text:
Whole Foods: The canary in the coal mine?
"Whole paycheck," somebody once dubbed Whole Foods. I've understood why ever since they built a Whole Foods around the corner from where I live.
People are willing to pay a premium for the food they buy there, but those days may be numbered. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had two articles, one on the cover of the Marketplace section called "Slow to Cut Prices, Whole Foods Is Punished," while the other, shorter piece was headlined "Biting Into Prices at Whole Foods."
The upshot: on Wednesday, the 380-store chain's stock price plummeted, "vaporizing more than $3 billion of the company's market value" due to flat earnings and "a key measure of sales growth [that] hit its weakest pace since early in the U.S. economic recovery more than four years ago."
The flat growth apparently is because consumers are wising up to the fact that they're paying far more for organic kale and fair-trade chocolate than they have to. Other grocers are moving in on Whole Foods' turf, and "this competition is just getting started," the WSJ predicted.
The comparison with overpriced wine begs to be made. I bet you that the demographics of the Whole Food shopper and the buyer of premium wine are more or less identical. According to this analysis, Whole Foods customers
- Gravitate to lifestyle brands
- Form a loyal customer base
- Are better educated and wealthier
- Are willing to pay higher prices for higher quality food in a pleasant shopping environment
- Are largely Baby Boomers – the largest consumer group in America is getting older and they are seeking healthy, preservative- and pesticide-free foods to ensure a long and healthy life
That sounds a lot like premium wine drinkers, doesn't it?
Are people getting smarter about what they buy—less willing to pay a premium for something that makes them feel good, but doesn't actually taste better? If so, it's undoubtedly an after-effect of the Great Recession, which made more of us more frugal than we were in the high-spending pre-Recession days. My own feeling, living in a Bay Area that's increasingly young and diversified, is that people are less susceptible to marketing and more sensitive to the actual value of the things they buy, whether it's groceries, clothing or wine. This could be very good news for value wine brands—not necessarily cheap wines, like Two Buck Chuck, but those wineries that offer the high quality of their competitors, yet at a lower price point. We're already seeing signs that high-priced wines are having a hard time—witness such deep discounters on the Web as WineAccess.
There's no evidence that consumers aren't still swayed by famous name wines and glorious appellations, but there's plenty of evidence that younger consumers, unlike their parents, aren't quite so willing to shell out big bucks, if they feel there's a bargain to be had. And thanks to the vigorous competition we see all around us, especially on the Internet, there are bargains galore to be had.
interesting Steve. When I lived in San Jose I shopped at Whole Foods sometimes…the quality was clearly better than what I could find in the Supermarket. Now that I live in Healdsburg, it's easy to find good, organic quality food without paying Whole Foods mark up, and I almost never go there (there is a reduction in income from the high flying Silicon Valley days too, but it's not that.)
I work at a winery which has really good quality wine (in my opinion) at reasonable (but not cheap) prices and I am continually astonished how much people buy, even young people, and how quickly they join the wine club, so I'm thinking it's exactly as you said; where there is value people will pay but for just a "name" which maybe doesn't deliver at the elevated price level's suggestion, maybe they'll think twice.
I also think it hits at the notion of authenticity. WF's house brand (365) is literally nothing special. It is a mass sourced (increasingly from China) generic with a highly corporate gloss and accompanying price of pretending to be something special. Their wine departments were long ago taken over by mass market brands, with maybe a few local craft beers and micro-distillery spirits to put a false gloss of "local" and "artisan" on things. The Midwest regional office de-listed scores of small distributors and importers as approved vendors a few years ago, turning over the vast majority of shelf space to the Southerns and Wirtzes of the world.
That inauthentic hucksterism–the shallow marketing of style over substance–has as much to do with their decline as their pricing. Taking that analogy to wine, it's the same reason that people who are gladly willing to pay $75/bottle for a single cru Barbaresco from a 100 year old grower are turning away from the latest $75 cab from some cellar rat turning out his first "project."
Picked up a bunch of beets yesterday at the mobile farmer's market at the park around the corner from my office for $2. On Saturday, that farmer's market moves to an old mall parking lot. Enough said.
"Are people getting smarter about what they buy — less willing to pay a premium for something that makes them feel good, but doesn't actually taste better?"
I don't think that's the big issue with Whole Foods. As the WSJ said, the problem is that people can get the *exact same products* for less elsewhere. The example of the Humboldt Fog going for 28 bucks at WF while a nearby co-op had it for $15 bucks … that's the WF problem.
When the Whole Foods went in around the corner from me in Pacific Heights, I thought it would be more convenient than treking down to Real Food on Polk. It is The Food Museum in my house, a place for second grade field trips where you can look but shouldn't touch. They use the element of food shame to get people to actually pay $16.00 for a kilo of mashers, or in my case $23.00 for a burrito I built. They know people will get to the check out and be too embarrassed to put it back. I shop there for the thai peanut noodles and IPA, that is about all now 🙁
Bill Haydon
It must be rather boring to be you.
I can't imagine a life where I see things in a simplistic, "bushian"' " you're either with us or against us" way. Rounding things to a binary set, just so fucking monotonous.
Add to that, the chip that seems to have taken up residence on your shoulder… Man it must be exhausting!
Cheer up, old bean! And try to recognize that the interesting and exciting are rarely black or white
Dear DR; Boo–frickin'–hoo. Somebody said something negative about your precious (in all meanings of the word) valley. Somebody dared to challenge the authenticity of cellar rats churning out Cabernet in some corner of their employer's cellar and feeling entitled to price it equivalent to estate grown Barbaresco.
As for being "Bushian," many times I've stated that there are many wineries in California that I respect for having fought the tide of sameness I understand that not all Cali wineries followed the path of hedonistic fruitbombs, but I'm aware enough to know that they were few and far between until just recently and were literally washed away in a sea of sameness. And I'm encouraged by the new wave that really seems to be challenging the "Emperor Has No Clothes" mentality of the California wine industry, particularly the dominant Napatude strain.
Then again, just look at the amount of dismissive scorn that's been heaped upon them by their own colleagues in the industry for daring to suggest that Cali might need to change its stripes. For challenging the notion that everything is not as great as it ever was. For challenging the notion that everyone still loves you. For challenging the notion that any problems lie within your stars (and distributors) rather than in yourselves. The reality is that they (and the even more scorned writers like Bonne, Asimov and Feiring) are right, and their critics are wrong. I see it almost every day. I see it when I walk into a big city fine wine merchant and see a quarter of the shelf space devoted to domestics. I see it in the Michelin Starred restaurant that has NO California wine on its list. I see it in the wine bar that has more Greek wines than domestic wines. I see it in the suburban retailer's annual grand tasting that used to be 75% California now being less than a third. I see it in the boxes of cult "on-premise only" Napa Chardonnay being dumped into a retailer in suburban Cincinnati.
And how do some in Napa decide to respond to these market conditions? By acting like arrogant grifters and labeling all of their hedonistic fruitbombs at exactly 14.1% alc….as if perception is the only problem….as if we're all too stupid to see through the con.
But don't take my word for it. Here's Jancis Robinson in a recent FT column on the New California tasting in London. The last sentence of my small quote is the real kicker and speaks directly to the head-in-the-sand Napatude.
"But as someone who has been closely observing California wines since I was honorary secretary of Britain's Zinfandel Club in the late 1970s, I am convinced that things did change for the worse in the 1990s when prolonged "hang time" came into vogue. The effects were evident in the massive wave of red wines made from grapes left so long on the vine that they started to shrivel. Acidity and tannins came to be regarded as negative attributes; alcohol and richness were striven for. Yet when researching trends for the recent edition of The World Atlas of Wine, I found every single region, however warm, reported a deliberate move away from this style – with the exception of mainstream California."
I guess she's just a hater with a "Blairian" view of the Calijuice industry.
I'll add one more thing, DR. You don't want an honest, nuanced, let the chips fall where they may debate about the current state of Napa Valley wine and its problems, perceptions and possible futures. You want the "Pleasantville" "Emperor Has No Clothes" discussion. The one where no negativity or assumption of problems is dare discussed. The one where everything is wonderful, where sales have never been better and distribution is shrinking only because "I can't meet DTC demand." You want the fantasy discussion, and anything that challenges that self-important, narcissistic fantasy world that Napa lives in must be shouted down and dismissed as irrational hatred.
I could care less about you directing it at my comment section nom de plume (hint: I didn't graduate from Oxford in 1938, and I'm not the Soviet mole in MI6). The ridiculousness, pretentiousness and ultimately self-defeating and short-sighted narcissism of Napa Valley is when you blindly direct it at the writers who are increasingly taking relevance away from Parker and the WS and even members of your own industry who are attempting to address the difficult questions. That is why Napa is increasingly imploding under the weight of its own bull$#!%.
It's also why Napa Valley's reputation outside of the bubble….aka, out in the real world has increasingly become this:
My "precious valley"???? I have ZERO financial (or any other) interest in the NV – or any wine grape growing region, full stop.
Moreover, I'm not disputing your option. I don't care about your taste. Nor, though I have great respect for her, do I care about Jancis Robinson's opinion, beyond it's function as a data point which, may, or may not, inform a drinking or purchasing decision.
It is your endless, monotonous blathering, in addition to your simpleminded "black or white" framing of an argument which most people, who read this and other wine blogs/publications/etc, have an option (either their own, or sponged from various pundits (be they Parker/Laube or Bonné/Asimov(et al)).
You keep saying (writing) the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER…; and you've offered no interesting insight or perspective, on either "side" of the argument.
It's fine that what you write reflects your opinion (one that I'm not entirely disputing; though it is far more nuanced, particularly as concerns your polly anna-ish view of european wines, that you seem capable of articulating.
The problem is the MONOTONY, REDUNDANCY, and lack of INSIGHT. The latter would be fine, were you not going on and on and on and on and on and on…
Enjoy the rest of your weekend
First of all, my original comment spoke directly of WF's current problems and how increasing lack of authenticity as evidenced by their 365 line and current wine purchasing policies might be contributing to them. Secondly, I extrapolated that lack of authenticity to a similar example in the high end wine industry. Wasn't making such links the entire point of Steve's piece? Since I'm the simplistic thinker with no ability to think with nuance, I'll let you figure that out for me.
Secondly, regarding your insults of me. While there is no doubt a dominant theme to my comments, I think I've brought plenty of nuance to them. It's jus that I have been stridently critical of the dominant themes in the Calijuice industry, and you don't seem capable of looking past that and finding anything. You see criticism of Napa, and you immediately dismiss all within. I've spoken repeatedly and approvingly of the changes occurring in the California wine industry along with those brave souls who stayed true to their convictions and swam against the tide of internationalism in the 90s and 00s. As for Europe, I've spoken of the almost ruin of a great region (Chianti Classico) in its chase for the international/Parker style as well as the current civil war there between the large and the small and the traditionalists and the modernists. I've also spoken disapprovingly of an entire region (Priorat) that fell under the spell of a Parker-influenced hack of an importer. If that's monotonous or lacks insight, I apologize and let the University of Chicago know that I'll be returning my degree.
As for insight, I've given witness to what's happening in some of the largest and most important wine markets (NYC, DC, Boston and Chicago) in the United States along with many of the secondary markets that surround them, in which I'm present on a regular basis. All those examples that I listed above are actual retail and on-premise accounts in Chicago and NYC, and they are not isolated examples but rather exemplify their respective markets.
It doesn't sound like you want nuance or insight. You want dime store positivity. You want California Uber Alles!
Do you have trouble reading, Bill Haydon? How you extracted a desire for "dime store positivity" or "California Uber (sic) Alles!", from what I wrote is rather perplexing.
What I'd like to see, is either
1) Something interesting or insightful in your repeated voiced observations. It's annoying when I read a missive and come away have neither learned anything nor been challenged intellectually. Though, in fairness, it is my choice to read or not
2) Write about something else
3) Argue with me on what I write, not what you think you want me to be writing
Enjoy your day, cranky!
What started out as an interesting discussion has devolved to a cat fight about the Napa Valley and what it has become. Please let me make two points. 1. A number of years ago, Joe Colombe, founder of Trader Joe's, spoke at our conference. To this day, I remember his target market profile. In his words, "his ideal customer was one who is over-educated and underpaid". Given the increasing disparity of wealth (Thomas Piketty's Capital just arrived today),Trader Joe's market strategy seems well positioned. Taking that definition to the Whole Foods model, it seems their marketing strategy is unsustainable. Perhaps in the next few years, assuming their stock performance is anemic, they will re-invent themselves, returning to quality items that are not mass marketed, and genuine in their representation. It is simply quality and value. That is what is attracting today's shopper, regardless of age.
I have been in the wine business for more than forty years. I was a winemaker in the Napa Valley in the seventies and eighties. I then migrated to other regions because of what the Valley had become. In those days, most high alcohol wines were Zinfandel coming from the foothills. Exceeding 14% for our Cab was unheard of. Regardless of what you think about Parker, when your name becomes a verb there is substantial reason for it. High scores sell wines. In the early days of his newsletter, he did most of the tasting. His business grew and he had to hire assistants, leaving him to go and taste his favorite regions. He would come to the winery and barrel taste, and base his scores on that. Hardly a blind tasting.
While it is a dreadfully overused term, Napa has become a victim of its own success. I think Robert Mondavi was correct in going after France to show the world that Napa could rival Bordeaux as producing great wines. Unfortunately his vision was overtaken by people who wanted to create a lifestyle, rather than just create great wine. With the sudden flow of excess cash in the eighties and nineties,certain people were using their wealth to show off and one-up their friends. This led to a vicious cycle of building even more pleasure palaces and higher prices, as if a $250 bottle of wine somehow equated with being a second growth or (gulp) even a first growth. This in turn led to new wealth coming in and bidding up the price of land, causing even higher grape prices and bottle costs. Increasingly, the access to Napa Valley wines became more restricted to those with higher disposable incomes, just as in the case of Whole Foods.
The Napa Valley in the 1970's has approximately 19,000 acres of plantable land. That has been extended, but still a constraint. I applaud the move to throttle the wines back. I was never a fan of the fruit-bombs, as I felt they were too one dimensional and boring. As a winemaker, I always preferred the beginning of the ripening window, looking more to pH than Brix. Yes, I was challenging myself, but I felt I was making more complex, interesting and long-lived wines. The challenge will be for Napa if the wineries and growers can re-direct themselves to a more inclusive model, creating wines that will appeal to a broader audience, providing quality and value. Those that paid too much for their land and charge too much for their grapes should honestly ask themselves "why?". Is it because they have the dirt in their souls, or simply want to impress for the sake of impression. Their fate is in their hands.
Why do you hate Napa Valley, Jeff?
Steve, Whole Foods also has a business model based on fear, and I wonder when that will come back to bite them. Fear of pesticides. People are realizing WF has been creating a pesticide scare contrary to the evidence coming out of our land grant universities, the EPA and USDA itself. The fact is eating organic food is not safer, nor is it better for the environment, and taste is about ripeness and variety. The basic argument is fallacious if you assume natural is safer than synthetic. And many of the natural products seem very synthetic and manipulated. As a vineyard owner, I see organic farmers use more pesticides than conventional farmers, I know those organic pesticides are "chemicals", I see them applied more often, and I know organic pesticides often have higher Environmental Impact Quotients as determined by Cornell. Once consumers become aware of the manipulation used by WF to justify the higher prices, I suspect there will be further fallout.


text:
Police: Wind may be to blame for I-40 crash
Man suffers serious injuries, officers say
Five people, including three children, were inside an SUV that overturned Tuesday evening.
The crash happened about 5:19 p.m. on Interstate 40 East at Highway 66 South, according to Forsyth County EMS workers.
The North Carolina Highway Patrol told WXII that the SUV overturned after it was passed by a tractor-trailer.
A man driving the vehicle suffered serious injuries. Officials said he was taken to an intensive care unit.
A female passenger suffered neck and shoulder injuries. The three children were OK, though one of them needed stitches, authorities said.
Police said the woman was the girlfriend of the driver and the mother of the three children.
No charges have been filed. The crash scene was cleared at about 7:30 p.m.
Investigators said the wind may be what caused the SUV to overturn.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
- Over/Under
- Season 1
- Episode 135
Jeff Tweedy Rates Stuffed Crust Pizza, Men's Jewelry, and High School Reunions
Released on 12/10/2018
[upbeat drum music]
I would say it's overrated,
but also I blame myself for not having the patience
or the work ethic to wear jewelry.
Do you take them off?
Do you put them on in the morning?
At the same time, that's how they portray pirates.
And you would think
that pirates would not have that kinda time.
Yeah, they really portray pirates
as being very image-conscious.
[drum roll]
I, like a lot of people in this day and age,
have a complicated relationship with bread.
I really wish that I could give my whole-hearted endorsement
of a bread bowl because in my heart of hearts,
it's a very, very comforting notion
to have a bowl that you can eat.
But I have successfully avoided bread bowls
for some years now, and now I want one.
Thanks for reminding me.
[drum roll]
[chuckles] High school reunions,
overrated, just the thought of it,
fills me with anxiety.
Coincidentally we're in Belleville
for one of my high school reunions.
It's actually a story in my book.
I ran into some of my classmates, and they thought
I was in town to go to the high school reunion.
And they asked me if I still had a little band,
and they reminded why I didn't want to go
to the high school reunion.
[drum roll]
All metal is underrated.
All metal musicians, all genres of metal is underrated.
Say for example you listen to an indie rock station,
like if you have Sirius XMU or something like that,
and you listen to those bands and they're trying so hard
to sound like they don't care about anything.
And then you switch to liquid metal
or some like super hard-core like black metal band
or something like that,
there is no mistaking that they give a shit.
You can't do that without fucking working your ass off.
So I'm always inspired by metal bands.
[drum roll]
He's a genius, Weird Al is underrated.
Name another artist that has
their own completely self-contained genre.
He's one of the only ones you know,
just has made his own world of what he does
and you can't go anywhere else for Weird Al.
If you want some Weird Al, you have to go to Weird Al.
[drum roll]
Stuffed crust pizza is just overrated,
seems pretty disgusting to me.
What difference does it make whether it's in the crust
or on top of the crust?
Is it just because they didn't think
they could get enough cheese on top of the pizza?
Is it because people didn't eat the crusts enough?
Is it like the crust lobby?
[upbeat drum music]
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American Football Rate Greta Van Fleet, Bradley Cooper, and Celebrity ASMR
The Cast of Queer Eye Rate 30 Rock, The Strokes, and Kellyanne Conway
Sean Paul Rates Pet Sunglasses, Nike Eyebrows, and Rainbow Teeth
Todd Rundgren Rates Alien Abductions, Jimmy Buffett, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Better Oblivion Community Center Rate Crazy Frog, Pink Floyd, and Being Emo
Jamila Woods Rates Meditation Apps, Mercury Retrograde, and Soylent
Deafheaven Rate Scented Candles, Raya, and NXIVM
Bob Saget Rates The Beach Boys, Whippets, and Gandhi
Lil Nas X Rates Horses, Twitter, and Prom
David Crosby Rates Chicago the Band, Twitter, and Game of Thrones
Slowthai Rates Gordon Ramsay, Grand Theft Auto, and Mr. Bean
Beast Coast Rate Black Holes, K-Pop, and Chucky
Charly Bliss Rate Cats the Musical, Pixar, and Sonic the Hedgehog
Ken Burns Rates Mockumentaries, Psychedelics, and "Old Town Road"
Blarf Rates Gene Simmons, Measles, and Pitchfork Reviews
Billie Eilish Rates Being Homeschooled, Goths, and Invisalign
Perry Farrell Rates Face Tattoos, Hedonism, and Touring in a Van
Carrie Brownstein Rates Crowd Surfing, Cowboy Hats, and Sheet Masks
Maxo Kream Rates Taco Bell, Christmas, and SpongeBob SquarePants
E-40 Rates Red Wine, Edward Scissorhands, and Slippers
Clairo Rates Hilary Duff, Criss Angel, and Peppa Pig
Burna Boy Rates Tattoos, Yachts, and Disney Movies
Tove Lo Rates Goat Yoga, Midsommar and IKEA
Violent Femmes Rate Banjos, Curly Fries, and Therapy Animals
Ozuna Rates Reggaetón, Disney World, and Aliens
FINNEAS Rates Baby Yoda, Taco Bell, and James Bond
Megan Thee Stallion Rates Dating Apps, Dubbed Anime, and Texas Toast
Dua Lipa Rates Pokémon, Ikea, and Selfies
Brockhampton Rate Tinder, Tupac and Reddit
Jack Harlow Rates Eminem, Country Music and Los Angeles
Over/Under: Pitchfork Music Festival
Boygenius Rate Google Drive, the Ocean, and Topsheets


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Sept. 24, 2010 -- Negative emotions such as anger and sadness increase pain in women who suffer from fibromyalgia and in those who don't, according to a new study.
Researchers in the Netherlands conducted experiments on a total of 121 women, 62 with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, and 59 who don't have the disorder.
Both groups were asked to recall a neutral situation, then recall anger and sadness-inducing conditions. The effects of these negative emotions on pain responses were measured. The participants were also subjected to electrical pain induction, where they pressed a button when they felt an electrical current and again when it became painful and once again when intolerable.
The researchers found that women with and without fibromyalgia indicated increased pain in response to both anger and sadness. A greater emotional reaction was associated with a greater amount of pain response.
Negative Emotions and Pain
"Emotional sensitization of pain may be especially detrimental in people who already have high pain levels," says Henriet van Middendorp, PhD, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Research should test techniques to facilitate better emotional regulation, emotional awareness, experiencing, and processing."
Middendorp tells WebMD by email that the study findings are most relevant for women with fibromyalgia because they experience negative emotions more frequently than women without the condition.
She says that because "negative emotions are an unavoidable part of life, especially when you are dealing with chronic pain, it could be worthwhile to focus on trying to change the way people deal with their emotions in order to try to change the impact that negative emotions have on pain."
For example, she tells WebMD, "teaching patients to recognize their emotions and to express them may decrease the intensity with which the emotions are experienced, which will also decrease the impact of emotions on pain."
Although it's true that anger and sadness increase pain in women with fibromyalgia, researcher Mark A. Lumley, PhD, of Wayne State University tells WebMD that there are "some caveats."
He says that researchers were "unable to measure the patients' experience of either anger or sadness, nor how intense the emotion was or how clearly and definitively it was experienced."
It is possible, he says by telephone, that when asked to express anger, patients with fibromyalgia "were not able to give as clearly angry a story and to express their feelings directly."
It's likely, he says, that those patients "had more difficulty giving a specifically angry experience and then expressing it. If so, then this could result in no differences between the fibromyalgia patients and controls."
Exercise and Cognitive Therapy Can Help
Lumley tells WebMD that there is evidence that women with fibromyalgia "have greater difficulty identifying feelings, expressing feelings, and that anger that is inhibited is particularly problematic for patients with fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions."
The findings are "a little surprising," he tells WebMD, because he "would have expected fibromyalgia patients to show a greater increase in how much they reported experiencing sadness and anger" because "they tend on average to have more negative emotions."
In a related study, researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, also in the Netherlands, found that tailored cognitive-behavioral therapy and exercise training aimed at helping pain may be beneficial treatments for fibromyalgia patients.
Treatment effects were significant, showing positive differences in pain, fatigue, and functional disability, and in anxiety and negative mood, the researchers say. "Our results demonstrate that offering high-risk [fibromyalgia] patients a treatment tailored to their cognitive behavioral patterns at an early stage after the diagnosis is effective in improving both short- and long-term physical and psychological outcomes," researcher Saskia van Koulil, MSc, of Radboud says in a news release. "Supporting evidence of the effectiveness of our tailored treatment was found with regard to the follow-up assessments and the low dropout rates," she says.
Both studies are published online in advance of the October print issue of Arthritis Care & Research.


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3M Speedglas
11 Items
- $606.20 $475.00
- $28.17 $20.99
11 Items
Started as the brainchild oft five men, 3M began over 100 years ago and has now grown into a global distributor of safety equipment. 3M takes pride in innovation, teamwork, and an inspiration to help ease the daily working tasks of people around the world. With world-wide operations and sales, 3M produces over 50,000 products for homes, businesses and industrial working environments today.
Today, 3M offers a broad range of high-quality welding helmets. Welding Supplies from IOC has an array of the "3M Speedglas" Welding Helmets. The 3M Speedglas line is a dependable brand that offers maximum durability and effectiveness when it comes to your welding projects.
If you are looking for a 3M Speedglas helmet to fit your job, check out the 3M Speedglas 9100XX Auto Welding Helmet with Side Windows (06-0100-30SW) from Welding Supplies from IOC. The comfort of the Speedglas 9100 welding helmet is the result of extensive research and development processes. We consulted with international experts in ergonomics and anatomy to ensure that we would produce the most comfortable and protective welding helmet ever. It offers sensitivity settings for normal welding to low-amp inverter TIG welding, and even low-sensitivity setting for when other welders are working nearby. With enhanced versatility, this helmet has seven user selectable dark shades: shade 5 for gas welding/cutting, shade 8 for micro plasma and low amp TIG welding and shade 9 to 13 for most other types of arc welding.
Suitable for more entry-level welders, the 3M Speedglas 100V Aces High Helmet (07-0012-31AH) is good for Stick, MIG and most TIG welding processes. User-selectable dark shades 8 through 12 and viewing area of 6.05 sq.in.(1.73 in. X 3.66 in.) It has three user-selectable sensitivity levels for reliable arc detection and has excellent optical quality. It is shade 3 in the light state. With an Auto Darkening Speed 0.1 Ms @ 73 Degrees F and a battery Life 1500 Hours, you won't be disappointed with this purchase.


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Buckeye Sportsman
Dan Armitage, host of Buckeye Sportsman, is one of the state's best-known outdoor writers, with articles appearing in numerous outdoor magazines, including Outdoor Life, In-Fisherman and Field & Stream as well as in various statewide periodicals including Ohio Game & Fish, Ohio's Country Journaland AAA's Home & Away magazines.
Through his work and contacts as a full time outdoor writer, Dan keeps Buckeye Sportsman listeners abreast of the latest outdoor news affecting hunters and anglers, and his featured guests each week offer expert advice on everything from calling Ohio turkeys and waterfowl to fishing for crappie, bass or walleye in waters right here in Ohio. In fact, the reason Buckeye Sportsman has become so popular is that each show is carefully targeted to our Ohio audience. Dan is also a popular speaker at the major sport shows in and around Ohio, where he conducts hunting and fishing seminars every winter. If he is appearing at a show near you this season, please stop by, say hello, and let him know what topics you would like covered on future Buckeye Sportsman shows.
The program is now in its 20th season on the air, making it the longest-running outdoor radio show in the state. Buckeye Sportsman includes dozens of stations statewide that distribute the program every weekend. Thanks for tuning in!
Click here to find past episodes, show links, and to contact Dan
Show Links:
Sponsored By:


text: RADIOLOGY: KIDNEY: Case# 32986: MULTIPLE RENAL MASSES. A 75 year old female with giant cell arteritis and abdominal pain. There are patchy nodular and confluent areas of lower attenuation seen throughout both kidneys. A simple cyst is seen in the upper pole of the left kidney. Kidneys show prompt contrast uptake and excretion and the distal ureters appear grossly unremarkable. The urinary bladder is grossly unremarkable. Patient is status post hysterectomy. Multiple sigmoid diverticulosis is identified. The visualized lung bases are grossly unremarkable. The liver, spleen, pancreas, gallbladder, and visualized bowel are grossly unremarkable. Adrenal glands are unremarkable. There is no free intraperitoneal fluid or air seen. No abnormally enlarged lymph nodes are identified. Review of bone windows shows masses in the region of the intervertebral foramina at the left 9-10 and 10-11 disc interspace levels. These masses appear to be non-enhancing.


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Mister Rogers' Neighborhood came to a close in 2001 after beloved host Fred Rogers announced that he was ending the TV series to focus on his health. Sadly, Rogers died of stomach cancer in February 2003 at the age of 74. The series continued to air in reruns on PBS until 2008.
Rogers' production company, family, and friends have done much to keep his legacy alive and now, his puppet characters are returning to television in a new animated spin-off.
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, starring the four-year-old son of the original Daniel Striped Tiger, is expected to debut in the fall of 2012.
Here's the press release from PBS:
DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD, set to launch in Fall 2012 as part of PBS KIDS preschool line-up, will focus on preparing kids for school success.
PBS Press Tour, Los Angeles, CA, July 31, 2011 – This morning, at the Television Critics Association's Summer Press Tour, PBS announced the launch of production for DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD, a new animated multi-platform series inspired by one of the most beloved PBS classic television series, MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD. The new preschool series is an animated version of the original Neighborhood of Make Believe in which a four-year-old Daniel Tiger is the star of the show who talks directly to the home audience inviting them in to his world. The first television series produced by The Fred Rogers Company since MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD will launch in Fall 2012 on-air on PBS KIDS, along with a robust website, including free, interactive games for kids, online resources for parents and teachers, and other cross-platform content.
DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD is based on the next generation of the original MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD characters. All of the original characters have grown up and now have preschoolers of their own. DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD stories revolve around a four-year-old Daniel Tiger, son of the original Daniel Tiger, and his preschool friends. The series uses musical strategies grounded in Fred Rogers' landmark curriculum and music. In this way, the songs will give parents and kids a concrete way to practice important pro-social skills together.
DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD brings together a group of today's leading creators of children's media and educational technology. The series was developed by the acclaimed Fred Rogers Company in association with Out of the Blue Enterprises.
"We're very excited to be creating a program that builds on Fred's legacy in such fresh and innovative ways. Fred knew that school readiness skills are the foundation for academic achievement, and a full life, and now a growing body of research confirms this," said Bill Isler, President of The Fred Rogers Company.
"Fred Rogers revolutionized children's media with MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD, and DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD continues on this path of innovation, helping the next generation of young children learn and grow in new ways," said Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children's Media, PBS. "Joining the PBS KIDS family of series that cover important curricular areas like literacy and science, DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD fills a critical gap in children's media today: modeling the behaviors and habits that kids need in order to excel in formal learning settings – essentially, learning how to learn. It's important for kids to learn pro-social skills like cooperation and listening, so that when they start school they are able to focus on the material at hand."
The executive producers of DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD are Kevin Morrison, for The Fred Rogers Company, and Angela Santomero, cofounder of Out of the Blue Enterprises and the creative force behind the hit PBS KIDS literacy series SUPER WHY!. In addition to this key partner, The Fred Rogers Company is joined by 9 Story Entertainment, bringing award-winning animation capabilities to the production, and top game designer Schell Games, which will spearhead the series' digital educational applications.
DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD joins the PBS KIDS line-up of cross-platform content for kids ages 2 to 8, which includes a host of top-rated series including THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT!, CURIOUS GEORGE and WILD KRATTS. With a transmedia approach, PBS KIDS is increasingly serving children wherever they live, learn, and play – on TV, online, through mobile devices, in the classroom, and through a new line of educational toys.
About PBS KIDS
PBS KIDS, the number one educational media brand for children, offers all children the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television, online and community-based programs. Each quarter, more than 27 million viewers watch PBS KIDS on TV, and PBSKIDS.org, the number one kids' entertainment site for free video streaming, attracts more than 9.3 million unique visitors per month (Nielsen, NTI Q42010; comScore Video Metrix; Google Analytics). For more information on specific PBS KIDS programs supporting literacy, science, math and more, visit PBS.org/pressroom, or follow PBS KIDS on Twitter and Facebook.
About the Fred Rogers Company
The company was founded by Fred Rogers in 1971 as the non-profit producer of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for PBS. In the years that followed, it not only created hundreds of episodes of this much-loved program, but also extended Fred's values and approach to other efforts in promoting children's social, emotional, and behavioral health and supporting parents, caregivers, teachers and other professionals in their work with children.
The Fred Rogers Company continues to build on Fred's legacy in innovative ways through a wide variety of media, and engaging new generations of children and families with his timeless wisdom. For more information, visit us at www.fredrogers.org.
About Out of the Blue Enterprises
Out of the Blue Enterprises is dedicated to developing a groundbreaking portfolio of individually-targeted children's entertainment properties, under the direction of a proven management team led by Co-Founders Angela C. Santomero, M.A. developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Creator of the preschool entertainment phenomenon, Blue's Clues, and Samantha Freeman, MBA from Harvard Business School and former Nickelodeon entertainment executive with extensive children's marketing experience. The company creates breakthrough, interactive and curriculum-based entertainment concepts that span a variety of viable platforms, including television, video, publishing and consumer products. In doing so, Out of the Blue stimulates the minds of kids and families, involves them in fresh and original ways and elevates their educational entertainment experiences to a whole new level.
What do you think? Do you think the new show is a good idea; a good way to carry on Fred Rogers' legacy?
Image courtesy PBS.


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Listening to our Community
It is not often that you get to gather a group of people with no connection to each other, for a conversation, and listen to them talk. Over the past 6 weeks, The Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts (COLT) and its member land trusts have done just that. It was an opportunity to listen and


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Hello Dear Humans. I hope you are all well. I am very happy with life. Ma Leueen and I have been working hard in training sessions with Coach Belinda but today we did something different. We went out to the grass field beyond the paddocks and took a few turns around the forest track behind the field. Ma Leueen said it was too windy to go into the forest trails as a dead branch might get blown down onto our heads!
On the track there is a dead tree that is more than just a dead tree. It is the villages of the Goblins. I am not the least bit frightened of them and always talk to them when I am going past . "Hello Gobs,"I say. "Hello Beebs," they answer. They are very small little creatures with big ears and they are very friendly. I have not told Ma Leueen about them as Humans can be a bit funny about stuff like that. But today she asked me why I was looking at the dead tree each time we went past it. So I turned to her and said :"That is where the Goblins have their villages."
Well Ma Leueen was pretty cool with that. So I explained a bit more about their villages. I told her that they have two villages in the dead tree. You can see in the photo below that there is a little bridge that goes from one village to the other. Can you see it? It is there in the middle of the dead tree.
They have nice little caves under the tree and they are quite cosy but the Gobs told me today that they have had enough of the rain as some of their tunnels have flooded and they have had to make adjustments. Ma Leueen told me to give them her best regards and then we continued on.
And before I go .I AM WORTH A MILLION DOLLARS! Yes! That is what Ma Leueen told Coach Belinda and a couple of the other humans when we got back to the barn. She said that yesterday I was a star in our dressage training and today on a cool and very windy day she can take me out and give me a gallop on the forest track and do some hill work and I am as "good as gold". That is what she said. It seems that not all horses can be this flexible and brave. Just sayin'.
Till next time Dear Humans.


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It was a nuisance and David Gassman put it off for three weeks, but he finally put a little stool sample into a tube and mailed it to a Kaiser Permanente lab.
It's a good thing he did. The test indicated he had colon cancer.
The 68-year-old Oakland resident, who is recovering from surgery, can thank an emerging field known as "comparative effectiveness research." It's an idea that sounds so obvious it's hard to believe it isn't already routine: Rather than simply analyzing whether a drug or treatment method works, researchers compare options to determine which ones do the best job for patients.
Many experts say the approach has such potential to transform the U.S. health system that the federal government will spend $3.5 billion on it through 2019 under national health reforms.
After Kaiser's comparative research revealed that a low-cost, mail-in stool test is more effective than previous stool tests, the health system began offering it widely to patients in the mid-2000s, aware that many would find it more appealing than an intrusive colonoscopy.
Kaiser screening rates jumped from less than 45 percent to nearly 85 percent, potentially saving hundreds of lives.
Critics have complained that comparative effectiveness research could lead to health care rationing. But the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland with 550 employees has been doing it for decades to improve patient care and is considered a national leader in the field.
Why is it needed?
Drug companies spend millions of dollars testing their next blockbuster drug, and the federal government devotes large sums to studying diseases, but little is spent on research to help doctors and patients answer such crucial questions as:
"Patients and clinicians often are forced to make decisions without good evidence," said Dr. Joe Selby, executive director of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, an independent nonprofit that Congress set up to oversee the program.
The United States has had major gaps in comparative effectiveness research, said Dr. Tracy Lieu, who directs Kaiser's Northern California research division. "Drug companies are not particularly eager to fund studies that might find that their drugs should be used on fewer patients," she said.
Although Gassman had never heard of such research, it may have saved his life. He had a sigmoidoscopy several years ago and he says it could have been several more years before his doctor recommended a colonoscopy. The mail-in stool test, which Kaiser sends out annually to its 50- to 75-year-old members, enabled doctors to catch his colon cancer early.
If the test finds blood in the stool, a sign of cancer, the results are confirmed with a colonoscopy. Gassman had surgery in May and now jokes that he has a semicolon.
"We have to continue monitoring the situation to be sure it doesn't return, but supposedly we got it all," he said.
Kaiser has changed its colon cancer screening policies over the years as a result of comparative effectiveness research. In 1993, when many patients weren't being screened, Kaiser invested millions of dollars to offer sigmoidoscopies, which are similar to but less invasive than a colonoscopy, after finding that it could save lives. The study was headed by Selby, who was director of Kaiser's Oakland research division before he was tapped to head the national institute.
But in part because many patients find sigmoidoscopies uncomfortable, Kaiser could never get its screening rates above 45 percent.
A later Kaiser study found a new version of a stool test identified more cancers and polyps and had fewer false positives than older stool tests, said Dr. James Allison, an emeritus investigator in Kaiser's research division. Screening rates soared when Kaiser made the mail-in stool tests widely available in the mid-2000s. Today, Kaiser urges its members to take a yearly stool test, or a colonoscopy every 10 years, or a sigmoidoscopy every five.
The screening has had results: Kaiser found 331 cancers among the 340,000 stool tests it analyzed for its Northern California members in 2011.
In one of its latest projects, Kaiser teamed with UC San Francisco to look at the best way to control high blood pressure in African-Americans, who have much higher rates of the condition than whites.
They will examine whether giving African-Americans a higher dose of diuretics or telephone sessions with a health coach can be effective, said Dr. Stephen Sidney, director of Kaiser's stroke prevention research program.
These are the kinds of effectiveness questions that will be pursued with the federal research money at institutions around the country. Congress allocated $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research in 2010 in the federal stimulus bill and set aside $3.5 billion more in the Affordable Care Act.
Critics said they fear such research could lead to health care rationing if the government uses the results to ax effective treatments simply because they cost too much.
To address such criticisms, legislation discouraged the new institute from doing cost comparisons.
That has erased many of the concerns initially raised by groups such as the Partnership to Improve Patient Care, a private organization formed in 2008 that includes representatives of drug manufacturers, device-makers and patient groups. Now the group's chairman, former Rep. Tony Coelho, a Democrat who represented the San Joaquin Valley area, said he wants to make sure that patients are involved in the new institute's decision-making and that doctors and patients can understand the research findings.
The new institute has patients on its advisory committees and people can suggest research questions on its website, Selby said.
To avoid having its findings sit on a shelf, he said, the institute will work to see "that decision-making actually changes and health status improves."
Sandy Kleffman covers health. Contact her at 510-293-2478. Follow her at Twitter.com/skleffman.
Kaiser research
Kaiser has been doing comparative effectiveness research for years. Among the findings that changed its practices:
Sigmoidoscopy screening for colorectal cancer reduced deaths by 60 percent, compared with no screening.
Electronic health record use can improve outcomes for diabetes patients.
A newer version of a stool test was more effective than previous ones in screening for colorectal cancer.
Hospitals treating patients with severe heart attacks can lower deaths by doing an angiography to check for blood vessel abnormalities.


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The JavaFX portion was, at one point, the largest JavaFX codebase in existance, and, indeed, the first serious large JavaFX project not funded by Sun. And the company I was working with dropped JavaFX for plain old Java.
Although I can't say what the project was, I can say that this is a project that most companies would have tried to use Flash for, but, in the end, Java provided features that competitors using Flash simply can not offer. As far as I know, this company is now the only company with these features in a browser because they went with a Java foundation.
Now keep in mind that a large part of the problem, here, is that this was really the first major JavaFX project, so it was bound to have difficulties. We had support from Sun, but I think Sun did not realize how far they had to go and how many bugs they still had in their runtime. In my opinion, nobody, neither us nor Sun, was aware of the problems of JavaFX. Despite it's version number (1.1 when we started and 1.2 by the time we abandoned), we found it to be buggy. Had the version number been 0.7, I would right now be saying JavaFX is the coolest thing ever, but the truth is that it's still a nascent technology that has yet to prove itself.
Lack of Competent Developers
Symptomatic of a new technology, we had a hard time finding quality developers. Sun gave us some leads but these developers were simply not up to the task of building our complex app. JavaFX is not a difficult programming language, so having someone in-house learn it would have been preferable, but at the time we did not have the resources.
The performance of the JavaFX portion of our app was extremely poor. The extremely performance critical portions of the app were written in Java and performed well, but almost all the graphics were written in JavaFX. Basic graphics like buttons were okay, but complex drawing was very slow. I don't know for sure if this was a result of poor design or JavaFX itself, but from the code I perused it looked like a little of both. We know JavaFX was at least partly to blame because we had performance issues even when we commented out the complex calculations.
Unstable API
Transitioning from JavaFX 1.1 to JavaFX 1.2 turned out to be very difficult because of backwards compatibility issues. Unfortunately, at a certain point in our project, our app was performing so badly with even rudimentary graphics tasks that Sun and our JavaFX developers insisted on upgrading.
Lack of Quality Control
At one point, after we released a baseline product with minimal features, Sun released a new upgrade to JavaFX. Unfortunately, this meant that JavaFX libraries would be updated on all machines that ran our app. Since there was a bug in the library, our app stopped working.
Poor Developer Communication
In an effort to work around the bug, we asked Sun for the developer version of the new library. Unfortunately, they were not forthcoming. At that point, the decision was made to stop development on the JavaFX solution and seek an alternative. After I convinced the team that Swing was capable of looking great, we developed a pure-Java alternative and have released the new product. The graphics performance is orders of magnitude better, and the look is similar to Flash. People who have seen it so far have gone out of their way to complement the appearance of the app. The appearance matches the design spec almost perfectly except for a few things we have not yet had a chance to attend to. (I am belaboring this point because Swing has a reputation for being ugly, simply because most of the included Look and Feels are ugly)
Future Seems to Be Too Business Oriented
When asking Sun about the future of JavaFX, they said they plan to offer certification levels. It's bad enough that Java skills are based on memorization rather than problem solving abilities now, but I can sort of understand that given the business orientation of Java, and maybe businesses look for that sort of thing.
If hip kids don't learn Java, that's okay. There's more than enough Java programmers to keep Amazon, ebay, oracle and all those other Java giants going. But JavaFX is not like that. JavaFX is a creative tool. It's not a direct competitor to flash, but it's in the same vein, and those people aren't going to take a certification exam. Sun needs to think about what is going to make people think JavaFX is awesome, and certification is not it. Neither is having Gosling slinging T-Shirts at them. JavaFX really really has the potential to be awesome, and I really really want it to be, so here's what I think you need to do (Sun, I'm talking to you):
- Show people that you are serious about making it awesome. Hire some awesome programmers and have them blog and tweet or whatever the cool kids are doing these days about what they are doing. Really. Hire the best. Hire some young folks. Hire some experienced old guns. Mix and match. Make sure you let them be honest on those blogs.
- Talk to some cool startups that do mobile stuff like venmo about what they are doing in the mobile sphere and work with them proactively.
- Suck it up: work with the android people. Sure they stabbed you in the back, but you need them.
- Help out Apple: really, their JVM sucks. It seems like I am filing bug reports every week. Make sure they get it right because cool geeks use Apple.
- While you're at it, make sure your JavaFX staff has Macs and other cool toys. Remember, you need to treat those folks as creatives, not code monkeys.


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History Tidbit: November 20, 1910 marked the onset of the Mexican Revolution War, led by Francisco I. Madero. Different groups around the country had grown disgruntled with the dictatorship-like, thirty-year presidency of once army hero, general Porfirio Díaz Mori. I have mentioned Díaz as one of the brigadiers of the Mexican army who were instrumental in the Cinco de Mayo victory of the Battle of Puebla (May 5, 1862), against the invading French army. In 1871, he became, once again, chief defender of the Mexican democracy, rebelling against the re-election of president Benito Juárez. Díaz's own first term as president began in 1877, then ironically extending over another six terms; this period, named after him and known as "El Porfiriato" was characterized by sharp contrasts between the country's economic progress, riches for the upper class, and extreme poverty and exploitation for the general population.
Although the deposition of Díaz only took a few months, and Madero had managed a pause in the battlefield and the establishment of a new government by mid 1911, the social and political turmoil – created by the revolt and three decades of oppression – were far from over. Madero was murdered in 1913, and a contra-revolutionary government led by Victoriano Huerta took over. Guerrilla and political leaders such as Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Alvaro Obregón and Venustiano Carranza, had very different goals and views, but were all against Huerta's tyranny. Huerta was removed from power in July 1914, and eventually Carranza became president; his government drafted a new constitution, approved on February 5, 1917. Many historians consider this as the official end of the conflict, or shortly after when Alvaro Obregón was elected president, in 1920. However, regional revolts and their associated bloodshed subsided only gradually; all four of the aforementioned leaders were murdered: Zapata in 1919, Carranza a year later, Villa in 1923 (three years after he had retired to his farm) and Obregón in 1928 after seeking re-election.
During the cruel battles taking place for almost a decade, especially in Northern Mexico, many women joined the ranks, becoming "soldaderas" (derived from soldada – female soldier). Some were active members of the army, and others were "camp followers" in charge of gathering resources, cooking and tending to the wounded. These women would also carry a pot, a metate (stone grinder) and a molcajete (mortar), and cook whatever they could under those precarious circumstances, with whatever food they gathered on the fields, or looted from defeated towns. Because of these conditions, although known for many years prior to the Mexican Revolution War, any one-pot preparation, or "de la olla", became a favoured staple on the menu: comforting café de olla, a sweetened coffee fortified with cinnamon; frijoles de la olla, the ubiquitous pot of filling and nutritious beans; and mole de olla, a saucy beef soup with vegetables, also a complete meal with the addition of corn on the cob and small corn dough dumplings called chochoyones.
Beef Soup in Red Sauce – Mole de olla
Printable recipe: Beef Soup in Red Sauce – Mole de olla
1 lb (454 g) stewing beef; in chunks
½ lb (227 g) beef shank with bone; in chunks
1 bay leaf (or a bunch of fresh epazote, if available)
Water, as needed
Salt, to taste
2 tbsp white wine or apple cider vinegar
5-6 dry red peppers, such as ancho, pasilla or guajillo
1 medium onion (reserve outer layers)
2 medium tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 cup water
2 ears corn
1 chayote (check my post: Do you recognize this vegetable?)
2 zucchini
1 cup green beans
1 carrot
1 potato (optional); peeled, cubed
1 cup corn flour for tortillas (masa harina, Maseca™, check: Corn Flour and Masa 101)
1 cup water
1 tbsp vegetable oil (or lard)
¼ tsp salt, or to taste
To serve:
Lime wedges
Set all the sauce ingredients together, then prep: remove seeds and stems from peppers (I used 2 ancho and 3 guajillo); peel onion (reserve outer layers for meat) and cut in half; peel garlic cloves; wash tomatoes (I only had grape tomatoes, so I used about a cup):
Wash vegetables, set them all together, then prep: slice corn into quarters; peel carrot, cut in half lengthwise, then each half into two-inch sticks; peel chayote, cut into eight to ten pieces; slice green beans into thirds; trim ends off zucchini, slice lengthwise into quarters, then each piece in half:
Measure and set the chochoyones ingredients together:
In a large pot, arrange meat chunks, reserved outer layers of onion, and bay leaf (or epazote); add enough water to cover meat. Bring to boil over high heat, then lower to a rolling simmer; after a few minutes, skim any foam off the top with a spoon:
Cover and continue simmering for at least one hour. Meanwhile, mix all the chochoyones ingredients in a bowl, until a firm dough is formed; take small pieces of dough, about one teaspoon at a time, and form into a ball; make an indent with a finger or a small measuring spoon:
The dumplings on the left were indented with a 1/4-tsp measuring spoon, and the ones on the right, with my index finger; they do not look very different, but I found that using the measuring spoon was faster and the indents slightly more uniform. The dough was enough to make approximately 60 dumplings. Arrange on a tray and let rest uncovered until needed.
Check meat with a fork; it should flake easily. After one hour, my batch was fully cooked and it was possible to break up the meat with a fork, but I needed some force to do it.
I continued cooking the meat, covered, and in the meantime, I prepared the sauce. On a dry skillet (no oil), over medium heat, char the cleaned peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes; turn frequently, and remove peppers as soon as they crisp, to avoid burning. Remove garlic, and continue charring the onions and tomatoes for a few more minutes:
Place peppers in a bowl with 1 cup of water, and let the other sauce ingredients cool down on a plate; reserve.
After a total time of 1 1/2 hours, the meat was tender and falling apart when tested with a fork; in the photo below, left, a piece of bone may be seen missing the marrow, which has melted into the broth. Remove herbs and onions, increase heat to medium/high, and add pieces of corn:
Let cook for about ten minutes; add the rest of the vegetables in the following order, letting cook for about five minutes between each addition: chayote, potato (if using), carrot, green beans, and zucchini:
Cover an continue cooking. Meanwhile, place the charred peppers with their soaking water in a blender jar. Add reserved onions, tomatoes and garlic; process until completely smooth. Uncover pot and add sauce, either straight from the blender jar, or pouring in through a strainer (I like the texture from pouring without straining.) Bring back to a boil, stirring gently to combine sauce; add more water as needed, salt to taste and vinegar:
Let simmer for another five minutes, and adjust seasoning, if needed. Just between five to ten minutes before serving, drop reserved chochoyones gently in the pot, making sure they get covered with broth:
Once the chochoyones are cooked, scoop a little of everything in a large soup bowl, and top with broth; serve with lime wedges on the side:
A mild version of this dish, called "caldo blanco" (clear soup, or literally, "white broth") may be prepared by omitting the red sauce and chochoyones (they tend to taste pasty in the clear broth):
FUN FACT: Corridos are ballads which gained great popularity during, and shortly after the Mexican Revolution war. Many of these corridos were about soldaderas, and probably the most famous is "La Adelita" (nickname for Adela), about the "brave and, furthermore, beautiful" camp follower who had a moonstruck army man declaring his undying love, and even the "colonel's respect". I am including a broadcast of "La Adelita" song on a YouTube channel, with some interesting photos from the period. There is no way to know whether Adela was a real character, or a portrait of the many female soldiers and camp followers of the time; nowadays Adelita is used as another name to refer to a soldadera.
I am joining Fiesta Friday #251 hosted by Angie @ Fiesta Friday; Angie is asking for ideas on how to use Thanksgiving leftovers, and I am thinking this dish could be easily adapted to a rich turkey-carcass broth, adding leftover chunks of turkey meat, and even vegetables. How about that? Angie's co-hosts this week are Mollie @ Frugal Hausfrau (with recent posts with appetizer ideas, and a "must-check-that-now!" chocolate glazed tart recipe) and Monika @ Everyday Healthy Recipes (old fashioned recipes with Monika's own twists, some from Polish tradition, and always adapted for healthy living.)


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Woolley, Sir Charles Leonard
Woolley, Sir Charles Leonard, 1880–1960, English archaeologist. His early work included excavations at Carchemish (1912–14) and the Egyptian site of Tell el Amarna (1921–22). He was then chosen to direct the joint British Museum and Univ. of Pennsylvania expedition at Ur in Mesopotamia (1922–34), where his findings did much to further the study of the Sumerian civilization in the 3d millennium BC Woolley oversaw the excavation of the prehistoric cemetery at Ur, which included 16 royal tombs with treasures of gold and lapis lazuli and evidence of large-scale human sacrifice. Later excavations led by him were those of the Syrian sites of Al-Mina (1936) and Tell Atchana (1937–39 and 1946–49). His writings include The Sumerians (1928), Digging Up the Past (1930), Ur of the Chaldees (1938, rev. ed. 1952), A Forgotten Kingdom (1953, rev. ed. 1959), and Excavations at Ur (1954).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Archaeology: Biographies


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Anson Wong Released
A Court of Appeals in Malaysia today released wildlife trafficker Anson Wong. Wong had served 17.5 months of a five year prison sentence for smuggling boa constrictors. You can read more here.
Wong's five year sentence was a significant one for a wildlife trafficker anywhere in the world, and unprecedented in Malaysia. The Appeals Court today ruled that the 5 year sentence did not fit the crime of boa constrictor smuggling, a defensible conclusion in the limited circumstances of this case.
Ironically, the failure of Malaysia's Wildlife Department ever to arrest Wong worked to his advantage: "It is trite law that Wong's plea of guilt is a mitigating factor. It is trite law that the fact Wong was the first offender is another mitigating factor," the judge said.
Agents and prosecutors in US Fish & Wildlife Service's Operation Chameleon would argue that Wong was hardly a "first offender." Instead, as Wong confessed in a US Court room, he smuggled critically endangered wildlife for decades.
What did occur for the first time was that Wong was brought to justice in his own country. This is a major advance. It is the result of good work by Malaysian citizens, national media, NGOs, legislators, prosecutors, and judges. Every element of Malaysian society except Malaysia's Wildlife Department worked hard for justice in this case. The future is yet to reveal itself…
Tags: Anson Wong, Perhilitan, USFWS, Wildlife trafficking


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Welcome to the January Carnival of Natural Parenting: Experiments in Natural Family Living
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have reported on weeklong trials to make their lives a little greener. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.
In December, as my youngest child turned 20 months old, I was met by the return of my menses. Being pregnant and/or lactating for almost ten years (my oldest child is 9 years old), I've only had a handful of periods during that time.
I can't say I have missed dealing with it. I hate pads; they leave me feeling wet and rashy and as though everyone can see the outline. Remember when disposable pads used to be really thick? I do. I resorted to using tampons pre-motherhood (and in those rare instances since). They didn't have the same issues as the pads, but they came with their own. They tend to leave one feeling dry, and there is always the thought in the back of my mind about toxic shock syndrome. Both disposable pads and tampons create a lot of waste, both during production and in land fills.
When I had children, and subsequently began using cloth diapers, I was introduced to the idea of cloth pads. It seemed like a better idea than disposables, but it didn't address the other problems I had with disposable pads: the wetness, rashiness, or bulkiness. I really didn't want to switch to pads, so I told myself that with as infrequently as I had a period, it really didn't warrant storing a bunch of cloth pads in the interims.
A few months ago, I began taking a closer look at my options, as we may not have more children, and I knew I would eventually reach a point where my daughter's nursing (despite nursing through day and night) wasn't enough to keep my cycle away. I knew I wanted to try a menstrual cup. I asked around about different ones, read reviews, and ultimately ordered one to put away. I then proceeded to forget about it.
So, when my period decided to show, I was a little bummed. Honestly, I was hoping that it would stay away for a while longer. I was a bit mopey. Here I was having to deal with menstruation and the struggle we've been having about whether or not to have another child seemed to dangle closer, as my fertility began to return.
Then I remembered my menstrual cup packed away in my drawer. I wouldn't say that it was like opening up a gift, but it did make my day a little brighter. So, I tried a menstrual cup for the very first time.
I took out the cup, washed it, and then looked at it. It seemed a bit intimidating. I then compared it to the size of something else and decided that I would be just fine. It was much easier than I thought it would be. It had all of the benefits of tampons without the drawbacks. I did have some leakage in the first couple of days, but I don't know if that was because it was my first time using it, my first menses in a long time, the fact that I was having to dump it every 1-2 hours in the first days, or a combination thereof. When menses moseys back around in a month or two, I'll gladly try it again. I much preferred it to tampons, but I think I'll make some cloth panty liners for back up on those first days.
The next challenge? Emptying the menstrual cup in a public bathroom with my entourage in tow.
Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
- Make your own moisturizer! — Megan at boho mama whips up a winter skin-friendly moisturizer.
- Cold Water Only — Brittany at The Pistachio Project talks about how you do not need hot water to wash laundry.
- Family Cloth… Really?? — After lots of forethought and consideration, Momma Jorje finally decides to take the plunge with family cloth.
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle : 5-5-5 Things A Day — Luschka from Diary of a First Child writes about decluttering her home in an attempt to create a gentler living space. She takes on a new project where she sets a goal of reducing, reusing and recycling every day.
- Pros and cons of family cloth — Lauren at Hobo Mama would love to continue replacing paper products with family cloth … if she could only get over how damp she feels.
- Craftily Parenting — Kellie at Our Mindful Life finds that crafting makes her a better parent.
- Changes — Laura at Pug in the Kitchen couldn't choose just one area to experiment with, so she wrote a long post about all the fun changes initiated in her life!
- Life without Internet: Not all it's Cracked up to Be — Adrienne at Mommying My Way tries to go a week without the Internet, only to realize a healthy dose of Internet usage really helps keep this stay-at-home mom connected.
- My Progression to Raw Milk — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares her natural parenting progression all the way to trying raw milk.
- mama's new little friend. — Sarah at Bitty Bird tries a menstrual cup to "green her period," and is pleasantly surprised when she falls in love with the product!
- Before you throw it out, try homemade laundry soap! — Jennifer at Practical OH Mommy shows visual proof that homemade laundry soap is cheaper, easier, and works better than the store-bought chemicals!
- Oil, Oil, No Toil, No Trouble — K from Very Simple Secret talks about her foray into the oil-cleansing method.
- I Need a Hobby — Amanda at Let's Take the Metro couldn't decide which experiment to run, so she did them all.
- 7 days of macrobiotics for a balanced family — The Stones make a [successful] attempt to release the "holiday junking" with 7 days of macrobiotic meals to balance their bodies and souls. Elisabeth at Manic Mrs. Stone includes an explanation of macrobiotics.
- Chemical Free Beauty Challenge — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction turned to natural alternatives for her daily beauty and cleaning routine, with great results.
- Greening my Armpits!? My Green Resolution — Shannon at The Artful Mama talks about how she decided to give up her traditional antiperspirant and make the switch over to crystal deodorants and definitely isn't looking back!
- Going Raw (for a while) — Jenny at Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares her family's experience with raw food.
- Do we get to eat gluten today? — Sheila at A Gift Universe has been trying to figure out if her son does better with or without gluten in his diet … but it's really hard to tell for sure.
- Hippies Can Smell and Look Fabulous Too! — Arpita of Up, Down And Natural details her experience of going shampoo-free and overhauling her cosmetics to find the balance between feeling beautifully fabulous and honoring her inner hippie.
- Our cupboards are full…but there's nothing to eat — Lucy at Dreaming Aloud takes on the challenge of chomping through the contents of her storecupboard rather than going shopping — but there's something that she just can't bring herself to do …
- Elimination Experiment 3.0 — MudpieMama recounts the messy adventures of her baby daughter trying to be diaper free.
- Family Cloth Trial — Amyables at Toddler in Tow talks about making and using family cloth wipes in the bathroom for the first time.
- Taking a Hiatus — Amy at Peace 4 Parents shares how her experience of much less internet interaction affected her family and how it will change her approach in the future.
- Trying Out the Menstrual Cup — Lindsey at an unschooling adventure ditches the tampons and gives menstrual cups a try.
- Managing Food Waste in Our Home — Tired of the holiday waste, Robbie at Going Green Mama takes a weeklong focus on reducing food waste in her home, and learns some lessons that can take her through the new year.
- Going Offline, Cloth Tissues, and Simplicity — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama muses over her time away from blogging and social networking. In addition, she shares her newfound love of cloth tissues and simplicity.
- The Oil Cleansing Method — Erica at ChildOrganics explores an easy, organic and natural way to tackle skin care.
- Experiments in Natural Family Living – Natural Toys! — Lani at Boobie Time enjoys the silence of natural toys and being more present with her son.
- Discovering a New City and Organic Foods — Amy at A Secure Base describes her family's switch to and search for organic foods for one week.
- My Experiment in Homemade Bread — Crunchy Con Mommy tried — and loved — baking her own homemade bread.
- Menu Planning: Stop the Excuses — Gaby at Tmuffin stopped the excuses and started planning her weekly meals, drastically cutting her grocery budget and stress level and improving the quality of foods she fed her family.
- My First Menstrual Cup — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children was pleasantly surprised with her first experience using a menstrual cup.
- My Natural Beauty Regime — Christine at African Babies Don't Cry shares the results of banishing cleanser and soaps from her bathroom, as well as a couple of natural homemade recipes that have worked well on her skin.
- Unplugging and Creating a Rhythm: Our Experiment in Natural Family Living — Dionna at Code Name: Mama focused less on gadgets and spent more time with her family to create a healthy rhythm for the new year.
- Experiments in Natural Family Living: 5 First Steps Toward Preparing for a Natural Birth — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama discusses how she tackled the pressing matter of how to begin preparing for a natural birth.
- All you need is…vinegar! — Kristen at My Semi-Crunchy Life learns that one household product can replace all the cleaners in her cabinet.
- Nope Nada Ixnay Negative Pass Decline — Zoie at TouchstoneZ finds out what shakes loose if she says, "YES!!" to anything anyone asks of her over the space of 10 days.
- Reducing our exposure to toxins found in plastics — Syenna at Gently Parenting Twins throws out the melamine and BPA plastics which have been hanging around the kitchen for too long.
- Duh! — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares how she began the process of helping her 2-year-old son stop physically acting out.
- Experiments in Natural Parenting: Starting, Stopping, and Gaining Perspective — Melissa at Vibrant Wanderings explains how pregnancy brain interfered with her attempts to complete an experiment, but how she gained some interesting perspective as she started and stopped several.
- From Experiment to Lifestyle — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares her experience avoiding processed foods for a month, and deciding to make it a permanent lifestyle change.
- From Disposable Paper to Reusable Cloth – AGAIN! — Terri at Child of the Nature Isle stops flushing trees down the toilet and switches to the softest ever butt-wiping material: cloth.
- Extra! Extra! Water Heater Turned Down, Mom Doesn't Notice! — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis finds an energy-saving experiment that's so easy she didn't even realize it was happening.
- Worm Tea — CatholicMommy isn't sure how successful her worm bin will be, but she's having fun anyway.
- Miles to Go … — Rachael at The Variegated Life learns that when it comes to sleep debt, she's in real deep.
- My Month With Water Kefir — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries experiments with a new fermented probiotic drink homemade in her own kitchen.
- OMG Mom is Home… All Day Everyday: A Week-Long Experiment in Connecting — What a difference a week makes! Ana at Pandamoly is afforded a week off from work and takes the chance to reconnect and reattach with her 16-month-old son through an experiment in simply being there.
- Creating Healthy Family Recipes — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares her experiment with healthy, gluten-free recipes and a chocolate muffin recipe that was created during the experiment.
- Adventures in Alternative Haircare: No 'Poo — This guest post at Natural Parents Network from Amy at Anktangle chronicles a months-long journey into the world of no 'poo.
- My Experiment in Natural Family Living: Natural Family Planning — Birth control options are seriously limited for those of us trying to live a little closer to the earth, so Mama Psalmist experiments with natural family planning.


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Event Series: Wellspring Food Bank
Wellspring Food Bank
01/11/2024 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Wellspring Food Clothing Bank is located on the north side of the Vinelife Church campus.
We welcome anyone having food or clothing insecurities.
Open on Sundays from 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. and Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Just show up!
For more information contact Marcia Sue at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Christie faces probe over Sandy funds
Investigators are looking into whether embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie misused about $2 million in Superstorm Sandy relief funds for an ad campaign that put him in the spotlight in an election year, a lawmaker said today.
Already enmeshed in a scandal over snarled traffic at the George Washington Bridge, Christie, a rising star in the Republican party, is now being audited by the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat.
The inspector is focusing on a federally financed $25 million Jersey Shore marketing campaign that included a television commercial featuring Christie and his family, which cost $2 million more than a competing bid without them.
"It is inappropriate for taxpayer-funded dollars that are critical to our state's recovery from this natural disaster to fund commercials that could potentially benefit a political campaign," Pallone said in an Aug. 8, 2013 letter requesting the investigation.
"While promoting tourism at the Jersey Shore in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is certainly a worthy endeavor, recent reports have led me to believe that the state has irresponsibly misappropriated funding allocated by Congress from the Sandy aid package and taken advantage of this waiver for political purposes," the letter said.
The winning ad, with the tag line that New Jersey was "Stronger than the Storm," aired in the spring as Christie headed into a re-election campaign to win a second term.
On Oct. 29, 2012, Sandy devastated New York, New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast. The historic storm killed at least 159 people, and damaged or destroyed more than 650,000 homes, many in Pallone's district on the Jersey Shore, where the storm made landfall.
"Had Governor Christie chosen the less expensive firm, $2.2 million in federal disaster aid could have potentially been directed elsewhere, for example, to provide 44 Sandy-impacted homeowners $50,000 grants to raise their homes," Pallone said in a press release.
There was no immediate response to calls and emails to Christie's office for comment.
News of the audit arrives in the shadow of a scandal dubbed "Bridgegate" by tabloids, in which a massive traffic jam was orchestrated by Christie's staff in September, apparently as political payback against the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who didn't endorse Christie for reelection.
Christie, a likely contender for the White House in 2016, last week fired a top aide who called for the closure of lanes to the George Washington Bridge, and has denied knowledge of the scheme.
The Democratic Assembly speaker-elect said he planned to call the New Jersey Legislature into a special session this week to continue to investigate the four-day incident, which paralyzed Fort Lee, on the Jersey side of the bridge.
U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman, whose job Christie held before being elected governor, has opened an investigation into the decision to close the lanes.
The governor also faces a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday by Rosemarie Arnold, a lawyer charging that area residents suffered financially from being trapped in traffic.