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80 years of history on rye at Canter's Landmark deli celebrates its birthday by rolling back prices with an 80-cent sandwich. 
(Arkasha Stevenson / Los Angeles Times) A crowd lines up outside Canter's as the restaurant rolls back prices with an 80-cent sandwich for its 80th birthday. Nita Lelyveld, LA Times, July 13, 2011 You want new? You want trendy? You want fancy food? Then maybe, says Gary Canter, you don't want Canter's, his family's deli, which doesn't do change. "People don't need pheasant under glass, with grilled asparagus and 19 sauces," says Canter, 52, who started working behind the bakery counter at 13. "Just give them simple food. Just give them a sandwich." The Canter's menu is, in fact, long and diverse. You can order blintzes, hot roast tongue, a quesadilla, tortellini, fried kippers. But the sandwich list is at the heart of it all. And the pulsing center of that heart is corned beef. That's what most people came for in 1931, when brothers who had run a deli in Jersey City, N.J., crossed the country and opened up in Boyle Heights. And it's what hundreds lined up for 80 years later — on Tuesday — when the 24-hour, family-owned deli, where four generations now work, celebrated eight decades by ordering 5,000 pounds of corned beef and offering anyone who showed up an 80-cent meal. From 4 p.m. to midnight, eight dimes got you this: thick slabs of corned beef sandwiched between two mustard-slathered slices of rye bread, a sour pickle, a dab of potato salad and a chocolate chip version of the buttery classic Jewish pastry called rugelach. Starting midmorning, two lines, to eat in and take out, grew and grew on the sidewalk outside, as an accordionist named Shalom Sherman danced between them in rainbow-colored cowboy boots, squeezing out such timeless tunes as "Hava Nagila" and the theme from "The Godfather." Ida Ardell, 99, who lives in West Hollywood, has Canter's beat on birthdays. "I knew Los Angeles when it was empty," she said. "There was nothing here at all." She first went to Canter's in Boyle Heights, then kept coming after it moved to Fairfax Avenue in 1948. Ardell stood in line for well over an hour on the arm of her granddaughter, Lisa Wiley, 48. She doesn't get out much these days, she said. But she was happy to do so Tuesday, hair perfectly coiffed, in the company of two younger friends — 92 and 93 — who declined to give their names for fear they'd look bad, bargain hunting. "Everybody," said one them, "thinks it's beneath them to come out here and do this." Not so for Eric Muller, 65, who comes from West Los Angeles every time Canter's rolls back prices to celebrate — a gesture it's been making at least every five years since it hit half a century. "We know the dates. It's like a birthday. We don't miss it," he said. "After all, the regular sandwich is what, $12?" (It's $11.75.) Or Patricia Raphael, who took the bus from Pasadena and was first in line for take out at around 11:45 a.m. "When I lived in Hollywood, this was home — corned beef and cabbage, what can I say?" said the elderly woman, originally from New York's East Harlem, who gratefully accepted the whispered offer to move out of the sun and get her sandwich special early. She was going home, she said. The sandwich wasn't. "Oh no. I'm going to sit way in the back of the bus and quietly munch." Oh my Beloved Papa San Diego Reader/Garrett Harris/June 20, 2011: 
At the beginning of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, the Donati family has a problem. Buoso, the wealthy pater-familias has died. The bulk of the inheritance is a house in Florence, the mills in Signa, and Buoso's prize mule--it's the middle ages--is going to the monastery. What to do? What to do? Young Rinuccio has an idea. They send for Gianni Schicchi. Schicchi arrives, looks at the will and tells them they're screwed and he can't help. However, Rinuccio and Schicchi's daughter, Lauretta, hope to marry in May but things have changed. With the lose of the fortune, the Donati's want a dowry from Schicchi. Schicchi has no dowry and is livid that the family would sacrifice Rinuccio and Lauretta's love over a dowry. He is about to storm out when Lauretta pleads with him. "Oh mio babinno caro", oh my beloved papa, have pity and help us. She tells him that she wants to go get the ring but if they can't she's going to throw herself into the Arno. Schicchi has a flash of inspiration. Long story short, Schicchi impersonates the dead Buoso and dictates a new will to a notary. All the smaller items in the will go to the original recipients but when it comes to the house, the mills, and the mule, those will now go to Buoso's great friend Gianni Schicchi. At the end of the story Rinuccio and Lauretta are together in the house overlooking Florence and singing about their love. Schicchi addresses the audience. "Tell me, gentlemen, if Buoso's wealth could have gone to better ends than this? For this prank, I have been condemned to the Inferno, and so be it; but with all due respect to the great father Dante, if you have been amused, grant me extenuating circumstances!" Schicchi is willing to let Dante put him in The Inferno so his daughter can have love. Happy Father's Day! ******************** 
What a concept. If I ever won a lottery...(ya haffta play to win, lol), I'd be proud to do this same project. Thanks, Betty! You're what's so great about America. Your giving heart shines on this site, and... I'm a rabid armchair traveler! I've travelled plenty myself, but internet travelling is so cheap and easy. End of an era for iconic St. Paul drive-in KARE11.com/Scott Seroka/3.April2011 ST. PAUL, Minn. -- It was supposed to be closed at 7 on Sunday night. But the customers kept coming, and they still had plenty of burgers to grill at Porky's on University Avenue. Finally, just before 10 p.m., they locked the doors for the last time. "It was a good hangout for old folks," longtime customer William Bunke said. He and his wife were hoping to grab one last supper, but the line was too long. Lorrie Beaulieu was happy to stand in line with her three daughters and a friend. She remembered eating at Porky's when she was a young girl. "We're losing an icon and I want my daughters to experience a Porky's burger." They got one, after about an hour wait. "It's just the homemade old fashioned burgers and the onion rings, you can't beat em'," Linda Howard said. She remembered paying 89 cents for a burger back in the day. Owner Tryg Truelson was grilling burgers on the final day. He said he hasn't really had time to process the moment yet. He says the incoming light rail construction and a declining economy drove him to sell the property to his neighbors, who haven't released what their plans are. "I'm just consumed trying to get everyone a burger one last time," Truelson said. Outside, the smell of fried onions and grilled burgers was overpowered by the smell of burnt rubber, as patrons squealed their tires in honor of the restaurant's closing. There were hundreds that lined the avenue in front of the restaurant. By 10 p.m. the door had been locked and police had come through to scatter the crowds. An era had come to an end. Starbuck was an important Quaker family name on Nantucket Island - remember Nantucket was the "WOPEC" (whale-oil producing economic council) of the world between the mid-18th - the mid-19th Centuries. There were actual whalers named "Starbuck“ on Nantucket (along with ye ol’ Macy family). Starbucks Coffee really was named after the first mate of the Pequod, Starbuck. Starbuck, the young First Mate (2nd in command on merchant ships) of the Pequod was a thoughtful, intellectual Quaker from Nantucket. Starbuck is married with a son. Melville doesn't name Ahab's wife in the book but Starbuck’s his wife's name is Mary. He wants to return home so much sooner that when Pequod neared it's quest of Moby Dick Starbuck considered arresting or killing Ahab with one of Ahab’s own loaded muskets for a straightaway return home. “[H]is far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend[ed] to bend him ... from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.” — Moby-Dick/Chapter 26 Starbuck lacks the support of the crew in his opposition to Ahab is unable to persuade them to turn back making him bound by his obligations to obey. The Pequod's 2nd Mate was Stubb. So, Starbuck's could have been named after him... perhaps as Stubbway for coffee and Subway for sammies. Equally well. There is a Starbuck Island (after the Nantucket Starbuck family) in the South Pacific whaling grounds of the Line Islands of he Republic of Kiribati. 
Flag of the Republic of Kiribati (kewl flag, eh?) … which also includes Fanning Island that Daddy and I visited on our Hawaiian cruise. Amazingly enough, the US Navy used 18th & 19th century whaling maps to navigate their way around the Pacific during WWII. for your garden… Encourage your Starbuck‘s (or use your own or those of independent designer coffee houses/stands) to create: "Grounds for your Garden" for environmental friendliness in compost. (they always went in the slop pail, or into the compost heaps, on Minnesota farms!) Does this remind you of yourself every morning, like it does me and my sistahs? lmbo: Consider giving shoes away this holiday season. (Womens alone account for approximately 2.9Billion pairs) or women's business suits or a winter coat soles4souls dressforsuccess.org one warm coat 
Rope making: Stranded ghosts of a bygone age Rope making is knot yet dead, says Ted Thomas. Telegraph/Ted Thomas/18Feb2010 
Ripping yarns: Kent ropemaker Fred Cordier threads yarn through a die before it is formed into strands Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY Fred Cordier goes to work by bike. Unlike those who pedal to keep fit or to do their bit to save the world, his motives are strictly down to earth. He is Master Ropemaker at Chatham's historic dockyard, and he rides his old boneshaker up and down the quarter-mile-long rope walk (or ropery). When it was built in 1790, the low, multi-windowed space was the longest brick building in the world. In here, rope is made in much the same way it was in the days of Queen Victoria, though conditions have improved dramatically; in the 18th and 19th centuries, rope making was considered a sweatshop operation. Strands of rope stretch down the length of the building, quivering and taut with tension, and this industrial throwback is made all the more quirky by the sight of men wobbling up and down on bicycles. "When I first started here 47 years ago there were more than 60 people working on all three floors as well as women in the spinning room. We didn't need the bikes," says Cordier. But these days, the rope walk is on one floor and the work force is just four. "We use the bikes almost as extra people," he says. "They were originally purchased from the Post Office and used for cycling between buildings. I got hold of some and we have had them ever since. They're getting a bit wobbly." Chatham was a village until the days of Elizabeth I, but the Tudor monarch oversaw the creation of a royal dockyard for ship building and repairing. This was the place where HMS Victory's keel was laid in 1759 and her 20 miles of rope were made. In those days, hundreds would have been involved in the ancillary trades of rope making, sail making and rigging, all playing their part to make sure that Britannia ruled the waves. The dockyard closed in 1984 amid a storm of protest, but a major part of the complex was saved and the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust saw it developed into a popular visitor attraction, of which the rope walk is one of them. Cordier initially lost his job, but soon found himself back in the fold as his experience and knowledge were simply too good to lose. The process is quite simple: "on the rope walk the yarn is put through a register plate to keep strands separate," says Cordier. "From there they pass to the strand tube, coming together in a uniform shape, and are kept tight to keep the formation. This tube is attached to a hook on the forming machine and as it is pulled down the rope walk, a twist is put into the strand." Rope remains very much in demand, according to Andy Parr whose father set up the company. "Our ropes are used for literally anything," he says. "Mooring boats for tugs, tow-ropes for military vehicles. Plus the theatre still uses a lot of rope – we produced rope for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and then there are cat scratching posts." Although the rope walk isn't a museum, the historical aspect enthrals visitors. These interwoven strands of natural fibre (either manila or sisal) represent a unique link with the past. The length of rope on which ropemakers work is 218 metres, the modern equivalent of 120 fathoms, the depth old sailing ships needed for weighing their anchors. "I've seen a few ghosts," says Cordier. "Sometimes it can feel a bit funny, especially when you are switching the lights off at night. Each light has to be switched off individually and, as you are walking along, you hear people behind you." Given the quotidian nature of rope, it is easy to overlook the skills of someone like Cordier. As with many crafts that were once at the heart of the nation's industrial heritage, his is a dying art waiting to be replaced by machinery. Elsewhere in the building the company uses a machine to produce rope in one complete operation. "When I retire that will be it," he says. "Most of the information is in my head, though I have written down a lot in what I call 'the Bible'. If it goes missing we might be in trouble." ROPE AND GLORY For tours of the ropery, see www.chdt.org.uk To order Chatham rope: 01634 827812 master-ropemakers.co.uk See Chatham's ropework at HMS Victory in Portsmouth (historicdockyard.co.uk) See HMS Trincomalee, the oldest British warship still afloat, at Hartlepool (hms-trincomalee.co.uk) The Eden Project in Cornwall has a rope sculpture made from hemp. Ridley Scott's recent remake of Robin Hood stars Russell Crowe and, apparently, "an awful lot of rope". World Geography Game Okay. I've always thought I've been pretty good at geography. This map/game is not only humbling, it's downright demeaning!: :D This Traveler IQ was calculated on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 01:45AM GMT by comparing this person's geographical knowledge against the First Travel Blog's other 5,052,640 travelers who've taken the challenge. Donating/Volunteering Over the years, I've been fortunate enough to volunteer my time and our money to lots of great charitable organizations, from wive's clubs donations, to working in Navy Relief offices and sewing layette pieces for new Navy babies; Girl Scouts of America, room mom-ing, lol ... to sending money to organizations like Becky's House and The Monarch School in San Diego. I've just discovered what appears to be yet another great mission nor only for South Central, and California, but for all of America: A Place Called Home That old "Now is the time for all great people to com to the aid of their country" typing practice line is just as true as ever. We can all pay fewer taxes to Washington spenders, by volunteering, and writing off donations given to charitable organizations, such as A Place Called Home. There are so many organizations in need. Like sweet Kori, rocking aids babies in a San Diego Hospital. Doctors working in free clinics. Tutoring not only kids, but adults into becoming... Literate! All things that we can "write off", and wow... make America so much better for so many more Americans. 'Homeless' doll costs $95 (hairstyling extra) NY Post/ANDREA PEYSER/September 24, 2009 Barbie she's not. Meet Gwen Thompson, the newest addition to the American Girl canon of dolls -- the wildly suc cessful, extremely expensive brand of faux children that are sold out of a four-story town house in the heart of Fifth Avenue. Little children as young as 4 are addicted to these pricey little monsters. It's like middle-American crack. You have an African-American doll, an American Indian doll. A Jewish one. A doll who "lived" during the Great Depression, and one from the Roaring '20s. And while you were snoozing, the creators of American Girl, which is sold by Mattel, got bold. They engaged in all-out political indoctrination. Snuck into the collection is a doll that comes with a biography that is weird and potentially offensive enough to keep Mom running to the Maalox. Gwen, you see, is harboring a terrible secret. She is homeless. A homeless doll. In the history books that come with every American Girl doll -- bringing to life these little monsters until impressionable little ones believe they are actual people -- you learn that Gwen's father walked out on the family. Her mother lost her job. 
As the little kiddies learn to read about this doll as if she's a human being, one learns that, as fall turned into winter, Gwen's mom lost her grip. Mother and daughter started bedding down in a car. For $95 -- more than your average homeless person would dream of spending on a rather mediocre baby substitute -- Gwen Thompson can be yours. A mixed message if ever there was one. If you'd like a doll desk, doll horse, doll clothes, doll trunk, a medical kit -- suitable for pretending to administer doll drugs -- that will cost you extra. A lot extra. Did I mention how wildly successful this series is? I'd heard about this doll from a friend, and walked into the American Girl store in Midtown to investigate. I found not a store, but a cult. I asked to see Gwen, and the saleswoman persisted in referring to the inanimate object as "she." "She's right over here," she said, pointing me to the "limited edition" doll, identical to all other American Girl dolls except for eye, hair and skin color. And still, your kid will bug you to collect them all. But what is Mattel subtly selling along with its outrageously expensive progeny? It seems obscene that a company that prides itself on teaching impressionable children about history and grooming -- you can have your doll's hair done for $20! -- should engage in political preaching. What message is being sent with Gwen? For starters, men are bad. Fathers abandon women without cause. She's also telling me that women are helpless. And that children in this great country, where dolls sell for nearly 100 bucks a pop, are allowed to sleep in motor vehicles. But mothers don't lose custody over this injustice. Because, you see, they are victims, too. The saleswoman asked me the age of the child for whom I was buying. I told her 6 -- my kid, at 10, is already outgrowing these things. The woman informed me that the suggested age for American Girls was 8. That's not who's buying them. I know many girls as young as 4 who won't let their mothers sleep without the promise of an American Girl. So take a close look at what your daughter is playing with. Barbie, the feminists long complained, gave girls body issues. But she never attempted to politically indoctrinate me. I'll stick with the thin girl. I don't usually pass on the "pass this on" emails, but I love this one: Don't take life so seriously... DANCE! KISS. A LOT! RELAX IN NATURE! HAVE FUN! I don't care if you lick windows, take the special bus or occasionally pee on yourself.. You hang in there sunshine, you're special Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back.. Life is short... Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably... And NEVER regret anything that made you SMILE. I've talked with people, who like me, saw 'The Wizard of Oz' on a wide movie screen. (Not in 1939 either, lol.) Before theatres went miniscule and TV's went huge. When we didn't expect most movies to be in Cinemascope, nor Technicolor. There we were little kids (dropped of at the movies to see it alone.) We'd heard of tornadoes. And we and/or our relatives included mostly common-sense, hardworking farm families. So we were comfortable with the movie. until... BAM!!! There we were in AWEZ. How magical. (One of Rush City's own was a munchkin!) 1986: I took a US History class while we were in New Mexico. The instructor was a few years behind me at the same Los Angeles suburban high school, but was now of all things my professor. Hey, I snagged not one, but both of the only A+'s he ever gave out. ;) A ditty that was included in one of our textbooks, was about how 'The Wizard of Oz' was actually a take on the American Civil War. North-v-South: Industrial-v-Agrarian Paper-v-Gold (the "Yellow Brick" road) Oz (abbreviation for gold ounce = Oz.) etc. I love American History, and it was kewl to find out that take, and it's still magical. Every time. Our family's last stop on our US Navy moving journeys, brought us to San Diego, and... Coronado. The same Coronado where L. Frank Baum lived for a time, and wrote 'The Wizard of Oz' for his grandchildren. According to Coronado historians, Oz didn't stand for ounces, it was just the O-Z drawer in Baum's file cabinet. Just a fairy tale from L. Frank. Nothing more. We've seen "The del's" huge Christmas Tree in the main lobby, with a Wizard of Oz theme, in celebration of one of their finest, on The Emerald Isle. It's still magical, too. After all these years. The Man Who Made Oz L. Frank Baum and the first American fairy tale. Slate/Meghan O'Rourke/Sept. 21, 2009 In 1900, a 44-year-old L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and became the father of the American fairy tale. The book was a commercial and critical success. The story of the orphaned Dorothy Gale, whisked by a tornado away from gray, impoverished Kansas to the magical land of Oz, captured the hearts of children and adults who had lived through an economic crisis but saw all around them the thrum of invention and change. As a young country abuzz with "progress," the United States needed a different kind of fairy tale. A truly American myth could not merely invoke Celtic wraiths or Bavarian dark forest goblins. It would have to include the drive to innovate that launched the Gilded Age and made America the archetypal modern industrial nation during the very decades when Baum's imagination was formed. Two new biographies, Evan I. Schwartz's Finding Oz and Rebecca Loncraine's The Real Wizard of Oz—released in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the iconic MGM film—show that Baum was uniquely suited for this task. He was poised at the crossroads of his era—swept up in burgeoning feminism, the acceleration of new technologies, and the rise of huckster salesmanship. Born in 1856, he grew up in the bustling canal town of Syracuse, N.Y., after his father made money in the oil fields. A dreamy, sickly child, Baum devoured the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. He told his sisters he would write "a great novel that should bring me fame." But he also reveled in newfangled inventions like the printing press (which, as a teenager, he used to put out a literary journal) and, later, bicycles, Model Ts, and movies. As a young man, he opened a bazaar, sold china door-to-door, helped manage his father's company, and edited The Show Window, a trade journal instructing storeowners in the art of luring customers with "window dressing." The Baum family home, an idyllic spot known as "Rose Lawn," was bounded by a plank road that led merchants to the Erie Canal.* In Baum's formative years, both biographers remind us, the author would have heard much debate about the rise of robber barons (Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller), Reconstruction, the new energies of spiritualists, and the Manifest Destiny by which the U.S. Army justified its genocidal attitudes toward many remaining Native American tribes. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a traditional fairy tale to which Baum added a peculiarly American twist: the humbug. In addition to the usual talking animals, evil witches, scary forest, and challenges to be overcome, Oz has at its core a fraud. The Wizard is not a real wizard, but a lost American balloonist who uses stage tricks—hanging a disembodied head by a wire, for example—to fool people into thinking he is powerful. Deploying spectacle to impress his guests, he sends Dorothy and her companions to kill the Wicked Witch of the West (who has real magic powers). When they return, successful, they discover the truth: Toto, scared by Oz's roar, tips over a screen the Wizard hides behind. There stands "a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face." He pleads, "… don't strike me—please don't. … I'll do anything you want me to. … I'm just a common man." "You're more than that," retorts the Scarecrow. "You're a humbug." Soon enough, the Wizard recovers from his mortification; he is proud to show off how he duped his guests. "Barnum was right when he declared that the American people love to be deceived," Baum once wrote of one of his heroes. Strikingly, even after the Wizard reveals his con, the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow still ask for his aid. Like the quack he is, he obliges, stuffing the Scarecrow's head with pins. The Wizard, you might say, is America's first celebrity guru: an ur-Dr. Phil, using charisma and a screen to project authority and wisdom he doesn't truly have. If Oz and its sequels are shaped by Baum's sharp eye for the theater of commerce, they are also shaped by his wishful revisions of social conflict. Notably, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz offered a paean to strong women at a moment when suffragettes were agitating for the vote. The book's hero-protagonist, obviously, is a girl. In Kansas, her lively laugh repeatedly startles her worn-down aunt. In Oz, she effortlessly (and intuitively) kills the evil witches subjugating the natives. Indeed, all of Oz's strongest figures are women—Glinda, the Good Witch of the South; the Good Witch of the North (not in the film); and the two Wicked Witches. Baum, who publicly supported women's right to vote, was deeply affected by his beloved, spirited wife, Maud, and her mother, Matilda, an eminent feminist who collaborated with Susan B. Anthony and publicized the idea that many "witches" were really freethinking women ahead of their time. In Oz, Baum offers a similarly corrective vision: When Dorothy first meets a witch, the Witch of the North, she says, "I thought all witches were wicked." "Oh, no, that is a great mistake," replies the Witch of the North. In sequels, Oz's true ruler is discovered; it turns out to be a girl named Ozma, who spent her youth under a spell—one that turned her into a hapless boy. One can imagine Baum winking on the page at his wife and mother-in-law. In his own life, Maud was the strong, practical one who kept things running. By comparison, he must have seemed the feckless humbug, trying one endeavor after another before succeeding as an author. Or so Baum at times viewed himself, his biographers suggest. His career—he began as a salesman of the family axle oil ("so smooth it will make your horse talk," he would say) and ended broke—indeed lacked a steady literary trajectory. But he was not a mere hack, though he wrote scores of schlocky books for children under pseudonyms to make money. At his core, Baum was an impresario of illusion, fascinated by the allure of utopian possibility, however implausible. Often read as a political allegory about the move away from the gold standard (you can learn more about that interpretation here), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more broadly a portrait of a country America promised to be but never became. The book and its sequels offer a recuperative vision, born of intense hopes and disappointments that did not add up in life. And if the tensions show through, that is part of the works' power. Thus in Oz, different races (the Munchkins in the North, the Winkies in the West, and the Quadlings in the South) mingle democratically, and war is the ultimate ill. In one way, Baum was writing here against himself and demonstrating his own deep ambivalences. While he lived in the Dakota Territory, shortly before the Battle of Wounded Knee, he published two militant editorials calling for the extermination of the remaining Sioux on the grounds that the men of the tribe had lost their authentic strength, becoming little more than "whining curs." Here is the flip side, perhaps, of his dreams of female power—a profound sense of disappointment in male potential, not just among tribal warriors. For Baum, the lure of progress was similarly double-edged. "There's no place like home," a feel-good refrain in the movie, is a far more complex statement in the book. On the one hand, the old familiar world seems better to Dorothy than this bright new one (to the bafflement of the Scarecrow, who attributes his confusion to his lack of brains). On the other, Oz is clearly the more beneficent land, and later in the series Dorothy and her family end up living there. For friends they have companions like the Tin Man, a woodsman who has replaced his flesh limbs with metal ones—at once a chilling and a curative vision in an era haunted by amputated Civil War veterans. Baum, like many of his peers, was at once enthralled and unnerved by mechanization. After the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it looked as though Baum were on track to a fairy-tale ending himself, as a wizard supplying just the fantasies Americans wanted. He helped fashion a popular musical based on the play. Later, he moved to Hollywood and started a film production company, exploring, ahead of his time, the possibilities of special effects. But in the end, Baum's profligacy and grand movie ambitions ruined him financially. He ended up a cautionary figure for an era of speculative overreaching, and a victim of overwork—a man, in other words, for our own economic season. Eventually, Baum sold the copyright to The Wonderful Wizard and died of exhaustion in 1919, 20 years before the MGM film was made. It seems fitting, in retrospect, that while in Baum's book Oz is a real place, in the film it is just a dream. Fairy tales, after all, are not reality. 
(click on the logo for more info) OK, I laughed when I first saw this too. But then I remembered all of the rest stops (ugh!) and gas station bathrooms (ugh!) and entertainment venues (ugh!) and restaurants (ugh!) The Fiddle and Banjo Contest in outback Northern Virginia with only over-used porta-potties, (mostly over-used by er, drunk guys) that I needed to pee in... ...opened a couple doors on Saturday morning and opted to "hold it". and did til we left on Sunday afternoon. 
(Pasadena) jacaranda collage by faria at flickr I've found the book that I've been telling heavenly-baby-girlie about for years ... a business I had so always wanted to start! Meet: Renta Yenta! Go ahead and read the the webpage, but promise me, you'll read... THE BOOK! Over the years, my friends and I too found ourselves in the most absurdly ridiculous but hilarious circumstances just like all brilliant doo-ers doo! For the most part, our works were mostly volunteer/freebies. Renta Yenta ... the dream job from forever! The snippets of hillarity that you'll read were written by Renta and Yenta, but they could just as easily have from any or all of our diaries and our bestest ever girlie-friends through the years... you'll be reminded of the wealth of 'peeing-your-pants' laughter that we've collected with our girlie-friends too. "See what ya get for thinking?" we were always thinkng up insane things to do and did them in spite of silly possible consequences. Just do it! **************** So there I was in our Studio City cottage, awaiting the arrival of our baby daughter. My very favorite-ist-ever early morning show at the time, was Good Morning Los Angeles with "everything Los Angeles guru" host: - Ralph Story, and his co-host (former Miss America runner up, from Northfield, Minnesota) -Stephanie Edwards. The guests that morning included two gals, Lila Greene and Toby Brown, who were there to discuss their new-found business: Renta-Yenta If you are my family or my friend, you've heard about Renta Yenta. ....I am sooooo jazzed to have found this book! Give the book a read, and enjoy the gaggle-o'-giggles! You'll find their stories, really are not only their stories, but all of ours, especially those of us who were there for the 1970's women's movement and funny stories from time-immemorial, about... Girlfriends-in-Crime! Thank you to Phillip Scott Johnson (eggman913), who’s talent gave us all this video to enjoy. Between art history classes and visiting art galleries here in the US and across Europe, it almost feels like running into old friends, and with Bach to boot!: I hope along the way, you too have found eggman’s other videos. Once again….thx eggman913. 
How Now Orange Cow 11/29/2005 Farmer protects animals with orange paint LOGANTON, Pa. (AP) — With deer hunters out all over the woods, a farmer has decided to paint his cows, horses and even his dog bright orange to make sure they aren't mistaken for deer. Friz Konieczka doesn't want to take any chances because he heard about a neighbor's horse being shot during hunting season several years ago. Konieczka, a Clinton County farmer, wants his animals to stand out — and they do. Fluorescent orange paint lines their backs and sides. (Related video: Animals painted for protection) Konieczka said he'd rather spend $5 for a can of orange paint than have one of his animals killed or injured. He painted his horses, his cows, his goats, his turkeys and even his Dalmatian, Buddy. Visit: 
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