08:32 – Barbara likes the new mattress. She says she slept very well last night. So did I, but then I almost always sleep very well. When she was at the store choosing the mattress, the guy asked her about my preferences. She told him that it didn’t matter because I was happy sleeping even on the floor. Which is true. I’m a mattress agnostic. I’ve spent more than a few nights in my life sleeping comfortably in the woods after just scooping out hip and shoulder troughs and piling pine needles to sleep on.
Page A4 of the paper this morning had an interesting full-page article/graphic. I’d known that near the end of the War of Northern Aggression General Stoneman and his cavalry had spent a couple of weeks pillaging and burning western North Carolina, but this page lays it out graphically and day-by-day. Stoneman’s raid was purely gratuitous because the war was very nearly over and also because western North Carolina had tended pro-Union throughout the war. Stoneman’s forces faced some opposition, mostly by teenage boys and wounded Confederate soldiers, but they were welcomed with cheering upon their arrival most places around here. (The fabled Tarheels were mostly from central and coastal North Carolina, where there were many plantations and tens of thousands of slaves. Slaves were relatively uncommon in the western parts of the state, which was mostly smallhold farms. The few slaves held by these family farmers were often treated as members of the family.)
More kit stuff today.
10:49 – The prevailing opinion seems to be that brown sugar isn’t suitable for long-term storage. Everyone including the LDS church says so. I’m not sure why that should be true, but then I’ve never tried storing brown sugar so I’ll assume that these sources may know something I don’t.
Not that it’s a real problem. Granulated or powdered white sugar can be stored essentially forever. The LDS church says 30 years, but the truth is probably closer to 300 years if not 3,000 years. The same is true of molasses, which is basically what’s left over when natural brown sugar is refined into white sugar. It’s easy enough to make up your own brown sugar on the fly by mixing one tablespoon of molasses, give or take, with a cup of white sugar and stirring until they’re completely mixed. So I’m not storing any brown sugar. Instead, I’ll store a couple bottles of Grade A unsulfured molasses.
Stoneman’s Raid appears again in the famous song by The Band and Joan Baez, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
The Wikipedia article on it sucks, though; Stoneman evidently did the bidding of his superior war criminal thug generals, like Sherman, and then some. Make the South howl, and then make them keep on howling long after the war, too. Bastards. We’re still dealing with the ripples and repercussions of all that 150 years later.
Yeah, “Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again…” which Baez managed to mangle into “so much cavalry came”. Her “Virgil quick come see” lyrics also make me smile when I visualize a hotel or riverboat called The Robert E. Lee traveling down the road and Virgil running to see it. I’d run to see that, too.
I could never quite figure out that part of the lyric; are we sure she meant a hotel or riverboat? General Lee’s cavalry captain son, Robert E. Lee, Jr., was among the local defenders. After the war he lived and worked on the farm he got from Grandpa George.
The Band’s lyrics are:
“Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
“Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes Robert E. Lee!”
That probably meant the General, but could also have meant the Captain. On the other hand, if memory serves, the General was never in Tennessee.
Bugs really like to get into brown sugar. Moreso than white sugar or molasses. Creepy crawly bugs, that is, not bacteria and such; I don’t remember ever seeing growths on brown sugar, but I’ve sure seen a lot of critters who chewed through whatever I had it stored in. That’s probably why it’s not suitable for long-term storage.
I’m sure that’s true if you don’t pack it with oxygen absorbers.
Baez performed it without having seen the lyrics, so her version is chocked full of Mondegreens.
That figures. A lot of peeps think Baez is the cat’s whiskers and just an amazing voice but it grates on me somewhat. Way too much vibrato going on, all the time.
Speaking of female musicians, there is this gem of a quote today from some homely imbecile (Laura Marling??) (Salon likes her!) I’ve never heard of who got some kind of prize I never heard of:
“… by saying I am English, therefore I behave this way or that way, you are excluding people. By saying that you identify with a particular religion, you’re negating someone else’s. That’s how I sort of began to see things. So yeah, the idea of identity became a much more difficult subject to me than I had realized.”
So if I “identify” with being a Christian or Roman Catholic I’m “excluding” or “negating” someone else’s religion. If I identify with being a Murkan, I’m excluding peeps from other countries. If I ID as a male, I’m negating the other half of the human race. Jesus wept.
What is it with people nowadays that they just can’t fucking be satisfied with the “identity” they’re in the world with?
Excuse me now; I’m identifying with being the sole occupant of this house right now and thus excluding and negating the entire rest of the human race.
Well, OFD, it seems to me and all citizens of the world that exclusion is the first step toward hatred, so perhaps you should be asking yourself why you’re such a hater.
i believe white males are the only ones not permitted to identify themselves with groups
Actually, on the youtube reproduction of the Band’s concert in 1976, the lyric is…”there goes the Robert E. Lee” which lends credence to the fact that the object to be viewed is a riverboat, of which there were several so named at the time.
Hi,
I put a spoonful of molasses into a small jar of granulated Splenda.
Lots of stirring turned it into a lovely brown sugar like mass.
Alas, it did not last. Over a week’s time the molasses “ate up” the brown granulation stuff into more goo. Still tasted fine. Probably would not mix mechanically well into cookie dough at that stage.
Thanks for what you do,
I’m pretty sure that 1976 rendition was a one-time thing, intended as a tip of the hat to Baez. I’ve heard many different examples from The Band, including one concert performance, and none included “The” before REL.
Frankly, I’m not sure what brown sugar does that white doesn’t. I suspect it has to do with not just the molasses flavor but the moisture. I’ve never used Splenda, but sugar works fine at least if you don’t try to store the mix.
We gotta contact Robbie Robertson or Garth Hudson and ask them WTF. (only survivors of the original band) If it’s “…Robert E. Lee” without “the” before it, then how do we explain it when the General was never in Tennessee? Poetic license, maybe. And why would Virgil’s wife give a crap about a river boat as something to rush to go see? But the General himself? Hell yeah.
“…so perhaps you should be asking yourself why you’re such a hater.”
Indeed. I put it down to the fascist patriarchal repression I suffered at home and in publik skool, reinforced by all those years in the military and the cops.
There is, thus, no hope for such as me.
Mr. OFD, please report to the nearest Starbucks for a soy latte and counseling on matters of race and hatred.
Well, let’s see now…nearest locations…hmmmm…
….yup….several stores thirty miles south of here…down in Burlap and Williston….
…but…closer still…just across the lake…two stores…in lovely Plattsburgh, NY….
…I could paddle the canoe or kayak over there…and hopefully sink like a stone or be gobbled up by Champ before I could get there…what a relief….
…or drive down to the ones in Burlap…and skid on black ice and roll the Toyota end over end in a giant ball of fire…what a relief….
That figures. A lot of peeps think Baez is the cat’s whiskers and just an amazing voice but it grates on me somewhat. Way too much vibrato going on, all the time.
I actually saw her perform a few months ago. I like her a lot. I can see why some people don’t.
I was similarly confused by the lyric “the Robert E. Lee”, but I always preferred the way it sounded to the alternative, so whatever.
“I can see why some people don’t.”
I don’t care about the lefty politics; that pretty much goes with the territory in modern media and entertainment fields for the past forty years. And I like some of her songs, but I just heard some earlier stuff over the Christmas holidays and man, that vibrato was on all the time; maybe she’s laid off it by now.
One I can’t tolerate is that screech own Aretha Franklin, currently as large as a small Leer Jet. She is self centered ego maniac and listening to her is like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Ray you’re just a racist, and probably a fatist too.
Dare to criticize the queen of soul. I like her but she can screech at times. Her number in The Blues Brothers was classic.
Oooooh a real live fatist! First time I’ve even seen dat word! And here!
https://dontmarry.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/are-you-a-fatist/
Aretha is vastly overrated but got the media machine humming along for her since Day One; some of her stuff is OK, but for me the throne has long since passed over to Patti LaBelle.
I’ll usually use “sizist”. All sizes are beautiful, you know.
Here’s some fun I used to have: A guy on my team weighed almost 400 pounds. He was tall and had some muscle, but there was still at least 200 pounds of excess fat. So, whenever I came across a woman demanding that everyone acknowledge that “all sizes are beautiful” or “it’s the inside, not the outside, that matters”, I asked if she’d be interested in dating a 400-pound guy. (I did ask him ahead of time if it was OK. He was not only OK with it, he proclaimed me the best boss of all time for trying to find him a girlfriend.) You may be shocked to find that not a single anti-sizist woman was interested in dating him. (Some claimed to be in committed relationships and some claimed they weren’t interested in any man. Could be, I guess, though I can’t help but wonder if I’d have gotten any Yesses if I’d been trying to get Leonardo DiCaprio a date.)
R U implying, young sir, that the Other Gender is just as guilty of “sizism” and “lookism?”
Shame on you!
One of my old cop partners from long ago was 6’6″ and 410 pounds; he could pick me up like I was a loaf of bread and also worked part-time as a pro wrestler. (he didn’t want me as his partner during baton training, though, for some odd reason…). Anyway, he seemed to have not much trouble getting dates back then. His main squeeze, though, mostly spent lotsa time baby-sitting him and trying to get him to ratchet down the drinking, which was a full bottle of whiskey every night with boilermakers and cigars at the cop bars.
I do note, however, that morbid obesity in this country seems to be outta control nowadays, everywhere you go. Lotsa protein on the hoof for those future inner-city slag heap primitive BBQ spits…
Sizist lacks accuracy. You could just as easily mean the skinny. I have always called her Urethra so I’m no less guilty.
Guilty as charged!
Buncha haters here.
The first ones to go were the fatties.
Poor fat bastard!
There it is.
But wow, eating it raw like that?
When a good krew can get together some old truck axles, a welding torch, some charcoal, and set up a nice BBQ pit in the smoldering slag heaps of the urban wastelands of the few-chah?
That fat bugger right there could feed a young Crip, Blood or MS-13 krew for a week!
You’ll probably find my carcass at the bingo hall with a red dauber in my cold, dead hand. Viva Las Vegas, baby!
The few slaves held by these family farmers were often treated as members of the family.
They treated their family members like slaves?
“They treated their family members like slaves?”
Yep, by today’s lefty mainstream standards any farm family, up to and including those today, treat their kids like slaves. They expect them to WORK for free! The horror!
It is enlightening to see kids at the local livestock show, and compare them physically to their ‘peers’ in public school. The FFA’s and 4H’s were almost universally skinny (wiry and lean) vs. the “urban” and suburban kids, particularly the females. The standards of grooming, dress, and deportment where quite a bit different as well.
If you find yourself despairing for the youth of the country, just visit the fair.
nick
That’s a good point; I will make an effort to visit the local farm and livestock activities up here this summer. Some of it is bound to be applicable to our little postage-stamp-sized lot with limited sunshine. I’m also sorta curious as to how much use they make of IT, if any, in their operations.
I will note, however, that although we did not live on a farm when I was a kid, we were all lean and wiry into our 30s, when Bad Things started to happen.