Labor needs to consider the effect on all working people [with its endorsements]." Appelbaum said his union plans to back the Democrat who runs against Grimm next year.
( Also on POLITICO: Unions sitting out Obamacare enrollment)
The split represents a brewing battle within a typically Democratic-leaning constituency over the next year, especially with Grimm being a top target for Democrats. Longtime Democratic New York City Councilman Domenic Recchia has made clear he plans to challenge Grimm.
Mike McGuire, director of the Mason Tenders PAC, said that the group needs the roughly 40 to 45 Republicans who have had a history of voting favorably on buildings trades issues, and that accounts for their support.
"If we turn our backs on Mike Grimm, the other 44 Republicans have no reason to believe we're [loyal] partners," said McGuire.
Another very prominent New York congressman, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) of Long Island, has been a beneficiary of union support over the years.
"My father was in a union, so I grew up in a labor family and know how hard the men and women of New York City's labor unions work," Grimm said in an emailed statement to POLITICO.
"I believe strongly in what they do, and my voting record in Congress is evidence of that with my support for competitive wages and the collective bargaining process. When it comes to the issues that actually effect the day-to-day work of union members, they will always have my full support. I am proud that the unions stood with me in my last campaign, and I look forward to having their support once again."
A source close to Grimm pointed out that some labor groups score votes that aren't specifically related to unions in their scorecards, so that can affect rankings.
Among Grimm's votes that labor officials such as Appelbaum have taken issue with are an April 2012 motion that would have permitted a 20 percent income tax cut for firms sending jobs overseas, a March 2012 vote amending a requirement that large U.S. firms disclose what jobs are based on American soil, and a 2011 vote to cut the number of weeks people can receive unemployment benefits.
Labor has also taken issue over the years with his attacks on Obama, whom he's savaged as standing against the nation's values.
Officials with the national AFL-CIO, which usually takes cues from local state chapters in endorsements, referred calls to New York AFL-CIO officials. Those officials declined comment.
"Too many unions are being transactional in the endorsement process," Appelbaum said. "Even when Grimm is willing to do favors [for labor on specific issues] … it doesn't negate that he is voting against the interests of working people and the broader interests of members of those unions."


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Pastor Rob Morris of Newtown's Christ the King Lutheran Church provided the closing benediction at an interfaith event following the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 16.
Published at 6:33 a.m. ET: A Connecticut Lutheran pastor has apologized for participating in an interfaith prayer vigil for the 26 children and adults killed at a Newtown elementary school in December because his church bars its clergy from worshipping with other faiths.
The December prayer vigil was attended by President Barack Obama, leaders from Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths, and relatives of the 20 first graders who were gunned down in their classrooms two days earlier after a gunman entered their school.
The Dec. 14 shooting shook the nation and led to calls for improved school security, gun control and better mental health care.
Watch the entire interfaith vigil for Connecticut shooting victims, including President Obama's speech. Pastor Rob Morris gives the closing benediction, beginning 73 minutes, 10 seconds into the video.
The pastor, Rob Morris of Newtown's Christ the King Lutheran Church, provided the closing benediction at the interfaith event on Dec. 16.
Earlier this month, the president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Pastor Matthew Harrison, wrote a letter to church members saying he had requested an apology from Morris for his participation in "joint worship with other religions."
"There is sometimes a real tension between wanting to bear witness to Christ and at the same time avoiding situations which may give the impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us, and how we get to heaven, really don't matter in the end," Harrison wrote.
"There will be times in this crazy world when, for what we believe are all the right reasons, we may step over the scriptural line," he wrote.
Harrison said he had accepted Morris' apology.
This is not the first time a Lutheran leader has been chastised for participating in a community service in the wake of a local tragedy.
'False teaching'
David Benke, a Lutheran pastor in New York, was suspended for praying at an interfaith vigil in 2001, 12 days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Benke, who had refused to apologize for the incident, was reinstated in 2003.
In his own letter to his church, Morris wrote that it was not his intent to endorse "false teaching" and apologized to those who believed he had.
"I did not believe my participation to be an act of joint worship, but one of mercy and care to a community shocked and grieving an unspeakably horrific event," he wrote. "I apologize where I have caused offense by pushing Christian freedom too far, and I request you charitably receive my apology."
Full coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting from NBC News
Fierce debate after Newtown school shootings: Where was God?
People of Newtown pray and grieve together

subset: commoncrawl


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Greetings all. It's obviously been awhile since I posted and I apologize for the abrupt departure. With MLB's blessing, I'm taking a break from this blog to work on a couple of other opportunities. Specifically, I've been given a chance to do some freelance work for ESPN Page 2. Here is my debut if you are interested.
Thanks for your support here and I'll let everyone know if/when I come back. In the meantime, if you want to hear my thoughts on fantasy baseball, I'm still contributing each week to the Roundtable feature that runs Wednesdays on MLB.com's main fantasy site.
Thanks again for reading and I hope you'll continue as I write on other platforms.
– Toby
Toby Awards
We are now a third of the way through the MLB season, enough
time for me to dust off my favorite gimmick – The Toby Awards! (Previous
editions here and here). Let's get right
to it.
Punch-Out Award for
Most Anticipated Arrival
When news broke that the classic Nintendo game "Punch-Out"
was being resurrected and adapted for the Wii, I was giddy. Outside of maybe Tecmo Bowl, there isn't a
more iconic title that had yet to be updated.
I couldn't wait for release day so I could reunite with Little Mac and
recreate his slightly racist rise to glory (even a Larry the Cable Guy show
isn't as chalked full of stereotypes).
And The Toby Goes To – Matt Wieters:
As much as I pined for Punch-Out, it didn't begin to compare to how hard the
fantasy community sweated out Wieters' arrival.
It was amazing that following the announcement, a ton of writers
wrote similar apocryphal stories from 25 years in the future describing all of
his accomplishments. If I had been hit
upon the head and knocked out, I might actually thought I'd been in a two
decade long coma and have taken them as fact.
How else could you explain everyone writing the same thing?
New York Skyline
I moved out of New York City five years ago this month and I
must say I don't really miss living there anymore. But every time I come back to visit, I
cherish that first look of the Manhattan skyline. No matter how many times you see it, it never
gets old.
And The Toby Goes To – Raul Ibanez: Speaking of refusing to age (and tenuous
transitions), Raul Ibanez numbers are absolutely stunning so far this year and
is going to end up on a lot of championship teams (hopefully mine). Seeing him rake this season has been like
owning a stock for several years that has provided consistent, but low-level
returns that suddenly explodes for no real reason. Please, oh please let this hypothetical
investment not be in an HGH company.
Rock and Roll Ain't
Noise Pollution Award for Perfect Beginning
You know on your IPod how if you just press play without
making a selection or choosing shuffle, the same song always comes on? On mine, it's ACDC's "Rock and Roll Ain't
Noise Pollution," so I've heard the beginning of this song many, many
times. And you know what? The first 20 seconds are absolutely
perfect. It's a slow, clean guitar riff
with the lead singer lighting a butt and taking a puff in the background. It's exactly how a rock song should
And The Toby Goes To – Zack Greinke: The start to Greinke's season has been just
as perfect and just like starting up the IPod, each time he takes the hill
seems to turn out the same way. He
hasn't just beaten hitters this year, he's demoralized them. Beginning the season with four consecutive
shutouts was particularly inspired. We
haven't seen a Zach perform at this high of level since the Five Aces
doowhop'd all over the Bayside High sock hop. (You knew a "Saved
by the Bell" joke was coming, but probably not that one. It happened during the Tori Senior Year,
which even the show disavowed ever happened).
LeBron James Award
for Best Performance Without a Supporting Cast
If you watched the Eastern Conference finals then this award
needs no further explanation. If it was
a reality show, it could have been called "Lebron the Great Plus Eight." While King James gave the performance of a
lifetime, his eight teammates in the rotation ran around helplessly, causing
havoc and doing more harm than good.
Winner – And The Toby Goes To: Gonzo is wasting a career
year in San Diego, as his offensive teammates have been absolutely
terrible. He's nearly doubled up his
next closest teammate in Runs, RBIs, and Home Runs. Click this link,
you'll see the same face staring back at you everywhere. Kinda creepy (mainly because he looks like a
player from "Backyard Baseball" came to life), but a fitting tribute to his
Big Whiskey and the
Groogrux King Award for Most Disappointing Hometown Performance
Growing up in Virginia and going to school in
Charlottesville, the day the Dave Matthews Band released a new album was among
the most highly anticipated of the year.
I remember popping in "Before These Crowded Streets" and driving
aimlessly around my hometown for an hour while listening and then rushing home
so I could play it again. But their
latest release is bland, uninspired and terrible. It sounds like someone doing a Dave Matthews
impression and doing it poorly. If a
band called "Lie in our Graves" played this album at a local coffeehouse, they
would be booed out of the overly-pretentious building.
Winner –And The Toby Goes To: Here is what you really need to know about
the Nats bullpen – the team is going to score 200 more runs than they did last
year, the starting pitching has been roughly equivalent, and they are still
going to lose over 100 games. At this
point, I'd rather see the British Army enter Washington than a Nats reliever. I hate them.
See you Monday.
Another Roundtable
Greetings all. I'm in the midst of traveling, I apologize for not having a new mailbag today. As long as I'm already disappointing you, I might as well say there won't be an interview on Friday either. But I'm working on an interview that I hope will make up for it next week. In the meantime, here is another roundtable. You should be thanking me, this way you actually get sound advice.
I will have a post up tomorrow. See you then.
Marry, Bury, Date: Week 9
back to another week of Marry, Bury, Date — the childhood game I've hijacked
to provide the framework for my initial foray into providing expert fantasy
baseball advice.
premise of the game is simple. Three names
are thrown out and the participants must pick which one they would Marry (ie
commit to long-term), Bury (get rid of forever), or Date (could be fun in the
short-term). When considering trade offers or waiver wire
pick-ups, fantasy players are faced with these same three decisions all the
time, so in an effort to help aid these choices, I'll name one player who I
like for the rest of the season, one player who I think could help in the
short-term, and one guy I wouldn't touch in this space each week.
I'm done, if you want to whisper to the player that I "like 'em, like
'em" that's up to you. If you do, I
look forward to the awkwardness that ensues all the way through the Junior High
Prom. Maybe I'll get my courage up and ask them to
dance during Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight."
week's picks are below.
Expert League Update: Heads A Rollin'
This past week my team drew the hot hand, losing to Jon
Williams and his endless cavalcade of two-start pitchers 7-3. Overall, my squad didn't perform that poorly,
they just got outplayed in one given week and when that happens, you shake
hands and move on (unless you are Lebron James, then you storm out to show your
"competitiveness." I hope they make a commercial
immediately where puppet Lebron refuses to shake hands after Kobe beats
him. Though to be fair, I probably
wouldn't shake hands with Kobe unless I just saw him wash them. Never know where they've been. Even the puppet version.) Besides, it's hard to get that upset when you
are in first place and your lead in the standings actually grew despite suffering
through your own beatdown.
What's of greater interest is the number of fairly big names
that have ended up on the waiver wire recently in this league of experts. As we explore each week in Marry, Bury, Date,
there comes a time when it's necessary to completely give up on a guy. For several ballplayers who received plenty
of preseason hype, that time has apparently come. Even in a league where 350 players are
rostered, an expert thought they were no longer worth owning.
Here is a list of guys who have been dropped so far in this
expert league and a couple of brief thoughts on each.
Kevin Gregg
(dropped 5/22) – After one owner decided to completely punt saves, he sent
Gregg packing. I thought this was the
most shocking drop on the list, given the huge premium closers went for in the
initial draft. I know he's had a few
blow-ups, but he still is the number one 9th inning option for a
contending team. I actually burned the
number one waiver priority to pick him up.
I think he'll be worth it in a league this deep.
Fantasy Baseball Expert Interview: Geoff Stein
Welcome back to the newest installment in our series of
interviews aimed at giving readers insight into the minds and backgrounds of
those fantasy writers and pundits who have reached the level of
"expert." It seems there has been an explosion in the number of
people claiming the title in the last few years, but no one seems to know where
they come from. These interviews aim to change all that, while also giving
aspiring "experts" (such as myself) some advice on both how to break
into the industry and ways to improve your fantasy skills.
Our guest this week is Geoff Stein, the operations manager
for Mock Draft Central.
your opinion, what makes you a fantasy expert? (basically the polite way of
asking – why should people listen to you?)
I don't think people should listen to me. I like to point things out and
allow people to make their own choices/decisions. I'm not a "do this"/"don't
do that" type of writer; instead I
focus on producing an original, entertaining piece that makes people
Expert League Update: Ya Heard?
This past weekend, I traveled to Arkansas for a
wedding. It was a great one. You know how you go to a ballgame or stay out
too late one night and when you wake up the next day you've lost your
voice? It almost always means you had a
good time the day before. Well I took
that to the next level. When I woke up on
Monday, I had lost my hearing. Couldn't
hear out of my left ear. Spent most of
the recap lunch staring at my plate wishing the food would disappear without me
actually having to eat it and pretending to follow the conversation around
me. Guess that means I had an awesome
time on Sunday.
Because of the weekend events, I didn't follow my expert
league match-up at all. Even forgot to
set my lineup for the weekend before I left on Friday. You know what? Didn't matter. The results didn't change a bit. I won 5-4-1, the exact same result that would
have occurred had I scoured the wire for last second free agent fill-ins and stared at
the scoreboard all weekend.
Like many fantasy players, I can get caught up in the
obsession and pay too much attention to every at-bat, pitch, and play. It's too bad "time spent hoping" isn't a
fantasy category, as I would clean up.
While I usually enjoy following my players extremely closely, it's still
nice to see that you can step away for a few days without consequence. Fantasy baseball isn't like the Hatch in "Lost." You don't have to push the button every 108
minutes to prevent the end of the world, even though it often feels that way.
Someday I might forget to put a pitcher in and it will cost
me a few categories. But today I take
comfort in knowing that even in an intense expert league, it's possible to step
back for a few days without changing a thing.
Gives me time to focus on other matters.
Like getting my hearing back.
I'll be back tomorrow with an interview featuring Mock Draft
Central's Geoff Stein. Until then.
Mailbag: How To Regain Interest in a Lost Season
Dear Internet Man Who
Lives in My Computer,
I have a question. This is the time in the fantasy baseball season when I have
trouble staying motivated. I start going away on weekends to go to weddings or
bachelor parties or the beach or, more likely, the office, and fantasy baseball
isn't always the top item on my list of things to catch up on during the week.
Plus, especially in my points league, the status quo seems to be sorting stuff
out so I feel like I'm destined to finish in 4th to 7th place no matter what I
do. Nobody good is available on waivers, at least anybody who will make a real
difference in my performance, and I'm too lazy to trade with anybody but the
guy who low-balls me four times a day. Any advice about how to keep my interest
up and make a move?
PS – okay, maybe more like 6th to 9th place.
Hey, good to hear from you again Krod Mandoon. How is your epic quest to ruin television
going? From what I hear, you are almost
there. Congrats.
Losing interest as the season goes on is a common problem,
though one not always caused by "my life is too awesome to care" syndrome,
which you seem to possess. If I was
traveling every weekend to hang out with my friends or go to the beach, I'd
probably lose interest too. Sounds pretty
nice. Your office is probably on a
boat. Jerk.
If you are still fielding trade offers and checking the
waiver wire, it sounds like you are not quite a lost cause yet, which is
terrific. There is nothing worse than
being in a league where guys completely check out in May (Ok, maybe a couple
things are worse – plague, famine, Coldplay).
I hope no matter how much you stop caring, you always log-in at least
once a week for 30 seconds to set your lineup.
If you can't do that, you should give up fantasy baseball as a hobby
because such behavior can ruin it for everyone.
Now please put your hands up everyone, the only way I exit my soap box
is through crowd-surfing.
But since you seem to care a little about fantasy
baseball (you are reading this blog after all), here are four suggestions on
how to jumpstart your interest.
Marry, Bury, Date: Week 8
Welcome back to another week of Marry, Bury, Date — the
childhood game I've hijacked to provide the framework for my initial foray into
providing expert fantasy baseball advice.
The premise of the game is simple. Three names are thrown out and the participants
must pick which one they would Marry (ie commit to long-term), Bury (get rid of
forever), or Date (could be fun in the short-term). When considering trade offers or waiver wire
pick-ups, fantasy players are faced with these same three decisions all the
time, so in an effort to help aid these choices, I'll name one player who I
like for the rest of the season, one player who I think could help in the
short-term, and one guy I wouldn't touch in this space each week.
After I'm done, if you want to whisper to the player that I
"like 'em, like 'em" that's up to you.
If you do, I look forward to the awkwardness that ensues all the way
through the Junior High Prom. Maybe I'll
get my courage up and ask them to dance during Oasis's "Wonderwall."
This week's picks are below.
Fantasy Baseball Expert Interview: Todd Farino
back to the newest installment in our series of interviews aimed at giving
readers insight into the minds and backgrounds of those fantasy writers and
pundits who have reached the level of "expert." It seems there
has been an explosion in the number of people claiming the title in the last
few years, but no one seems to know where they come from. These interviews
aim to change all that, while also giving aspiring "experts" (such as
myself) some advice on both how to break into the industry and ways to improve
your fantasy skills.
Our guest this week is Todd Farino, the founder of Fantasy
Baseball Search and the creator of our Expert League.
In your opinion, what makes you a fantasy expert?
(basically the polite way of asking – why should people listen to you?)
I don't really like to call
myself an expert. I'll leave that to the readers. I love to analyze
baseball from a strategy POV. I think the reason why I have success and
hopefully why people should listen to me is I don't beat around the bush.
I tell it like it is. Some analysts won't risk their reputation on tough
calls, but I will. I have a history of winning, playing tough
competitors, and backing up everything I say. If people want to take
advantage of skills that I have built over the past 18+ years the more to
them. I still feel I have alot of growth left to do and I'm constantly
revising my strategies every season. The key to winning is to stay
ahead of everyone else. I do that the pretty well so far and I don't
succumb to the pressures of the industry. I'm very raw in that sense.


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[Update: The poll closes Sunday at midnight, so vote now if you haven't already!]
It's that time of the year again! With the Big Three press conferences all behind us and the hype train now charging down the track at full steam, it's time to pick your favorite game of E3!
We've had our hands on dozens of games over the last few days and weeks -- some brand new, some announced ages ago -- but only one is destined for the coveted Destructoid Community Choice Award. Choose wisely!
For a refresher of much of what's been announced, click below for recaps of all the major press conferences, or just visit our E3 hub to see it all:
Decided? Good! Now hit the jump and cast your vote!
Don't see a game you think should be in the poll? Leave a comment with your suggestion and we'll add it!
You are logged out. Login | Sign up


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The Highest Grossing Movies of All Time
The highest grossing movies of all time, here in all their cinematic and box office splendor. These top movies at the box office include some of the best movies of all time and some of the best movie franchises ever. This list includes only domestic gross numbers, which means these films are the highest grossing in U.S. history.
The highest grossing films of all time include some recent blockbusters you won't be surprised to see on the list (like The Avengers and Jurassic World, but it also has some holdouts from the earlier years of cinema that might surprise you (without giving away their position on the list, Star Wars and E.T. have held up remarkably well). If it's made a ton of money at some point, it's probably among the top grossing movies.Is there really one movie that can be called the highest grossing film (you know, because of inflation)? Before you go on the "well, this list of the top grossing films of all time isn't accurate because it doesn't account for inflation", know that there is a whole other list for the highest grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation); so go over there next and take a look at the "real" highest grossing movie rankings.
$936,662,225 (2015)
$700,059,566 (2018)
$678,815,482 (2018)
$620,181,382 (2017)
$605,633,025 (2018)
$532,177,324 (2016)
$504,014,165 (2017)
$486,295,561 (2016)
$416,282,080 (2018)
$412,563,408 (2017)


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In our continuing efforts to streamline your airport experience and optimize processing times, Air Canada is expanding the number of airports where it will no longer accept cash as a form of payment.
Airports in Canada
Effective April 16th, 2020, cash payments will no longer be accepted at Air Canada counters located at the following airports: Toronto Pearson (YYZ).
And a reminder that the Air Canada counters at the following Canadian airports are already cashless: Calgary (YYC), Edmonton (YEG), Halifax (YHZ), Ottawa (YOW), Quebec City (YQB), Saskatoon (YWG), St. John's (YYT), Toronto Island (YTZ), Vancouver (YVR), Victoria (YYJ), Winnipeg (YWG), Montréal (YUL) and Fort McMurray (YMM).
Airports in the United-States
Since January 8th, 2019 cash payments are no longer be accepted at any Air Canada airport counters in the United States.
Payment Options
If you are departing from an airport where cash is no longer accepted, you have the option of paying tickets as well as baggage and other fees with any major credit or debit card.
And remember that you can always pre-pay baggage and other fees online at time of check-in from 24 hours before your flight up until the check-in deadline.
Cash Conversion to a Prepaid Credit Card
If you don't have a credit card, ReadySTATION kiosks are available at most airports and offer cash conversion to a prepaid credit card.
Where such kiosks are not available, an alternative solution is to purchase a prepaid credit card at the Airport Currency Exchange or at other convenience stores. If you do choose this option, please make sure to keep your prepaid credit card (even if its value has reached zero) until all travel associated with the card has been completed. In the event of a refund, this will allow us to return the amount to your original form of payment.


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The US broadcaster NBC is facing growing criticism after editing their delayed coverage of the London 2012 opening ceremony to replace the "memorial wall" tribute section with a Ryan Seacrest interview with Michael Phelps.
NBC, exclusive holders of the US rights to the Games, chose to broadcast the entire ceremony on a time-delay to maximise primetime advertising revenue, and were further criticised for refusing to provide a live online stream.
NBC's broadcast, which began as the live ceremony was finishing in London, left out sections including the reflective moment when the Scottish singer Emeli Sandé sang Abide with Me.
The section included images of loved ones lost by those in the stadium, and was also widely interpreted as a tribute to the 52 victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London in 2005.
On the BBC's coverage, commentator Hazel Irvine said: "The excitement of that moment in Singapore seven years ago when London won the Games was tempered with great sorrow the very next day, with the events on 7 July."
However NBC instead cut away in order to show Seacrest, the host of American Idol, interview Phelps.
Criticism of NBC's handling of the broadcast rights comes after it revealed its advertising income from the event has passed $1bn (£630m). It earned $850m from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In reaction to complaints over the lack of a live stream from the ceremony, NBC said: "We are live streaming every sporting event, all 32 sports and all 302 medals … The opening and closing ceremonies, however, are entertainment spectacles.
"Our award-winning production team will present them on a medium that best demonstrates their grandeur and majesty, and at a time when friends and family are able to gather together to watch, which is in primetime."


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One of the aspects of Azure development that I have found the least amount of information written about is the deployment of your application components. This is especially the case when it comes to ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) approaches are considered. As with most things you get the WSYWG demo, but not how things should actually be done in an enterprise environment. This post will try to cover as many deployment approaches as possible. While it won't be comprehensive it will give you enough alternatives to start coming up with your own processes.
This is usually where every demo of Azure development begins and ends. You right your web app or cloud service and "Poof!", your solution magically ends up in your Azure environment. In this scenario you use the publish option of the project context menu to open a wizard that allows you to connect to an Azure subscription and define where you what site or service you want to publish too. The process is even simpler if you defined these parameters when you created the project.
While creating web jobs I came across this method of deployment. You zip up your web job solution and go to Web Jobs under Settings for your Web App and you will see the blade shown below. You can learn more about this in my earlier post here.
This is the point where we get to a manageable deployment process. Once you have finished coding your Cloud Service you can go to the project in Visual Studio and create a deployment package using the context menu shown below.
Once you have that visit your cloud service in the portal and select the Update button. The blade in the figure below will appear and allow you to upload the package and the appropriate configuration. Azure will then complete the deployment from the provided resources.
If you like to be hands on FTP may be the deployment approach that is right for your team. It should be familiar to anyone who is used to manually copying their files to a web server. Once you go into Deployment Credentials for your Web App as shown below and then grab the FTP host name from the properties page you will be able to navigate straight to the wwwroot directory and copy your application files to the server.
Any of us who have been in this game for a couple of decades know that automated builds and deployments save a lot of manual deployment mistakes. Thankfully we have a number of options for deploying from source control to Azure. Rather than explain each I'll put a couple of links here that do a good job of explaining the process of setting these scenarios up..
Visual Studio Online
TFS On Premis
This post gives just a quick taste of Azure deployments from the quick and dirty options to methods better suited for enterprise developments processes. Be sure to try as many of them out as possible to understand they fit with your development team.
Print | posted on Thursday, November 5, 2015 10:09 PM
Tim is a Solutions Architect for PSC Group, LLC. He has been an IT consultant since 1999 specializing in Microsoft technologies. Along with running the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group and speaking on Microsoft and architecture topics he was also contributing author on "The Definitive Guide to the Microsoft Enterprise Library".


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The coaches often say that your follow through on the forehand should be such that after you complete it, your hand should come in front of you as if you are watching the time. Same thing would probably apply to a double handed backhand.
For moving sidewards to hit a full fledged shot, "Chin under the shoulder" is advocated for both forehand and backhand. Is there any other indicator that your sideways movement has been correct enough?- position of the feet perhaps or more specifically the outer foot being parallel to the baseline or slightly tilted towards it irrespective of the stance.
Other players have also said that I don't bend my knees enough. Is there any indicator for that? Opening of the hips perhaps?


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Bruce Katz (Piano, Organ ,Hammond),
Rod Carey (Guitar,Bass),
Per Hanson (Drums),
Rod Carey (Guitar,Bass),
Per Hanson (Drums),
David "Fathead" Newman (Sax Tenor)
Ronnie Earl (Guitar)
Neal Ward (Producer & Engineer)
Ronnie Earl (born Ronald Earl Horvath on March 10, 1953) is an American blues guitarist and music teacher.
Earl was born in New York City. He collected blues, jazz, rock and soul records while growing up. He studied music composition in college, and moved to Boston in 1975 to pursue a Master's Degree in Special Education, and teaching handicapped children. It was at this time that he attended a Muddy Waters concert at the now-defunct "Speakeasy". After seeing Muddy Waters perform in a close setting, Ronnie took up the blues guitar. He quickly began playing in the Boston blues scene.
Earl was born in New York City. He collected blues, jazz, rock and soul records while growing up. He studied music composition in college, and moved to Boston in 1975 to pursue a Master's Degree in Special Education, and teaching handicapped children. It was at this time that he attended a Muddy Waters concert at the now-defunct "Speakeasy". After seeing Muddy Waters perform in a close setting, Ronnie took up the blues guitar. He quickly began playing in the Boston blues scene.
His big break came in 1981 when he replaced Duke Robillard as lead guitarist for the Providence, R.I band,Roomful of Blues. Both Earl and Robillard were based in Providence R.I. at this time. The technically deft and musically encyclopediac Robillard took Earl under his wing. The result was a jazzy, soulful blues style, as well as his slow burn style which fans found both mesmerizing and exhilerating. He began performing solo in 1986 in addition to playing with Roomful of Blues, and he released his first solo album on the Black Top label with a quartet that focused on Blues Instrumentals, which few artists had ever attempted. After leaving the band officially he began collaborations with contemporaries Ron Levy and Jerry Portnoy, Earl King, Jimmy Rogers, and Jimmy Witherspoon. It was also around this time that Ronnie got treatment for a substance-addiction. He became a vocal advocate for sobriety, even inviting audience members to his dressing room "One Day At A Time" meetings between sets at a bar. He began teaching guitar at Berklee College of Music in 1992, and has released instructional videos. In the early 1990s he resumed touring and recording several more albums on the Black Top label. His albums primarily consist of strong instrumental compositions and traditional covers. Playing in a bars became a burden for someone who worked hard to maintain his sobriety, and an increasingly demanding touring schedule added to the stress. In the late 90's , Ronnie was diagnosed with depression, forcing him to cut back on his performances. He continued to work actively as a teacher and instructor, and also performed at facilities for the mentally ill, reaching back to his days as a special education teacher. Additionally, depression and mental illness frequently plague the most gentle and creative souls in our society
One of the finest new blues guitarists to emerge during the '80s, Ronnie Earl often straddled the line between blues and jazz, throwing in touches of soul and rock as well. His versatility made him one of the few blues guitarists capable of leading an almost entirely instrumental outfit and his backing band the Broadcasters became one of the more respected working units in contemporary blues over the course of the '90s, following Earl's departure from Roomful of Blues.Ronnie Earl was born Ronald Horvath in Queens, NY, on March 10, 1953. He didn't start playing guitar until after he entered college at Boston University in the early '70s and became fascinated with the local blues scene. Developing his craft quickly, he landed a job in the house band of the Speakeasy Club in Cambridge, MA, and changed his last name to the bluesier-sounding Earl in tribute to Earl Hooker, one of his favorite influences. Prior to the name switch, he'd made some recordings for the small Baron label under his original moniker beginning in 1977, first backing Guitar Johnny & the Rhythm Rockers, then as a founding member of Sugar Ray & the Bluetones with harmonica player/singer Sugar Ray Norcia. In 1979, Earl was invited to replace Duke Robillard in the prominent Rhode Island band Roomful of Blues, whose swinging jump blues revivalist sound demanded a jazz sensibility as well as ample blues feeling. Earl spent the next eight years with Roomful of Blues and watched their national profile grow steadily larger.Meanwhile, Earl also made a few recordings on his own for Black Top Records, forming the first versions of the Broadcasters in the early '80s. He released his first solo album, Smokin', in 1983 and followed it with They Call Me Mr. Earl in 1984 (both of those albums were later compiled on the CD Deep Blues).
Still, they were a sidelight to his main gig with Roomful of Blues, that is until he left the band in 1987 to make a go of it as a solo artist and bandleader in his own right. A new version of the Broadcasters debuted in 1988 on Soul Searchin', which featured vocalist Darrell Nulisch, harmonica player Jerry Portnoy (ex-Muddy Waters), bassist Steve Gomes, and drummer Per Hanson. Peace of Mind followed in 1990, as did I Like It When It Rains, a live album on Antone's that actually dated from 1986. 1991's Surrounded by Love reunited Earl with Sugar Ray Norcia and also proved the last in his long string of Black Top releases.By the early '90s, Earl had addressed and overcome his problems with alcohol and cocaine and began to rethink his approach. He formed a new version of the Broadcasters,
featuring organist Bruce Katz,
bassist Rod Carey, and longtime drummer Per Hanson, and boldly elected to go without a vocalist. Earl debuted his new instrumental direction -- which was more informed by jazz than ever before -- on 1993's Still River (released by AudioQuest) and embarked on a tour of Europe. He signed with the Bullseye Blues label and issued a string of acclaimed albums, including 1994's Language of the Soul, 1995's Blues Guitar Virtuoso Live in Europe (a live album from his 1993 tour originally titled Blues and Forgiveness), and 1996's Grateful Heart: Blues and Ballads
(which featured David "Fathead" Newman).
The latter two were particular critical favorites, with Live in Europe winning Pulse magazine's year-end poll as Best Blues Album and Grateful Heart doing likewise in DownBeat.Thanks to all the positive attention, Earl signed a major-label deal with Verve. His label debut, The Colour of Love, was issued in 1997 and sold more than 65,000 copies, making it one of the biggest hits of Earl's career; that year, he also won a W.C. Handy Award as Best Blues Instrumentalist. However, feeling that he was under too much pressure to move more units, Earl soured on the deal and around the same time suffered a bout with manic depression. He wound up not only leaving Verve, but taking a break from bandleading and live performance; he disbanded the Broadcasters and signed with the smaller Telarc label as a solo act. His Telarc debut, 2000's Healing Time, teamed him with legendary soul-jazz organist Jimmy McGriff. The follow-up, 2001's Ronnie Earl and Friends, was a loose, jam session type of affair featuring a number of special guests, including the Fabulous Thunderbirds' Kim Wilson, Irma Thomas, Luther "Guitar Jr" Johnson, and the Band's Levon Helm. In 2003, Earl returned with an album of mainly instrumental material I Feel Like Goin' On on the Canadian based label Stony Plain. A second album from Stony Plain, Now My Soul, appeared in 2004, while a third, The Duke Meets the Earl, which paired Earl with fellow ex-Roomful of Blues guitarist Duke Robillard, was released in 2005. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide


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This should come as no surprise at a time when a phrase like "binders full of women" can instantly become an Internet meme, but a new study shows that about 66 percent of social media users have used those platforms to comment about political candidates and issues.
The Pew Research Center study says younger social media users, and those who are either liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, are more likely to post their thoughts, links to political material and to urge others to take political action.
"At the height of the campaign season, it is clear that most social media users, especially those who care about politics, are using the tools to debate others, stay in touch with candidates, flag political news stories and analysis that are important to them, and press their friends into action," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project. "We'll see the fruits of this neo-activism on Election Day."
The percentage of people who have used Twitter or social-networking sites like Facebook for civic or political activities equals about 39 percent of all adult Americans, the study said.
The study found that:
– 38 percent of those surveyed who used social-networking sites or Twitter liked or promoted political material or social issues that others posted. Liberal Democrats were more likely to click a "like" button than consevative Republicans (52 percent to 42 percent).
– 35 percent have used social media to encourage others to vote. And 42 percent of Democrats have done so, compared to 36 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of independents.
– 42 percent of liberal Democrats have posted their own thoughts on political issues, basically in a dead heat with conservative Republicans at 41 percent.
– 21 percent belong to a social networking group involved in a political or social cause. And 20 percent followed elected officials and candidates.


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Green Plum Cooking School – Saturday, August 14th
Today, I'm making a gazpacho with beets. I'm having trouble with my mic, though. I'm not sure anyone can hear me. I just keep talking. I mention my mother's gazpacho and the one I had in Spain years ago – lasting food impressions that are always my reference points when I make gazpacho. My mother's is a puree and much like a salad with a balance of acids and oil from the vegetables or fruits; in Spain, the gazpacho had more red bell peppers in it, was strained after it was pureed (which made it finer) and was garnished with lots of goodies like croutons, hard-boiled egg and tomato. The beet gazpacho I'm making today brings aspects of these two gazpachos together.
I start by boiling the beets in water to which I have added sugar and vinegar. The result is a beet-colored sweet and sour elixir that will flavor our gazpacho. The garnishes are prepped: concasséd tomatoes, cucumbers and red onion — all diced or minced. I correct Megan's (aka Miss Priss) knife skills and reiterate that I want it diced or minced. But she says she can't hear me. I check my mic. Sarah and Megan's heads are down and they are determined to squeeze and chop and mince all of the ingredients. I take some time to chit chat about things with the audience. I mention my Twogs (my last two blogs that are full of tweets) which I did on my vacation because it's not enough that I close t'afia and pay for my staff to go on vacation, I now have an obligation to you, dear readers, to disclose my every experience!
For those who didn't read my Twogs (Hello, is this thing on?), I recounted my experience listening to Alice Waters talk at Toby's Feed Barn in Tomales Bay (she was supporting her new book, "The Green Kitchen"). You may remember that I started my Green Plum Cooking Classes by working my way through Alice Waters' "The Art of Simple Food" for the first year. I wanted to see if it was really possible to cook something delicious and simple in one hour, using the ingredients I found at the market every week. Well, it is possible. So, now, in my second year of cooking every Saturday morning at the market, I am using my own recipes from my online cookbook, Eat Where Your Food Lives.
During Alice's talk, she challenged the audience to YouTube their own experiences in their Green Kitchens (failed or otherwise). I'm considering filming my classes. Alice said that if she was going to do a TV show, she would just dig a hole, put a grate over it and start a fire and invite all of her talented friends to come and cook. That's where I'm at — only I want a wood-fired brick oven instead.
We bowl up the Beet Gazpacho. Really, it should be very cold, but today we're outside…in August…in Houston. You could puree the ingredients with ice water to make it colder. We could pass the gazpacho through the strainer again for a much finer texture but I go with my mom's gazpacho texture because I'm running out of time. I suggest to the audience to put it in the freezer with their vodka and realize that the two would make a great combo: beet gazpacho martinis…which reminds me of another vacation story, but no one can hear me at this point anyway.
NOTE: The recipes used in my Green Plum Cooking School classes can be found in my online cookbook, "Eat Where Your Food Lives," available for purchase at http://www.ChefMonicaPope.com)


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Lance Albertson is the Director for the Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSL) and has been involved with the Gentoo Linux project as a developer and package maintainer since 2003. Since joining the OSL in 2007, Lance has managed all of the hosting activities that the OSL provides for nearly 160 high-profile open source projects. He was recently promoted to Director in early 2013 after being the Lead Systems Administration and Architect since 2007.
Prior to joining the OSUOSL, Lance was a UNIX Administrator for the Enterprise Server Technologies group at Kansas State University. Lance prepared for life as a career systems administrator by grappling with natural systems first, joining his father near Hiawatha, Kansas on the family farm growing corn and soybeans.
In his free time he helps organize the Corvallis Beer and Blog and plays trumpet in a local jazz group The Infallible Collective. He holds a B.A. in Agriculture Technology Management from Kansas State University, where he minored in Agronomy and Computer Science.
For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Sharon Cordesse at (707) 827-7065 or email@example.com.
View a complete list of OSCON contacts


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An animal rights group has placed about 100 provocative ads on SkyTrain asking why people eat some animals such as pigs but not others such as dogs.
The ads started appearing earlier this week and show three sets of animals beside each other with the tag line: "Why love one but eat the other?" The paired animals are a puppy and a piglet, a kitten and a baby chick and a retriever and a cow.
The ad campaign by Mercy for Animals Canada poses a question to get people to think about why animals are divided into pets meant to be loved and food meant to be eaten, said Stéphane Perrais, the organization's director of operations.
"We want to engage people," he said by phone from Toronto.
"We want them to figure out how to answer that question. We're asking them to look at the various practices and various ways we treat animals that we call family and the ones we call dinner.
"It's really in our minds and our culture and the way we were brought up to think of these animals as significantly different so that we could turn a blind eye to the suffering of some animals and never allow such abuse on our own pets.
"The only difference between an cow and a dog and a pig and a cat is the way we treat them."
The national ad campaign is meant to encourage people to switch to a vegetarian diet by going to the website chooseveg.ca.
Perrais was a vegetarian but became vegan two years ago. Vegan is someone who not only doesn't eat meat but neither eats food made with animal products such as eggs or cheese nor wears animal products such as leather or furs.
He become vegan for ethical reasons when he looked into how animals are treated in factory farms. He believes others Canadians will make the same choice when they find out for themselves the origins of the food on their plate.
"What we realized in our discussion and research is that a large part of the public is kept in the dark about how their food is produced and all the practices and cruelty that goes on to make a hamburger and hotdog," he said.
"What we're trying to do is left the veil over these practices so that people can realize themselves whether they are willing to engage and approve such practices in order to satisfy a desire to eat meat."
Chooseveg.ca includes recipes and nutrition tips for people who choose a vegetarian diet along with testimonials from celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Bryan Adams and Pamela Anderson.
Chooseveg.ca has photographs and stories about rescued animals such as a chicken named Hope who was found on a pile of dead birds at an egg factory farm.
The website says that hens such as Hope are crammed into wire cages in factory farms where each one has less than the surface space of an iPad to live their lives.
"They are unable to spread their wings, walk, or forage for food," Chooseveg.ca says.
"When they are just babies, they have their beaks seared off with a hot blade. This is an extremely painful procedure and many chickens die from starvation because it's too excruciating to even eat."
Perrais said there is no such thing as humane meat which he describes as an invention of the food industry.
"Whether it is labelled organic or free range, these animals are routinely subjected to mutilation," he said.
"As soon as they're unproductive, they're killed in a very violent manner. It is very difficult to reconcile the terminology humane when animals have their lives taken away from them against their own will. That's where we find that concept inadequate."
Perrais admits that some people may answer the question posed in the ad campaign by saying they don't make any distinction between species and would just as willingly eat a puppy as a pig.
"The consumption of any kind of animal product is always based on cruelty and abuse regardless of the type of animal," he said.
Last July, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom to look at the neurobiological basis of conscious experience and related behaviours in human and non-human animals.
They concluded that "the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."
Pigs, for example, are known to be highly intelligent and social. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says that pigs communicate with one another with more than 20 different oinks, grunts and squeals.
"Newborn piglets learn to run to their mothers' voices, and mother pigs sing to their young while nursing," the PETA website says.


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Today, Clark College and Portland State University (PSU) formalized a co-admission agreement designed to improve student access to undergraduate education, increase the efficiency of joint efforts in support of students, and improve the success of student transfer rates through the completion of associate degrees and baccalaureate degrees.
Clark College President Dr. R. Wayne Branch and Portland State University President Daniel O. Bernstine signed the partnership agreement. The signing ceremony took place at 9 a.m. in the Penguin Student Union on the Clark College campus1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd., Vancouver.
Last year, over 100 Clark College students transferred to Portland State University, making PSU the second highest recipient of Clark College students behind Washington State University Vancouver. The new partnership will provide numerous benefits for Clark College students, including coordinated federal financial aid disbursement, early on-site academic advising, special scholarship opportunities for co-admitted students, coordinated student and academic services, credit for prior learning, one application, joint library services, access to computer services and coordinated degree completion.
Clark College students will be encouraged to transition to Portland State University after completing 90 transferable credits. Students will be advised to pursue educational pathways that include successful completion of an associate degree en route to the baccalaureate degree. Students who complete their program of study at Clark College and satisfy all requirements (including grade point average) will be guaranteed admission to Portland State, which currently enrolls more than 1,500 students in co-enrollment programs with Portland Community College, Clackamas Community College, Chemeketa Community College and Mt. Hood Community College in Oregon.
Clark College President Dr. R. Wayne Branch said, "Portland State University is one of the most diverse institutions in our region with interests in international education, intellectual and cultural offerings, and world-renown research programs. Providing our students with access to the baccalaureate education offered by such a wonderful institution furthers their pathways to success."
"We are very proud to forge this new educational partnership between Southwest Washington and northwest Oregon," said Portland State University President Daniel O. Bernstine. "Our students have access to top-notch research, faculty, and facilities. That access, coupled with the University's location in the heart of the region's technology and cultural core, create an education unparalleled in the Pacific Northwest. We are delighted to be able to offer these new opportunities to students from Clark College as they take the next step in their education."
As part of the agreement, both institutions have established mutual goals for the future including faculty exchange and professional development activities, career path programs, technology connections (access to student records, library services, course and classroom linkages and other faculty/student communication), as well as a comprehensive evaluation process for assessing the outcomes of the partnership agreement.
The University offers a comprehensive array of degree programs. Students may obtain a bachelor's degree in many majors including business administration, engineering and computer science, biomedical informatics, African American studies, fine and performing arts, foreign languages and literatures, biological and physical sciences, community health, applied linguistics, liberal arts, social sciences, architecture, mathematics and international studies among many others.
Information about Clark College classes can be found on the Internet at www.clark.edu or by calling 360-699-NEXT. Information about Portland State University can be found on the Internet at www.pdx.edu or by calling 503-725-3000 or toll free 800-547-8887.
About Clark College
Clark College is a community college providing two-year transfer degree studies, technical training and basic skills classes to more than 12,500 full-time and part-time students each quarter. It is the third largest college in the Washington State system of 35 community and technical colleges. Founded in 1933, Clark College received its first accreditation in 1936-37 and has been accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities since 1948.
For over 70 years, Clark College has been empowering learners who enrich the social, cultural and economic vitality of the region and the global community. Its new partnership with Portland State University enhances the educational opportunities it provides through its co-admissions agreements with Washington State University Vancouver and Marylhurst University.
For students seeking high academic standards in a welcoming and supportive environment, a commitment to student success and excellence in teaching, Clark College is "The Next Step."
About Portland State University
Portland State University, Oregon's only urban university, is the largest and most diverse in the state system. The University's position in Oregon's economic and cultural center allows for deep community engagement and the creation of partnerships with hundreds of organizations throughout the region — partnerships that give Portland State students valuable learning opportunities as they solve real-world problems of business and community. Portland State offers more than 100 undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees, as well as graduate certificates and continuing education programs. Portland State University serves more students and confers more master's degrees annually than any other Oregon university. Their commitment to community college student success has led to a significant Lumina Foundation grant where PSU will lead a national research study focused on increasing the success rates of community college students who transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
# # #
Portland State contact:
Erin Malecha Arias, Office of Marketing and Communications, 503-725-8794
For Immediate Release # PR-05-141


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Designed with yoga or aerobic studios in mind, PlybooFit provides a layer of cushion beneath the Plyboo floor of your choice. Made of 93 perent recycled rubber, the layer reduces leg fatigue for people who stand, jog or pose on the floor. As an added bonus, the subfloor reduces noise between floors. Designed for yoga, but a welcome addition to any residence. You might also be interested in PlybooQuiet which is a slightly thinner rubberized layer.
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Good advice: Highland house made over right
ADDRESS: 2306 Highland Avenue
NEIGHBORHOOD: JPA/ Johnson Village
SIZE: 2,900 fin. sq. ft., 150 unfin.
LAND: 0.17 acres
CURB APPEAL: 7 out of a possible 10
LISTED BY: Trish Owens, Montague Miller & Co. 951-7164
This is the first house that has provided On the Block with the chance to write a before-and-after review. We're happy to say right away that the buyers took all the good advice we offered in our May 8, 2003 column ("High lands: You can see for miles and miles") and have created the house we saw yearning to escape from the bare-bones bachelor pad the original owner was selling.
Which is to say, they've transformed what we called then a "craftsman style house that needs a humanizing touch" into a swanky chalet-style residence that would be right at home at Wintergreen or Snowshoe.
The first thing they did was open up the wall between the cramped room of undetermined use to the right of the front door and the large den/living room across the back. That one change not only provided the dark entryway– formerly overpowered by huge exposed oak beams– with desperately needed light, but also created the room-to-room flow that any modern family wants– and created a big dining room in the process.
The grim kitchen needed the most work, and the new owners– the husband is a restaurateur– have outdone themselves here: a sturdy hard-rock maple island delineates the completely redone kitchen from the adjacent open living space. A commercial gas stove and industrial-strength vent hint of great dinner parties. New maple cabinets and countertops and big ceramic tiles on the wall accentuate the exposed oak beams overhead and the new heart pine mantle from Mountain Lumber atop the living room's gas log fireplace. (The weird little square window is still there, drawing a visitor irresistibly to it.)
The house was thoughtfully designed originally to capitalize on what seems to be one of the highest peaks between Cherry Avenue and JPA – and the two upper floors are the places where that design pays off. The second level is pretty much the same as before, with the important addition of warm paint colors in the large master bedroom (with deck providing mountain views), small office, and two full baths (one with the great old claw-foot tub we're happy to see was not jettisoned in the makeover).
The tall third-floor, formerly just an attic, is now the primo bedroom, even more alluring than the master, with privacy, soft new wall-to-wall carpet everywhere, and distant vistas from front and back windows.
The basement apartment, at best rudimentary before, has been updated and now provides a cozy and private place for a Darden student who wants to convey– a big plus in this city of rental property glut. The big plus for the tenant is that the site of the house on a steep-ish slope means three walls of windows and absolutely no basement feel whatsoever.
Everyone here owns dogs, so fencing encloses the whole place– necessary in the back, but unfortunately intrusive in the front. Since our good advice in 2003 had such great results, we suggest the next owners resign themselves to keeping the dogs out back and dispose of the front fence to open the unusual chalet facade to the admiring glances of passersby.
Other perks: The block-deep lot makes possible a hidden gate out back that provides access from Center Street– a boon in a parking-starved neighborhood. The standing-seam metal roof is virtually maintenance-free. And since the house is less than 10 years old, looming repair of major systems shouldn't be a worry.
Anyone who hankers for slope-side vibes year 'round should slip by Highland Avenue for a look.


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almond, baked goods, breakfast, coconut flour, Eggs, gluten-free, Mallorca
The weekend here in Mallorca was absolutely glorious. We've been settling into warmer temperatures (t-shirt weather), breathing in the luscious scent of almond blossoms, and greedily enjoying blue skies and sunshine sans tourists.
In preparation for her 13 km walk for charity at school, KJ and I took our cameras and went for a leisurely 10 km walk just out of the village, down the mountain, through a few rolling hills, and towards the next town over. It's probably one of the prettiest trails (in my books) on this island. If it weren't for the winding asphalt road just alongside the rustic stone lined path and the occasional zippy car, I'd think that I had stumbled straight into a romance-chick-flick, the kind set in the idyllic foreign countryside where the unknowing American gets swept off her feet by some suave guy (yeah, hubby is my suave guy, though these other elements in my story are a bit convoluted).
After the day hike on Saturday, I woke up famished the next morning and craving pancakes (and fuel for Crossfit WOD 12.3 later… ouch). I reverted back to a recipe that I had tried a few weekends ago for a grain-free yet wonderfully fluffy pancake. That day, the pancakes came out perfect. Today – not so much. They looked, actually, rather terrible and burnt as the stove simply didn't want to cooperate with me. Fortunately, the disfigured cakes still tasted good – KJ thought even better than the last time – and its ill-fated looks were easily masked by a colorful fresh fruit salad.
KJ suggested that we have breakfast outside. Sunlight was kind to the food and turned out to be rather good for the soul, as we ended up basking in the outdoor warmth, working on art projects and sneaking the occasional snack, until late afternoon.
Gluten Free Pancakes (adapted from Nourishing Days "Grain Free Fluffy Coconut Flour Pancakes")
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup Greek yogurt & 1/4 cup frothed milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon agave syrup
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- optional – 2 tbsp ground flax, 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 banana, mashed
- olive oil for frying
Combine and mix together dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, salt, flax, and chia seeds. In a separate bowl, beat eggs until smooth, mix in mashed bananas, vanilla, agave, and yogurt. Slowly mix wet ingredients into the dry. I diverged from Nourishing Days recipe by using frothed milk rather than regular milk – with the thinking that some extra air added into the pancake mix would enhance the fluffiness. My Nespresso milk frother, probably one of my all time favorite kitchen gadgets, came in super handy. Once the milk is frothed, gently fold into the mix. If the mixture is too liquid-y (very much dependent on the type of coconut flour used and how finely it is ground), slowly add more coconut flour until the batter thickens. I added about an extra 1/4 cup.
Heat a bit of oil in a non-stick pan over medium-low temperature. Once the pan is hot, ladle a couple of tablespoons of batter into pan. Spread out slightly, if necessary, until the pancake is ~2-3 inches in diameter. Cook for a few minutes, until the edges begin to dry out and the bottoms start to brown. Flip and cook an additional 2-3 minutes.
Top with fruit, yogurt, preserves, honey, whatever the taste buds might crave and enjoy with a side of sunshine!


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For several days now, I've been debating with myself whether Interstellar is a bad film that does several things quite well, or a good film that has had the misfortune of having to shoulder, and justify, its creator's reputation. At some point in the last half-decade, popular culture decided--erroneously, if you ask me--that Christopher Nolan is a purveyor of Deep, Serious entertainments. And so his latest film, a fairly meat-and-potatoes space exploration story, comes burdened not only with its audience's expectations, but with its creator's need to live up to them. Every minute of Interstellar drips with a self-importance, a portentousness, that the film itself--which is pretty but overlong, heartfelt but silly, ambitious but scattershot--can't hope to earn. Just look at the way the film's trailers and promotional materials worked so hard to create a sense of mystery about what is ultimately a very straightforward premise, not because the film needs it--is it really necessary to try and sell a Christopher Nolan film anymore?--but because that's what's become expected from his oeuvre. All of which is a bit of a shame, because I actually ended up enjoying Interstellar a great deal more than I expected to--it's not as airless as Inception, nor as suffused with pseudo-religious significance as The Dark Knight Rises. If its ambitions were less lofty, or its pretensions less grand, it might have been easier to ignore its many flaws and problems, which stand out quite starkly in a film trying to make a Grand Statement about human nature.
Set in an unspecified but not-too-distant future, Interstellar imagines a world that has contracted and regressed in the wake of climate catastrophes and food shortages. Our hero, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), is an engineer and astronaut turned farmer, frustrated by having been born into a "caretaking generation" that doesn't give proper scope to his ambition and wanderlust. Through a series of coincidences that the film only partially earns, Cooper is recruited by NASA to pilot a last-ditch mission to find humanity a new home before Earth becomes completely uninhabitable, a decision that breaks the heart of his young daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy). While Cooper makes his suspended-animation, time-dilated journey to a distant galaxy, the scientists left back on Earth--which eventually include the grown-up Murphy (Jessica Chastain)--have to solve the problem of how to launch ships big enough to carry Earth's remaining population to their new home.
To this relatively bare-bones story, however, Interstellar appends a family drama, a time travel story, and a woo-woo parable about the power of love, none of which are particularly successful. The film's final act is a drawn-out, sentimental affair that can't earn out the ridiculous plot twists it expects us to buy. McConaughey is excellent at conveying Cooper's love and devotion to his
children, even from a distance of decades and light-years (it's
interesting, in fact, to compare the success of his performance with
Leonardo DiCaprio's utter failure to embody a very similar
character in Inception; perhaps because DiCaprio lacks McConaughey's
warmth and charm, and perhaps because Cobb's children are abstractions
who can't justify his supposed devotion). But the film ends up coasting
on that charm. It fails to interrogate Cooper's insistence that he is
doing everything for his family; the suggestion that he may love
exploration and space more than he loves them isn't given the serious consideration it
deserves. It's also frustrating that while Cooper's motivating emotion
is treated as something ennobling, conferring upon him a natural
leadership and moral authority, the emotions that drive his fellow astronaut Brand (Anne Hathaway), who is in
love with one of the scientists sent ahead to scout likely planets and
hopes to reunite with him, and Murphy, who holds on to resentment of her
father for leaving on his mission even after she learns what's at
stake, are used by the other characters to justify
discounting their opinions. The time travel plot, meanwhile, is both
obvious and ridiculous. When it becomes clear, five minutes into the
film, that young Murphy's claims that there is a ghost in her bedroom
are something we're meant to be paying attention to, any SF fan will be
able to guess how that plot strand will resolve, and the fact that the film belabors the explanation of that obvious plot twist only adds insult to injury.
At its most basic level, however--which is also the one on which it is most successful--Interstellar is a space exploration movie, the type of story that fans of written SF have seen hundreds of times but which is relatively rare in film. Cooper and the other crewmembers aboard the spaceship Endurance have to survive the incredible technical complexity of their mission, to deal with the limitations that the cold equations of fuel and other resources place upon them, and to make decisions where, at every turn, the survival of the human race hangs in the balance. And, of course, they have to land on alien planets with only a bare minimum of information and preparation and hope for the best, and whereas other movies might have featured scary aliens or vicious plantlife on these planets, Interstellar understands that when you're so far away from everything familiar, the most mundane dangers can be catastrophic. On the first planet they land on, the characters realize too late that the shallow lake where they've touched down is prone to massive, building-sized waves, which end up costing the life of one of their number.
Space-set films have a frustrating tendency to turn into horror stories in their second act, as their writers bump up against the problem of placing obstacles before characters who are literally floating in a void, and plump for monsters lurking in the shadows. Interstellar seems to be referencing this tendency when it has Brand tell Cooper that though their mission is fantastically dangerous, it holds little danger of evil. There's an obvious flaw in this thesis--humans bring evil with them wherever they go--but it's one that Interstellar resists delving into until it's established that even good, dedicated, well-intentioned people can produce conflict and drama when the stakes are high enough. Everyone aboard the Endurance is dedicated to the mission, and recognizes that their own ego, desires, wishes, and even survival are immaterial in the face of it. This does not, however, prevent them from clashing against each other, or from making terrible mistakes that cost them resources and time. When evil does come into the equation, it's in the form of human frailty, as a character who had accepted, in theory, the necessity of sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity's survival comes up against the reality of it and finds himself wanting.
As much fun as it is to watch this sort of story--and the enjoyment is only increased by Interstellar's refreshing rejection of Hollywood's standard save the cat story template, with multiple complications and decision points that give the film an almost novelistic feeling--there's no denying how old-fashioned it is, and how hard Interstellar works to avoid that fact and its implications. In some ways, Interstellar is as much a meta-statement about the kind of science fiction it is telling as it is an example of it. Cooper laments the loss of humanity's spirit of exploration, the insistence he keeps hearing that trying to get into space is wasteful in the face of real problems on Earth. But this is also a reflection of the shift in priorities within the genre. Hardly anyone writes stories (or makes movies) about space exploration and colonization anymore, and more often than not when writers nowadays imagine the future it's to focus on climate catastrophe and other more immediate problems (this is certainly the case when outsiders to the genre--including filmmakers--try their hand at it).
Interstellar tries to offer a hopeful paean to this kind of SF, but in so doing it only exposes its problems and shortcomings. There are some fairly obvious practical problems with the argument often offered in defense of both exploration-based SF and actual space exploration, and which is reflected in Interstellar's premise--that we have to explore space in order to find another planet to live on after this one has been used up. At its most basic level, it suggests that we would be better off focusing on the almost certainly fantastical problem of finding a habitable planet and getting humanity there, over the astronomically difficult but still comprehensible problem of reducing carbon emissions. Interstellar sidesteps that issue when it tells us that Earth is already doomed and that there's nothing to be done about that, but it can't avoid the deeper problem. "This planet is a treasure, but it's been telling us to leave for a while now," Cooper sagely opines near the beginning of the movie, a bit of ludicrous tendentiousness that is never challenged or exploded. Earth isn't telling us anything, of course, but if it could talk, it wouldn't be saying LEAVE; it would be saying STOP. To say that the solution to climate change is merely to find another planet to live on is the same as saying that the reasons for climate change--our rampant, greedy expansion and heedless exploitation of the planet--are natural and inevitable, not the result of social choices, and of the model upon which we've built our society. It absolves us of the responsibility to think about those choices and consider whether we should be living differently in order to avoid making the same mistakes all over again.
In recent works of prose SF, such as Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, or Stephen Baxter's Flood/Ark duology, there has been an attempt to acknowledge that humanity's expansion into space can only happen hand-in-hand with a reevaluation of our values and economic system--otherwise, these books recognize, finding a new home will only mean delaying the inevitable by a few hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. In Interstellar, on the other hand, that preservationist perspective is treated not as a necessary complement to Cooper's lust for exploration, but as its antithesis, placed in the mouth of a character who is marked out as a villain and a fool by her insistence that the moon landing never happened. Cooper's claim that Earth is telling humanity to leave is an attempt to paint a tragedy as something ennobling, an opportunity for humanity to spread its wings, with no thought to the evil that we might bring with us if we thoughtlessly accept that spin. Exploration is a very noble word, and Cooper is the very model of the starry-eyed dreamer we think of when the word "explorer" is used. But the fact is that throughout most of human history, exploration has been a blind for colonization and exploitation. Without facing up to that truth, there's no reason to believe that anything will change just because the territory being explored is an uninhabited planet (which is not to mention how often humanity has attached the label "uninhabited" to territories actually teeming with vast, complex civilizations).
These problems are only exacerbated by Interstellar's thoughtless racial politics. The environmental disaster that kickstarts the search for a new home for humanity is clearly modeled on the 1930s dust bowl (the film even uses interview segments from Ken Burns's recent documentary about that period). This is problematic on two levels. First, because the dust bowl was a man-made ecological catastrophe, and the film's choice to ignore this--to treat the disaster as something almost Biblical--only entrenches its refusal to see the problem with its premise. Second, the dust bowl was a quintessentially American catastrophe, and to reference it in a world in which the actual effects of climate change are felt disproportionately by people in poor, mostly non-white countries feels like yet another iteration of the common Hollywood tendency to treat a problem as serious only when it affects white Westerners. Coupled with the film's near-uniform whiteness--even the black member of the Endurance crew, Romilly (David Gyasi), feels like an afterthought, someone who exists to enable Cooper and Brand rather than a person in his own right--this feels like yet another skewer to Interstellar's self-satisfaction about the spirit of exploration. Who is it that's doing the exploration, we're forced to wonder, and when humanity is finally evacuated from Earth, who is it that gets to leave? (Not as obviously problematic, but still telling, is the total absence of animals from the film, even as livestock or pets; there is no recognition that humanity shares the Earth with other species, and no indication that NASA will be trying to save at least some species from the extinction to which we've doomed them.)
There's a scene towards the beginning of Interstellar that seems to encapsulate the fundamental thoughtlessness of its SFnal tropes. Brand explains to Cooper that if plan A--evacuating the people of Earth to a new planet--proves unworkable, the Endurance comes equipped with plan B, thousands of frozen human embryos. The first few, she explains, will be "auto-raised" to maturity, then the remaining embryos will be implanted in them and so forth. It should only take a moment's thought to realize that Brand is describing a horrible dystopian nightmare, a society whose members (whose women, that is) exist solely to act as incubators for children who aren't even their own. Even if a psychologically healthy society could somehow result from this sort of generations-long reproductive slavery, it boggles the mind that anyone would consider the result the salvation of humanity. Cut off from their planet of origin, from any tie to human history or culture, these people wouldn't be humanity, but a completely different species that just happened to share our DNA (and per the above, it's hard not to wonder just what the racial makeup of those embryos is, and whose DNA has truly been represented). The failure to realize plan B's monstrousness feels like an encapsulation of Interstellar as a whole--a film that is enjoyable so long as you don't think about it too much, that thinks it's paying homage to a grand tradition even as it's exposing its most ugly and horrifying flaws. A less self-serious film might have been able to carry at least some of the problematic implications of Interstellar's story more lightly--do we truly care, for example, about the profound social problems implied by the worldbuilding and plot of Guardians of the Galaxy?--but alas, Christopher Nolan's reputation for seriousness dooms this latest demonstration of how unearned it is.


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Would you believe a Subaru leading as the we get deeper into nighttime racing? It hasn't even been raining! Yes, the Team Paisley '98 Impreza has a couple of laps on the number two contender.
That number two contender is the Booby Prize Racing '96 Nissan 200SX, a car that the LeMons Supreme Court picked during the BS Inspection as the Under The Radar Candidate Most Likely To Contend. Looks like we guessed right this time!
In third we have the 1993 Honda Civic driven by Team "Corvette." No, we don't get the team name either.
Right behind the Honda is one of the top finishers from the last New England LeMons: the Scuderia Limoni Alfa Romeo Milano.
In fifth, we have another dominating New England veteran, the Scuderia Testa di Spillo Milano. Oh yes, two Milanos in the top five. Could this be the first-ever LeMons victory by an Italian car? Check in later to find out!


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[Note by author: For readers who may consider the words that follow in this post to be harsh and unfair, consider that even the elegant, upscale Spokane Couer d'Alene Living Magazine, in the Lilacs and Lemons section of its March 2010 issue, gave Chief Kirkpatrick a lemon and reprimanded her, saying basically that if she is so busy making plans to leave Spokane in the midst of such a crucial period in city and police history, she should darn well hurry up and get the heck out of Dodge, I mean Spokaloo.]
Listening to a recent KYRS Thin Air Community Radio morning news piece by Don Gronning (6/22/10 podcast), one is struck by the most recent persona of the always strutting, full-of-attitude Anne Kirkpatrick. The sassy southern gal, who arrived in Spokane nearly four years ago with her slick little one-girl show from the south, replete with meaningless but media-savvy slogans like "You lie, you die" and a repertoire of song and dance (literally) at the ready for any and all occasions, apparently has at least one more routine up her sleeve as she — like a teenager graduating from high school — desperately seeks a way out of Spokaloo.
So what is that persona? A new and improved Chief Anne Kirkpatrick who, despite previous statements to the contrary, appears to be headed out of town.
And naked. Well, not naked exactly but definitely devoid of her long characteristic Southern accent. (Seriously, listen to Gronning's 6/22/10 podcast.) Besides, in the south — like Abilene and Shreveport where I used to live, or Memphis, Tennessee where Anne was born and raised — we say "neck-id".
Apparently the "Ya'll come back now, here?" phony southern drawl worked as part of the dog and pony show the chief put on to get us Okies in Spokaloo to hire her as chief under a previous mayor and city council. But it appears she decided that it wasn't going to make her any friends or influence any people in the sophisticated environment of Seattle. So she is suddenly accentless, a sophisticated and independent woman, itinerant again and forced to strike out on her own. Maybe she should take Doug Clark's advice and take her bopping and jiving back to Memphis. Or how about Mabton, Washington, population 1891.
All of this after a long string of that bad luck: 1) the Guild stabbed her in the back, 2) she still can't shake Tony Bamonte off that same back, 3) Councilman Jon Snyder could not get his slip-shod, loop-hole filled version of the Ombudsman Ordinance passed in 30 minutes as he proposed he could in the wee hours of the morning of June 22, 2010, after over-whelming public testimony in favor of a more tightly-written, forceful ordinance to move a blatantly out-of-control police force closer to effective citizen oversight and control, 4) the Grand Jury and FBI noose tightened around the necks of her lying officers and administrators, 5) Ombudsman Tim Burns himself finally stood up and said, "Hell yeah, I'll take some of that independent oversight", and 6) the people of Spokane, who had made common cause with many a citizen abused or murdered by the police, and in the process made themselves heard over and over and over again for years, combined a powerful community coalition with public participation and turnout that would not succumb to old fashion tactics of "bait and switch" in the writing of legislation nor to agenda-stacking designed to run out the clock on democratic participation.
Unfortunate for Anne, even after giving it that old Tennessee try in the open competitive portion of the Seattle hiring process and after a private "perhaps I still got that old charm" approach via e-mail to Seattle's Mayor, Seattle didn't buy the song and dance.
Besides, can you imagine this "Chief" — who okayed tasering Josh Levy off the Monroe Street Bridge to his death yet in Gronning's podcast defends tasers like a shameless East Sprague used car saleswoman — dealing with the sorts of complicated human dramas and dilemmas that a Seattle would present her? Or how about having Chief Kirkpatrick in charge of the sophisticated political and social environment of one of the most dynamic and liberal cities in the U.S., the same Chief Kirkpatrick whose boys and girls in blue botched every aspect (from initial provocation to evidence suppression) of the July 4, 2007 police riot in Riverfront Park — being in charge of a police department in a world class city like Seattle? Can you imagine how much worse the 1999 WTO police repression would have been or what she would do with officers punching teenaged girls in the face or kicking and stomping an innocent immigrant?
Gigs up, Lil' Annie…
(Come to think of it, maybe the gig is not up after all. As I understand it, former Spokane Police Internal Affairs official Jim Faddis is looking for a spoons player for his jugband, the Prairie Flyers. Some will recall that Faddis and the notorious officer Dan Torok used pseudonyms while blogging at Frank Sennett's Spokesman-Review Hard 7 blog in the summer of 2007. Faddis, under the pseudonym of Kevin, along with Torok and others SPD plants defended the SPD at the height of public outrage over the Firehouse Sex Scandal, the 4th of July "near police riot", the arrests of protestors Dan Treecraft and Rebecca Lamb, and the killings of Otto Zehm, Jerome Alford and Eagle Michael, as well as the non-fatal shootings of Shonto Pete and Sean Fitzpatrick, not to mention controversial incidents involving SPD officers John Elam, Jonothan Smith, David Freitag, and Jay Mehring. The killings of Otto Zehm and Jerome Alford involved Torok and Faddis's department was involved in investigating most of the other incidents. The chief would no doubt be a fine addition to Faddis's band. Come to think of it, if someone could teach Spokane county prosecutor Steve Tucker to play a washboard and city attorney Rocky Trepieddi to play the cowbell…
[See also Educating the Chief – It's Spokane, not Spokaloo]
[Excerpt below from The Seattle Times article Biographies of the 11 SPD chief candidates: Here are short biographies on the semifinalists for Seattle police chief
Anne Kirkpatrick
Chief of police, Spokane
Anne Kirkpatrick, 50, who previously served as police chief in Ellensburg and Federal Way before joining the Spokane department in 2006, has carved out a reputation as a no-nonsense chief and strong believer in community outreach. She announced her intention to seek the Seattle job in February when she told Spokane officials she had applied for the position.
The Spokesman-Review reported that Kirkpatrick applied last year to be San Francisco's police chief but downplayed her action by saying that as a woman leading a large department she is often recruited. The job went to another candidate.
The Spokesman-Review reported that, while support for Kirkpatrick has been mixed on the police force, she enjoys broad support from city leaders, who credit her with making officers more accountable and improving ties to the community.
In April, union leaders representing the Spokane Police Department's officers said a majority of the Spokane Police Guild's 268 members voted no-confidence in the "office" of the police chief, but didn't disclose the vote tally, The Spokesman-Review reported.
But the department's lieutenants and captains gave her a vote of approval after learning of the union's vote.
The following excerpt from a Spokesman-Review article at the time of Spokane's search for a new chief reported on the Chief's 5 "Cardinal Rules" which apparently after the hanky-panky of the Jason Uberagua case and the police lying in the Zehm case must have referred to the Memphis Redbirds, the minor league affilitate of the St. Louis Cardinals —
She landed at Green River Community College, teaching criminal justice for two years. Then a retiring Ellensburg police chief called and asked her if she'd apply for his job.
"God's timing and God's hand involved," Kirkpatrick says of the surprise call. "And I'm glad, because I have to admit I wanted to go back."
Soon, she was running a 30-member department. And that's where she launched her five cardinal rules.
"They're character-based," she said of the rules. "People are going to make mistakes. But character-based mistakes are not tolerable."
The rules: No harassing, bullying or discriminatory language, "including zero tolerance of male white-bashing." No lying. No abuse of authority. No insubordination. And nothing that causes lack of trust in the department, such as sex on duty or failing to take a rape report.
One former officer and her attorney, however, contend Kirkpatrick applies those rules unevenly.
Former Federal Way officer Jessica Nelson was fired for what Kirkpatrick concluded was insubordination and lying about misuse of a department computer. Nelson maintains that it was a miscommunication – and that other officers were lightly disciplined for far worse offenses.
Nelson's Portland attorney, Beth Allen, said that officers were suspended for a few days, "if that," for allegedly sexually harassing other officers, discharging a firearm in the station and having a detainee escape from a police car.


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Sunday, May 20, 2007
Blueberry Pancakes for a Sunday Brunch
We ate these thick small pancakes with a generous drizzle of Canadian maple syrup, but a runny honey would be just as good.
Blueberry Pancakes
Serves 4
300 ml plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
300 ml milk
1 egg
2 Tbsp melted butter
100 grams blueberries (frozen are fine, as long you defreeze them first)
To serve:
pure maple syrup or runny honey
In a mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
Mix milk, egg and cooled melted butter in another bowl, then add to the dry ingredients and mix to combine. Add vanilla extract.
Heat a frying pan on a low to moderate heat, add some oil or butter.
Drop a small ladleful of pancake batter into the pan, scatter some blueberries on top. Cook until it's golden brown, then flip over and fry the other side, too.
Serve with maple syrup or runny honey.
Other blueberry recipes @ Nami-nami:
Blueberry tart (April 2006)
Other pancake recipes @ Nami-nami:
Buttermilk pancakes with sliced bananas, toasted nuts and warm maple syrup (March 2006)
Golden saffron pancakes (May 2007)
12 comments:
- Katie Zeller said...
Wow, those look beautiful and sound so easy.
No more excuses - I must make pancakes...maybe next weekend...I have the maple syrple (intentionally misspelled - ole midwestern joke)
- 7:53 pm, May 20, 2007
- Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) said...
I never think of pancakes for breakfast at home, though I love to eat them when we go out for breakfast or brunch. Thanks for the reminder that they are quick and easy to make.
- 2:47 am, May 21, 2007
- Jann said...
nothing beats pancakes on a Sunday morning............
- 3:52 am, May 21, 2007
- K and S said...
very nice way to start your Sunday!
- 9:57 am, May 21, 2007
I love lazy Sunday mornings...I would love to try thing once but C is not a huge pancake fan (he would rather go for a savory breakfast)...hmmm, I guess I'll just have to invite my whole family over! Hehe :)
- 10:16 am, May 21, 2007
- lobstersquad said...
good to see nami-nami is not under cyberattack. I think that´s a very sound rule about sundays and pancakes.
- 10:29 am, May 21, 2007
ma arvan, et need pannkoogisissekanded tuleks lihtsalt ära keelata!
- 8:27 pm, May 22, 2007
- Susan from Food Blogga said...
There are few breakfasts more satisfying to the belly and soul than homemade blueberry pancakes.
- 1:21 am, May 25, 2007
- Pille said...
Katiez - 'maple syrple' goes well with pancakes. I think that K only really 'discovered' maple syrup this weekend, but seems to like it now. He was pouring it (generously, may I add) over his breakfast yogurt today.
Lydia - you're welcome:) I don't think I've ever ordered pancakes when eating out - they're just such a home cooking item for me..
Jann - I so agree with you. I never crave pancakes on weekday mornings, but they're a must during weekends.
K&S - it is, isn't it?
Joey - luckily my K loves pancakes, and is very good in making them. I made these blueberry ones, but usually I just have a lie-in on Sundays and come downstairs when he's finished making pancakes:)
Ximena- looks like we made it to Spanish news, eh? Sound rule indeed. I wonder if it still works in August:)
Mann - no aga millest ma siis pühapäeviti blogin?? ;)
Susan - I quite agree. Although I find pretty much all pancakes satisfying to the belly and soul:)
- 5:23 pm, May 25, 2007
- Andy said...
I made these pancakes once with a drippy poached egg on top followed by crispy prosciutto bacon then drizzled over with maple syrup.
Over the top? Yes, but what a breakfast to die for! wowweeeeee!
- 12:21 pm, August 26, 2009
- Ann M Leis said...
I defrosted my blueberries, and my pancakes turned out blue because the juices during defrosting. tasted fine, looked odd
- 9:38 am, December 30, 2013
- Pille said...
Andy, apologies, but while I can imagine regular pancakes with maple syrup and bacon, then not these sweet blueberry ones :)
Ann - I should put the warning here that use fresh blueberries, or, alternatively, drain the frozen ones thoroughly - or perhaps use straight from the freezer! Glad to hear they tasted fine, thou!
- 9:53 am, December 30, 2013


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Authorities say a gunman has died after a four-hour standoff with tactical officers at a home near Bemidji.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Thursday that he was pronounced dead after being flown to a hospital in Fargo, N.D.
The BCA said officers were called to the home northwest of Bemidji before 5 p.m. Wednesday on reports that he was distraught, armed with a rifle and threatening to kill himself or officers. When he came out and pointed his gun at officers, a SWAT team sniper shot him. He retreated into the home but came out a short time later.
BCA spokeswoman Jill Olivera told The Pioneer of Bemidji (http://bit.ly/123AeIN ) that he was not pronounced dead until he reached the hospital in Fargo.
Family members identified him as 34-year-old Miquell Deppa.