So yesterday I took a cooking class at The French Kitchen Culinary Center in Colorado Springs. The center has a wonderful, clean, modern kitchen (quartz countertops and Miele appliances), where classes are taught, as well as a bakery and a store that sells both food (including many items that are difficult to find elsewhere) and cooking supplies.
Yesterday, we made a Passion Fruit Cake, and we each got to take our cake home. I'm used to simple recipes that call for two cups of flour, three eggs, etc. The recipe we used yesterday was extremely precise. We had to measure out x grams of flour, y grams of egg yolk, z grams of egg white, etc. Also, we needed to sieve not just the flour and the sugar, but the egg yolk. While the class was waiting for the passion fruit mousse to set in the freezer, our instructor served us a snack of three homemade breads (sour dough, country, and baguette) with butter and four homemade jams. Absolutely divine! She also gave us some English toffee (to die for!) at the start of the class. The class was amazingly well organized. We had aprons waiting for us, and every station was set out for each student with scales and cooking equipment. All the ingredients we used were very high quality. Some are a little hard to find (such as passion fruit puree), but one can purchase them at the center.
The store carries a variety of syrups. We could help ourselves to water and syrups during the class. They were very tasty and would no doubt make great additions to cocktails. Apart from a number of fruit-flavored syrups, there were also hazelnut and French vanilla flavors, which would be great in coffee.
It was so much fun, and the cake is soooooo good! The French Kitchen offers dozens of classes, most of which sell out weeks in advance. I'm signed up for Salads next month, and Paige and I are signed up for English Toffee. I hope to take Bread and Jams, Strawberry Cake, Opera Cake, Vegetables, Quiches, and many more. I may suggest a vegan or vegetarian class at some point, or perhaps a class in cooking French lentils (lentilles du Puy).
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
I just finished reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a historical novel that follows the lives of two half-sisters and their descendants through six subsequent generations and over 200 years. Effia and Esi were born to the same mother but different fathers in West Africa in the late 1700s. Effia grew up in Fanteland, while Esi lived with her family in Asanteland until the age of 15. The first chapter describes how Effia remained in what is now Ghana and married a white man, a slave trader named James Collins. Esi, on the other hand, was sold into slavery and shipped across the Atlantic. The ensuing chapters describe the lives of their descendants, leading up to very recent times when Effia's great-great-great-great-grandaughter, Marjorie, meets up with Esi's four-times-great grandson, Marcus, in California. The book ends with Marcus and Marjorie visiting Ghana together.
The novel was so sad that it hurt to read. While tragedy stalked the family on both sides of the Atlantic, Esi and her descendants suffered far more. The effects of slavery were devastating to them and caused unimaginable loss and suffering. Esi, her daughter Ness, her grandson Nojo, Nojo's wife, Anna, and Esi's great-grandson H, were all very suddenly torn away from any immediate family, some of them on more than one occasion. Sadly, separatating brown-skinned people from their family members is a practice that continues to this day. Even after slavery was abolished, its aftermath caused immense hardship to the children and grandchildren of slaves in the book as they suffered from racism, lack of opportunity, inadequate education, poverty, and addiction.
It is only in the final chapter of the book that Marcus, who is doing a PhD in sociology at Stanford, shows that perhaps his generation of descendants of slaves will be able to move beyond the curse of the past. However, Marcus also grapples with the legacy of enslavement that blighted the lives of his ancestors. He struggles with his research as described on p. 289 of my edition (First Vintage Books, April 2017): "Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction -- the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, too, about the 'war on drugs'. And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University."
Those last few sentences of the above paragraph are absolutely chilling, especially given today's announcement of the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and the fact that his replacement will be nominated by Donald Trump, a man who called for the restoration of the death penalty back in 1989 when five black boys, the "Central Park Five", were wrongly convicted of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park. Their sentences were eventually overturned, thanks to DNA evidence and the conviction of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes. Disturbingly, Trump doubled down on his racial animus in October, 2016, one month before he was elected president, saying, "The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous." What sort of successor to Justice Kennedy is this instinctive racist capable of selecting? I have to hope that the Democrats will be able to hold the line against Trump's worst impulses in the coming confirmation struggle.
Gyasi also deals with the collusion of Africans in the slave trade. She describes how the Fante (Effia's step-family) captured members of the Asante (Esi's family) and sold them to the British.
Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, in 1989, and moved to the US in 1991. While she now lives in the San Francisco Bay area, she grew up for the most part in Huntsville, Alabama, where her father was a professor of French at the University of Alabama and her mother worked as a nurse. She completed Homegoing, her first (and thus far only) novel, when she was just 25 years old. She studied english literature at Stanford and later graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has won several awards for her book, and I hope she will continue writing. I'd love to read her autobiography one of these days!
The novel was so sad that it hurt to read. While tragedy stalked the family on both sides of the Atlantic, Esi and her descendants suffered far more. The effects of slavery were devastating to them and caused unimaginable loss and suffering. Esi, her daughter Ness, her grandson Nojo, Nojo's wife, Anna, and Esi's great-grandson H, were all very suddenly torn away from any immediate family, some of them on more than one occasion. Sadly, separatating brown-skinned people from their family members is a practice that continues to this day. Even after slavery was abolished, its aftermath caused immense hardship to the children and grandchildren of slaves in the book as they suffered from racism, lack of opportunity, inadequate education, poverty, and addiction.
It is only in the final chapter of the book that Marcus, who is doing a PhD in sociology at Stanford, shows that perhaps his generation of descendants of slaves will be able to move beyond the curse of the past. However, Marcus also grapples with the legacy of enslavement that blighted the lives of his ancestors. He struggles with his research as described on p. 289 of my edition (First Vintage Books, April 2017): "Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem. And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction -- the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, too, about the 'war on drugs'. And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University."
Those last few sentences of the above paragraph are absolutely chilling, especially given today's announcement of the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and the fact that his replacement will be nominated by Donald Trump, a man who called for the restoration of the death penalty back in 1989 when five black boys, the "Central Park Five", were wrongly convicted of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park. Their sentences were eventually overturned, thanks to DNA evidence and the conviction of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes. Disturbingly, Trump doubled down on his racial animus in October, 2016, one month before he was elected president, saying, "The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous." What sort of successor to Justice Kennedy is this instinctive racist capable of selecting? I have to hope that the Democrats will be able to hold the line against Trump's worst impulses in the coming confirmation struggle.
Gyasi also deals with the collusion of Africans in the slave trade. She describes how the Fante (Effia's step-family) captured members of the Asante (Esi's family) and sold them to the British.
Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, in 1989, and moved to the US in 1991. While she now lives in the San Francisco Bay area, she grew up for the most part in Huntsville, Alabama, where her father was a professor of French at the University of Alabama and her mother worked as a nurse. She completed Homegoing, her first (and thus far only) novel, when she was just 25 years old. She studied english literature at Stanford and later graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has won several awards for her book, and I hope she will continue writing. I'd love to read her autobiography one of these days!
The Pain in Paint
So we needed some paint to touch up the exterior walls of our house. We had a 5-gallon bucket, a bucket labled Benjamin Moore, of paint left over from when we had our house painted about 10 years ago. I made the 25-minute drive (with an additional detour to a store that used to stock Benjamin Moore) to take it to the nearest Benjamin Moore stockist. There were several numbers on the bucket, but those indicating the color had worn off. The paint store could match the paint visually, but they didn't have a computer that would do so. I decided we wanted to be as precise as possible, so back home to visit our HOA office as they have to approve and then record our exterior paint colors. Hooray! They had the exact names of our "Benjamin Moore" paints. I returned to the store, armed with the names of the paints. A staff member pulled up the colors, but they were completely different from our house colors. I left her with the old bucket and asked her to match the color as best she could. It would apparently take 24 hours to get the paint ready. In the meantime, I went home, searched through my filing cabinet, and found an old color card of the paint that we'd used for our shutters and door frames. Hallelujah! The paint was Kelly-Moore Green Thumb 149. Kelly-Moore, not Benjamin Moore. Mystery solved. Kelly-Moore is apparently a completely different company from Benjamin Moore, and, according to "the paint lady" at The Paint Gallery, it is mostly sold in California and Arizona. There are only two Kelly-Moore suppliers in Colorado, and the nearest one is in Longmont, 70 miles away. So we'll just have the paint matched at the nearest paint store or buy the Benjamin Moore equivalent if we need to repaint the exterior in the future. I picked up the matched paint yesterday.
In the meantime, for prosperity and future reference, this is what we have:
Trim: Kelly-Moore, Swiss Cream
Shutters and Doors: Kelly-Moore, Green Thumb, darkened by 25%
Walls: Either Kelly-Moore, Juniper, lightened by 25% or Benjamin Moore Moon Shadow
Addendum, 7/1/18: The plot thickens. The paint is not Kelly-Moore. Kelly-Moore Green Thumb is definitely not what we have on our shutters and doors. We changed the original scheme because it was almost identical to our neighbor's colors, and we didn't update our HOA. Farblunget!!! What we have, in fact, is a standard suggested exterior color scheme by Benjamin Moore, but we took it from an old brochure that is no longer available. Anyhow, thank goodness for spectrophotometers!
In the meantime, for prosperity and future reference, this is what we have:
Trim: Kelly-Moore, Swiss Cream
Shutters and Doors: Kelly-Moore, Green Thumb, darkened by 25%
Walls: Either Kelly-Moore, Juniper, lightened by 25% or Benjamin Moore Moon Shadow
Addendum, 7/1/18: The plot thickens. The paint is not Kelly-Moore. Kelly-Moore Green Thumb is definitely not what we have on our shutters and doors. We changed the original scheme because it was almost identical to our neighbor's colors, and we didn't update our HOA. Farblunget!!! What we have, in fact, is a standard suggested exterior color scheme by Benjamin Moore, but we took it from an old brochure that is no longer available. Anyhow, thank goodness for spectrophotometers!
Monday, June 18, 2018
Father's Day
Happy Father's Day (for yesterday) to Craig.
I think he had a good day. He attended, as team captain, a tennis tournament at noon, and he hit against the ball machine for an hour and a half prior to that. Our friends from Florida (they moved out from Colorado a few years ago) were in Denver, and we had vague plans to meet up with them. One of their daughters, a student at Rick Macci Tennis Academy, wanted to hit at altitude again. Craig booked a court for her and Emma to hit yesterday afternoon at our club. We decided to go out somewhere for dinner. At around noon, I thought it might be best to give them the option of eating at our home, where they could stretch out and be more comfortable.
The house was a pigsty. We didn't have enough food for ten people. I hadn't planned a dinner menu. I had four hours to clean the house, buy some food, and make dinner. I immediately went into panic mode (a.k.a. "being a grouch") and started stomping around vacuuming. And then ... the miracle happened. Those children of mine, who were so helpless and so in need of care themselves not so long ago, took over!
Daniel went out to the store and bought all the food we needed. Paige cleaned the house so I could focus on cooking. Daniel, once he'd unpacked the groceries, zipped through the house tidying and organizing. Laura, as soon as she got home from work, joined in. Emma helped tidy up the living room before she and Craig joined our friends at the club for tennis and swimming. By 4 o'clock, when the girls finished up playing tennis, the house was clean and tidy, and we had several vegan and vegetarian (our friends are also vegetarian) dishes ready to go. We had watermelon gazpacho with tofu "feta", two dishes warming in Instant Pots (asparagus risotto and umami-flavored beans), a salad, vegan hot dogs ready for the indoor grill (it was raining), packages of shoestring fries ready to cook in the airfryer, a freshly-baked chocolate cake, and ice cream with various toppings.
When our friends arrived, Paige made margaritas for the adults and played the harp in the background as we had dinner. She showed our friends' kids her newly-acquired geology collection, which intrigued them to no end. S., Craig's friend, is from South Africa, so we watched The Gods Must be Crazy in the movie theater and drank South African wine. It was a very pleasant, relaxed, and comfortable evening.
Having adult children is a new and wonderful paradigm. Daniel decided to clean up our two-acre yard as a Father's Day gift for Craig (he also bought Craig a nice Fitbit). He created a Google spreadsheet of tasks that needed to be accomplished, roped in other family members where possible, and slaved away in the hot sun (last week was brutal) while Craig was out of town to surprise him when he got home.
I am so delighted with my children. They are kind, good people who want to help others. They are capable and competent and lend their energies and talents to making life better. I am constantly surprised and touched to find them supporting Craig and me, when I always thought it was our job to support them. Being the kind of people they have become was the best Father's Day gift they could have given Craig!
I think he had a good day. He attended, as team captain, a tennis tournament at noon, and he hit against the ball machine for an hour and a half prior to that. Our friends from Florida (they moved out from Colorado a few years ago) were in Denver, and we had vague plans to meet up with them. One of their daughters, a student at Rick Macci Tennis Academy, wanted to hit at altitude again. Craig booked a court for her and Emma to hit yesterday afternoon at our club. We decided to go out somewhere for dinner. At around noon, I thought it might be best to give them the option of eating at our home, where they could stretch out and be more comfortable.
The house was a pigsty. We didn't have enough food for ten people. I hadn't planned a dinner menu. I had four hours to clean the house, buy some food, and make dinner. I immediately went into panic mode (a.k.a. "being a grouch") and started stomping around vacuuming. And then ... the miracle happened. Those children of mine, who were so helpless and so in need of care themselves not so long ago, took over!
Daniel went out to the store and bought all the food we needed. Paige cleaned the house so I could focus on cooking. Daniel, once he'd unpacked the groceries, zipped through the house tidying and organizing. Laura, as soon as she got home from work, joined in. Emma helped tidy up the living room before she and Craig joined our friends at the club for tennis and swimming. By 4 o'clock, when the girls finished up playing tennis, the house was clean and tidy, and we had several vegan and vegetarian (our friends are also vegetarian) dishes ready to go. We had watermelon gazpacho with tofu "feta", two dishes warming in Instant Pots (asparagus risotto and umami-flavored beans), a salad, vegan hot dogs ready for the indoor grill (it was raining), packages of shoestring fries ready to cook in the airfryer, a freshly-baked chocolate cake, and ice cream with various toppings.
When our friends arrived, Paige made margaritas for the adults and played the harp in the background as we had dinner. She showed our friends' kids her newly-acquired geology collection, which intrigued them to no end. S., Craig's friend, is from South Africa, so we watched The Gods Must be Crazy in the movie theater and drank South African wine. It was a very pleasant, relaxed, and comfortable evening.
Having adult children is a new and wonderful paradigm. Daniel decided to clean up our two-acre yard as a Father's Day gift for Craig (he also bought Craig a nice Fitbit). He created a Google spreadsheet of tasks that needed to be accomplished, roped in other family members where possible, and slaved away in the hot sun (last week was brutal) while Craig was out of town to surprise him when he got home.
I am so delighted with my children. They are kind, good people who want to help others. They are capable and competent and lend their energies and talents to making life better. I am constantly surprised and touched to find them supporting Craig and me, when I always thought it was our job to support them. Being the kind of people they have become was the best Father's Day gift they could have given Craig!
Saturday, June 16, 2018
Paige's Week in Geological Time
Paige's geology adventures continue apace. Last Sunday, she visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and spent some time at the gems and minerals exhibition. Last Monday and Wednesday, she had geology classes (lecture and lab). Last Tuesday, we went up to the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum in Golden. We didn't walk the Bob Weimer Geology Trail associated with the museum because of the heat, but we need to fit that in to see the dinosaur tracks, etc. And today, we went up to the Victor Gem and Mineral Show in the adorable mountain town of Victor (population 409) on the southwest side of Pikes Peak.
Victor, a former gold rush town, is a bit deserted these days. It was founded after Winfield Scott Stratton discovered gold near what is now the town on July 4, 1891. At one point, Victor had a population of 18,000 people and was, together with nearby Cripple Creek, the second biggest gold mining district in the country. Gradually the mines became worked out, and the cost of gold declined relative to the cost of mining it. There is still gold in the area. One of the vendors at the show showed us some gold ore that he recently found while walking near Cripple Creek.
Paige returned with a malachite clock, two pieces of petrified wood (the one on the left is Blue Forest petrified wood and is 58 million years old; the one on the right is between 280 and 320 mllion years old), a pendant and a cabochon. The latter two contain azurite, malachite, and chrysocolla.
She liked, but did not buy (it cost $800), a piece of Blue Bird Gem Silica, which looked something like this:
We lunched at the Gold Camp Bakery on 3rd Street, which offered delicious pastries, soup, salads, and various pies, and we looked at a couple of antique stores.
We need to go back to Victor with Craig. He would love the beautiful 90-minute drive through the mountains and forests, and I think my train aficionado would very much enjoy a ride on the Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad. We also need to visit the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum. One can go out the back and pan for gold.
Further adventures await ...
Victor, a former gold rush town, is a bit deserted these days. It was founded after Winfield Scott Stratton discovered gold near what is now the town on July 4, 1891. At one point, Victor had a population of 18,000 people and was, together with nearby Cripple Creek, the second biggest gold mining district in the country. Gradually the mines became worked out, and the cost of gold declined relative to the cost of mining it. There is still gold in the area. One of the vendors at the show showed us some gold ore that he recently found while walking near Cripple Creek.
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| Paige's spoils from the Victor Gem & Mineral Show |
Paige returned with a malachite clock, two pieces of petrified wood (the one on the left is Blue Forest petrified wood and is 58 million years old; the one on the right is between 280 and 320 mllion years old), a pendant and a cabochon. The latter two contain azurite, malachite, and chrysocolla.
She liked, but did not buy (it cost $800), a piece of Blue Bird Gem Silica, which looked something like this:
We lunched at the Gold Camp Bakery on 3rd Street, which offered delicious pastries, soup, salads, and various pies, and we looked at a couple of antique stores.
We need to go back to Victor with Craig. He would love the beautiful 90-minute drive through the mountains and forests, and I think my train aficionado would very much enjoy a ride on the Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad. We also need to visit the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum. One can go out the back and pan for gold.
Further adventures await ...
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Vegan Summer Dinner
Daniel and I attended a vegan cooking class in Colorado Springs last night. It was a lot of fun, especially as we all sat down with vegan wine to enjoy the results.
We made a watermelon gazpacho with tofu feta, a quinoa salad, an arugula salad with grilled leeks and tomatoes, and the most divine chocolate truffles made from soaked cashews, coconut, and cacao powder. Apparently cacao powder is a superfood. I will probably make the soup and the truffles for Father's Day next Sunday, and I plan to combine the salads into some sort of quinoa tabbouleh, maybe something like this with some grilled leeks thrown in ('cos they were good!). In addition, I'll grill some jumbo Lightlife smart dogs (because the kids love them, and they pack 13g of protein apiece), and some vegan Beyond Meat products. Beyond Burgers are esteemed in some circles as the best burger analogs available, and I heard some good things about Beyond Sausages last night.
I had thought that all wines were vegan and didn't contain much other than grapes. However, apparently young wines are hazy, when we all prefer them clear, so winemakers clarify them with "fining agents" such as albumin (egg whites), casein (milk protein), gelatin (animal protein), and isinglass (fish bladder protein). With vegan wines, fining agents such as activated charcoal and bentonite are used instead.
Last night, we had Girasole wine, a chardonnay and a cabernet sauvignon. Both very good. "The Ultimate Vegetarian Wine Guide", published by the Vegetarian Times, suggests some other wines and is giving me some ideas for Father's Day gifts.
We made a watermelon gazpacho with tofu feta, a quinoa salad, an arugula salad with grilled leeks and tomatoes, and the most divine chocolate truffles made from soaked cashews, coconut, and cacao powder. Apparently cacao powder is a superfood. I will probably make the soup and the truffles for Father's Day next Sunday, and I plan to combine the salads into some sort of quinoa tabbouleh, maybe something like this with some grilled leeks thrown in ('cos they were good!). In addition, I'll grill some jumbo Lightlife smart dogs (because the kids love them, and they pack 13g of protein apiece), and some vegan Beyond Meat products. Beyond Burgers are esteemed in some circles as the best burger analogs available, and I heard some good things about Beyond Sausages last night.
I had thought that all wines were vegan and didn't contain much other than grapes. However, apparently young wines are hazy, when we all prefer them clear, so winemakers clarify them with "fining agents" such as albumin (egg whites), casein (milk protein), gelatin (animal protein), and isinglass (fish bladder protein). With vegan wines, fining agents such as activated charcoal and bentonite are used instead.
Last night, we had Girasole wine, a chardonnay and a cabernet sauvignon. Both very good. "The Ultimate Vegetarian Wine Guide", published by the Vegetarian Times, suggests some other wines and is giving me some ideas for Father's Day gifts.
Friday, June 8, 2018
Gems and Minerals Show in Fairplay
Geology is the new love of Paige's life. She is taking a geology class over the summer and has lost her heart. Her class will be taking field trips to Red Rock Canyon Open Space, the Garden of the Gods, and the Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.
Paige has taken a number of studio art classes in making jewelry, so gems and minerals have long been one of her interests. Yesterday, we drove out to see a gems and minerals show in the roaring metropolis of Fairplay (population 704) in Park County. There were about 25 vendors there, selling trilobite fossils, minerals, polished gems, and cottage industry jewelry. Park County is rich in mineral resources, and many of the vendors looked like ancient prospectors and mountain men -- long, grey hair and beards, 10-gallon-hats, and weather-beaten faces. Paige was in seventh heaven and returned home in triumph with several mineral samples, a beautiful Labradorite bracelet (the gems change color as the light changes), a small Trilobite fossil, and, her greatest find, a 15-million-year-old fossilized Megalodon tooth.
I love the drive west on Highway 24. We passed through beautiful, mountainous Teller County in magical and changing light and then on into South Park, a vast, empty, high (9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level), flat grassland, flanked by the Front Range to the east and the Mosquito Range to the west. Apart from scattered hamlets, a few farm buildings, and relatively deserted highways, the area is probably not much different than it was 200 years ago when the buffalo roamed. We saw buffalo in a fenced enclosure and several pronghorns.
Next on the agenda is a visit to the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum. It's been years since we last went.
Paige has taken a number of studio art classes in making jewelry, so gems and minerals have long been one of her interests. Yesterday, we drove out to see a gems and minerals show in the roaring metropolis of Fairplay (population 704) in Park County. There were about 25 vendors there, selling trilobite fossils, minerals, polished gems, and cottage industry jewelry. Park County is rich in mineral resources, and many of the vendors looked like ancient prospectors and mountain men -- long, grey hair and beards, 10-gallon-hats, and weather-beaten faces. Paige was in seventh heaven and returned home in triumph with several mineral samples, a beautiful Labradorite bracelet (the gems change color as the light changes), a small Trilobite fossil, and, her greatest find, a 15-million-year-old fossilized Megalodon tooth.
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| Megalodon tooth |
I love the drive west on Highway 24. We passed through beautiful, mountainous Teller County in magical and changing light and then on into South Park, a vast, empty, high (9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level), flat grassland, flanked by the Front Range to the east and the Mosquito Range to the west. Apart from scattered hamlets, a few farm buildings, and relatively deserted highways, the area is probably not much different than it was 200 years ago when the buffalo roamed. We saw buffalo in a fenced enclosure and several pronghorns.
Next on the agenda is a visit to the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum. It's been years since we last went.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Our Wildlife
I love the wildlife here in Colorado.
A neighbor recently posted this video of four mountain lions that were hanging out in his backyard:
There have been reports of both mountain lion and bobcat sightings near our house, and it's not unusual to see a coyote loping through our yard. We have to be careful with our little dogs. We have an unusual number of mule deer wandering around this year. The kids saw a muskrat in a nearby pond, and we have some rabbits living under the bridge over an artificial stream in front of our house. This evening, a red-tailed hawk took up residence in a pine tree outside our kitchen, much to the consternation of our local blue jays and crows, who have been raucously attempting to scare it off. We haven't seen any black bears this spring, but they must be around. Paige and I saw pronghorns this morning as we drove up to Fairplay.
Alas, we not only have wildlife in the forest around our house; some have moved in, specifically inside a wall of our house. A mama raccoon chewed a hole in the eves of the roof, made a nest, and had babies. We called a wildlife specialist, hoping they could be relocated, but the Department of Wildlife makes that almost impossible, so the usual procedure is to trap and humanely euthanize them😢 After discussing the possibility of a rabid raccoon getting hold of one of our pets, we reluctantly chose this route. Early this morning, I went out on the deck and saw that the Mama Raccoon was trapped in a cage on the roof. She watched me with her great, sad eyes as one of her kits cried outside the cage and tried to get in😢 "Raccoon man" came over very quickly and removed them. Years ago, I read Rascal, by Sterling North, a wonderful book about a boy growing up with a pet raccoon (Rascal). Raccoons are clearly affectionate, mischievous, and intelligent animals. I feel like Lady Macbeth😥
A neighbor recently posted this video of four mountain lions that were hanging out in his backyard:
There have been reports of both mountain lion and bobcat sightings near our house, and it's not unusual to see a coyote loping through our yard. We have to be careful with our little dogs. We have an unusual number of mule deer wandering around this year. The kids saw a muskrat in a nearby pond, and we have some rabbits living under the bridge over an artificial stream in front of our house. This evening, a red-tailed hawk took up residence in a pine tree outside our kitchen, much to the consternation of our local blue jays and crows, who have been raucously attempting to scare it off. We haven't seen any black bears this spring, but they must be around. Paige and I saw pronghorns this morning as we drove up to Fairplay.
Alas, we not only have wildlife in the forest around our house; some have moved in, specifically inside a wall of our house. A mama raccoon chewed a hole in the eves of the roof, made a nest, and had babies. We called a wildlife specialist, hoping they could be relocated, but the Department of Wildlife makes that almost impossible, so the usual procedure is to trap and humanely euthanize them😢 After discussing the possibility of a rabid raccoon getting hold of one of our pets, we reluctantly chose this route. Early this morning, I went out on the deck and saw that the Mama Raccoon was trapped in a cage on the roof. She watched me with her great, sad eyes as one of her kits cried outside the cage and tried to get in😢 "Raccoon man" came over very quickly and removed them. Years ago, I read Rascal, by Sterling North, a wonderful book about a boy growing up with a pet raccoon (Rascal). Raccoons are clearly affectionate, mischievous, and intelligent animals. I feel like Lady Macbeth😥
Monday, June 4, 2018
Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Center
So yesterday I, along with a coalition of the willing (Paige, Daniel, and Emma), visited the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park. While we've been there several times, we have never taken a guided tour before. We did so this time, and it was fascinating to learn more about what people there actually do.
I knew they dug up dinosaur bones and fossils. I didn't know that they rarely do so in Colorado, as they get billed "an arm and a leg and a couple of kids". They usually go to Kansas, although sometimes they go up to Wyoming and Montana. Kansas, for the last 70 million years of the Cretaceous Period, was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, which was at one time about 2,500 feet deep and stretched from the Rockies to the Appalachians. As a result, they often find sea beasties while digging in Kansas.
One such creature, an 18.5 foot long Xiphactinus, was discovered by the owner of the center, Mike Thiebold. They recovered the fossilizied bones and painstakingly reconstructed a skeleton of the big, bony fish over the course of three years. Apparently these fish would eat just about anything they saw, of any size, even if it was big enough to get stuck in their mouths (and some died this way, as the fossil evidence indicates).
The reconstructed skeleton is shown above (bottom photo). 'An unlovely creature, but it's quite fascinating to think those bones (middle photo) belonged to a fish that was swimming around Lane County, Kansas, perhaps 70 million years ago.
Our guide also told us that efforts are underway to clone a mammoth and that a Neanderthal-human hybrid (half Neanderthal) has been created and is now about seven years old and living in the US. I'm not sure that the latter is accurate, and I can't find information about it online. If true, this raises some ethical questions about how the poor kid could integrate into mostly human (many of us have a small percentage of Neanderthal in our ancestry) society.
I found some information about cloning mammoths, but I'm not sure how accurate any of this is, and I'm abysmally ignorant of the subject:
1) Soaam Biotech Is Bringing Back the Mammoth This article, from Business Insider, talks about the South Korean biotech company, Soaam Biotech, and its cloning efforts. It recently cloned eight coyote pups, which were gestated in a domestic dog. The company believes it can help to preserve endangered canine species (like American red wolves) through cloning. Apparently Soaam has paid the Russian mafia to find an intact mammoth genome that could be inserted into elephant eggs to form a mammoth embryo.
2) Want to Bring Back the Mammoth? Not So Fast This article, from the American Museum of Natural History, suggests that a "mammoth" that gestates in an Asian elephant (a close relative) would not be a mammoth but a mammoth-elephant hybrid, or a mammophant. The article also asks whether it is worth producing a series of "maimed, deformed, stillborn, quasi-mammoths, quasi-elephants" to produce a "sort-of mammoth".
I know very little about this, so I've just downloaded How to Clone a Mammoth by Beth Shapiro, which discusses methods of de-extinction. I hope I have enough background information to be able to understand a little of it.
I knew they dug up dinosaur bones and fossils. I didn't know that they rarely do so in Colorado, as they get billed "an arm and a leg and a couple of kids". They usually go to Kansas, although sometimes they go up to Wyoming and Montana. Kansas, for the last 70 million years of the Cretaceous Period, was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, which was at one time about 2,500 feet deep and stretched from the Rockies to the Appalachians. As a result, they often find sea beasties while digging in Kansas.
One such creature, an 18.5 foot long Xiphactinus, was discovered by the owner of the center, Mike Thiebold. They recovered the fossilizied bones and painstakingly reconstructed a skeleton of the big, bony fish over the course of three years. Apparently these fish would eat just about anything they saw, of any size, even if it was big enough to get stuck in their mouths (and some died this way, as the fossil evidence indicates).
 |
| The Xiphactinus bones were discovered by Mike Thiebold |
 |
| The fossilized bones of Xiphactinus that were found in Kansas |
 |
| A skeletal reconstruction of Xiphactinus |
The reconstructed skeleton is shown above (bottom photo). 'An unlovely creature, but it's quite fascinating to think those bones (middle photo) belonged to a fish that was swimming around Lane County, Kansas, perhaps 70 million years ago.
Our guide also told us that efforts are underway to clone a mammoth and that a Neanderthal-human hybrid (half Neanderthal) has been created and is now about seven years old and living in the US. I'm not sure that the latter is accurate, and I can't find information about it online. If true, this raises some ethical questions about how the poor kid could integrate into mostly human (many of us have a small percentage of Neanderthal in our ancestry) society.
I found some information about cloning mammoths, but I'm not sure how accurate any of this is, and I'm abysmally ignorant of the subject:
1) Soaam Biotech Is Bringing Back the Mammoth This article, from Business Insider, talks about the South Korean biotech company, Soaam Biotech, and its cloning efforts. It recently cloned eight coyote pups, which were gestated in a domestic dog. The company believes it can help to preserve endangered canine species (like American red wolves) through cloning. Apparently Soaam has paid the Russian mafia to find an intact mammoth genome that could be inserted into elephant eggs to form a mammoth embryo.
2) Want to Bring Back the Mammoth? Not So Fast This article, from the American Museum of Natural History, suggests that a "mammoth" that gestates in an Asian elephant (a close relative) would not be a mammoth but a mammoth-elephant hybrid, or a mammophant. The article also asks whether it is worth producing a series of "maimed, deformed, stillborn, quasi-mammoths, quasi-elephants" to produce a "sort-of mammoth".
I know very little about this, so I've just downloaded How to Clone a Mammoth by Beth Shapiro, which discusses methods of de-extinction. I hope I have enough background information to be able to understand a little of it.
Friday, June 1, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy
I just finished reading J. D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, a deeply touching memoir describing the author's voyage from a childhood of poverty and dysfunction to a fulfilling and successful adulthood.
J. D. describes himself as a "Scots-Irish hillbilly" with roots in Jackson, Kentucky who grew up in Middletown, Ohio, amidst extreme poverty, neglect, and dysfunction. His descriptions of Appalachian culture and the white underclass are poignant and disturbing. J.D., however, is a rare success story. After being held back a year at school, almost flunking out of high school, and barely escaping consignment to the foster care system (after his mother tried to kill him), he achieved a perfect score on his SATs, joined the marines for four years, returned to Ohio to complete an undergraduate degree summa cum laude at Ohio State University in under two years, graduated from Yale Law School, and achieved a happy and stable marriage. He attributes his success to the love and encouragement that his grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, lavished on him while he was growing up. Mamaw was pregnant at 13, married to a 17-year-old at 14, and moved with her young husband from Kentucky to Ohio in search of a better life. However, as J. D. says, "in some ways, she never left Kentucky".
One of the themes of his book is that upward social mobility and improved social conditions are less likely to be achieved through political intervention than through cultural change and pulling oneself (and one's family) up by the proverbial bootstraps. J. D. quotes Daniel Patrick Moynihan as saying, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society."
As a liberal, I can't disagree. Some of J. D.'s stories resonate with my own experiences in London in the eighties. As a 26-year-old, he worked as a manual laborer to try to pay for his move to New Haven. His co-workers were frequently extraordinarily lazy, ended up being fired, and then complained they'd been mistreated. I temporarily shared a London flat with a group of unemployed but able-bodied young people who were illegally claiming the dole in three different locations and forging letters to social services from our landlord falsely complaining that they didn't have certain basic necessities (such as a 'fridge), meaning they would receive an additional welfare check. Although they lived very well by scamming the system, their favorite expression was, "Oi'm bein' exploited!" It wasn't that they couldn't get jobs. There were signs up all over London advertising positions. Theirs was, for the most part, a lifestyle choice. Eventually the Thatcher government limited the number of jobs people on the dole could turn down to three. This led to protestations of enslavement. "They are going to force us to work. That's slavery!!!" As I left the flat for work every morning, while they were still fast asleep after another late night at the pub or were off vacationing in Spain, I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't really people like me, who were paying the taxes that subsidized their unproductive lifestyles, that were really being exploited and "enslaved". The sad thing was that, after living this way for a few years, these people became unemployable. They became accustomed to doing nothing, they were not developing marketable skills, and they frequently, perhaps out of boredom, developed addictions.
While J. D.'s grandparents certainly helped him to develop and provided some much-needed support and stability in his life, I don't think he gives his innate abilities enough credit. He was smart enough to ace his SATs, despite the fact that he had had very limited exposure to educated people and had not been particularly engaged in school. He was an outlier in his community, but not merely because he had caregivers that could sort of function.
Part of his struggle was not just against the low expectations and depressing environment of his youth but against elitist bigotry. When he handed in a slipshod assignment at Yale, his professor not only criticized it harshly, but he let it be known that he felt Yale Law should only accept students from schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, as those from state schools too often needed "remedial education". I've read that students' standardized scores are a better predictor of future success than where they go to university. This would suggest that J. D. would have done as well in the long run if he'd gone to law school at Ohio State as he did by going to Yale. Perhaps that is true in terms of his earning potential. I'm not sure that he'd have had the same social and career capital, though. An OSU law graduate is not going to be considered for the Supreme Court, for example. I would guess that J. D. was probably one of the smarter students in his class at Yale, and yet this professor would have denied him the opportunity of Yale Law School on the grounds that he had been denied opportunities in the past!
J. D.'s book is, for the most part, garnering positive reviews. He cuts a sympathetic and appealing figure. A Washington Post article suggests the book explains Trump's victory and describes "poor, angry White Americans in Appalachia and the Rust Belt" as a "tinderbox of resentment". A New Republic article suggests that devious corporations are in part responsible for social conditions in Appalachia (which voted overwhelmingly for Trump) and that Vance's narrative of cultural blame is misplaced. This article claims that the book is "little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class".
Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. To his credit, J. D. wants to help. He and his wife recently moved from San Francisco back to Ohio, where he hopes to contribute in some way, perhaps by helping to combat the opioid epidemic, to revitalizing Appachian culture.
J. D. describes himself as a "Scots-Irish hillbilly" with roots in Jackson, Kentucky who grew up in Middletown, Ohio, amidst extreme poverty, neglect, and dysfunction. His descriptions of Appalachian culture and the white underclass are poignant and disturbing. J.D., however, is a rare success story. After being held back a year at school, almost flunking out of high school, and barely escaping consignment to the foster care system (after his mother tried to kill him), he achieved a perfect score on his SATs, joined the marines for four years, returned to Ohio to complete an undergraduate degree summa cum laude at Ohio State University in under two years, graduated from Yale Law School, and achieved a happy and stable marriage. He attributes his success to the love and encouragement that his grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, lavished on him while he was growing up. Mamaw was pregnant at 13, married to a 17-year-old at 14, and moved with her young husband from Kentucky to Ohio in search of a better life. However, as J. D. says, "in some ways, she never left Kentucky".
One of the themes of his book is that upward social mobility and improved social conditions are less likely to be achieved through political intervention than through cultural change and pulling oneself (and one's family) up by the proverbial bootstraps. J. D. quotes Daniel Patrick Moynihan as saying, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society."
As a liberal, I can't disagree. Some of J. D.'s stories resonate with my own experiences in London in the eighties. As a 26-year-old, he worked as a manual laborer to try to pay for his move to New Haven. His co-workers were frequently extraordinarily lazy, ended up being fired, and then complained they'd been mistreated. I temporarily shared a London flat with a group of unemployed but able-bodied young people who were illegally claiming the dole in three different locations and forging letters to social services from our landlord falsely complaining that they didn't have certain basic necessities (such as a 'fridge), meaning they would receive an additional welfare check. Although they lived very well by scamming the system, their favorite expression was, "Oi'm bein' exploited!" It wasn't that they couldn't get jobs. There were signs up all over London advertising positions. Theirs was, for the most part, a lifestyle choice. Eventually the Thatcher government limited the number of jobs people on the dole could turn down to three. This led to protestations of enslavement. "They are going to force us to work. That's slavery!!!" As I left the flat for work every morning, while they were still fast asleep after another late night at the pub or were off vacationing in Spain, I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't really people like me, who were paying the taxes that subsidized their unproductive lifestyles, that were really being exploited and "enslaved". The sad thing was that, after living this way for a few years, these people became unemployable. They became accustomed to doing nothing, they were not developing marketable skills, and they frequently, perhaps out of boredom, developed addictions.
While J. D.'s grandparents certainly helped him to develop and provided some much-needed support and stability in his life, I don't think he gives his innate abilities enough credit. He was smart enough to ace his SATs, despite the fact that he had had very limited exposure to educated people and had not been particularly engaged in school. He was an outlier in his community, but not merely because he had caregivers that could sort of function.
Part of his struggle was not just against the low expectations and depressing environment of his youth but against elitist bigotry. When he handed in a slipshod assignment at Yale, his professor not only criticized it harshly, but he let it be known that he felt Yale Law should only accept students from schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, as those from state schools too often needed "remedial education". I've read that students' standardized scores are a better predictor of future success than where they go to university. This would suggest that J. D. would have done as well in the long run if he'd gone to law school at Ohio State as he did by going to Yale. Perhaps that is true in terms of his earning potential. I'm not sure that he'd have had the same social and career capital, though. An OSU law graduate is not going to be considered for the Supreme Court, for example. I would guess that J. D. was probably one of the smarter students in his class at Yale, and yet this professor would have denied him the opportunity of Yale Law School on the grounds that he had been denied opportunities in the past!
J. D.'s book is, for the most part, garnering positive reviews. He cuts a sympathetic and appealing figure. A Washington Post article suggests the book explains Trump's victory and describes "poor, angry White Americans in Appalachia and the Rust Belt" as a "tinderbox of resentment". A New Republic article suggests that devious corporations are in part responsible for social conditions in Appalachia (which voted overwhelmingly for Trump) and that Vance's narrative of cultural blame is misplaced. This article claims that the book is "little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class".
Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. To his credit, J. D. wants to help. He and his wife recently moved from San Francisco back to Ohio, where he hopes to contribute in some way, perhaps by helping to combat the opioid epidemic, to revitalizing Appachian culture.
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