Every 6 years I find myself amused when Bonnie comes up on the list of hurricane names. This year I particularly enjoyed the tweets that sounds more like they are about a person than a storm:
(I would consider myself an meanderer)
Month: May 2016
The Rainbow Comes and Goes
I’ve been on a bit of a non-fiction run with my reading lately. One of the hi-lights has been this autobiography, “The Rainbow Comes and Goes”, by Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper.
I remember watching Anderson Cooper on “The Mole” (I was a bit of a reality show junkie for a while) and was amazed as he transformed into a serious journalist on CNN. Growing up in the 80’s I knew Gloria Vanderbilt because of her jeans. Bits and pieces of her story crept into my consciousness but I didn’t really understand how varied her life was until I read the book.
The book itself is easy to read; it’s billed as a series of emails between the two over the course of a year. While there may have been some prompts to move the story along, it is like listening to a conversation between a mother and son who have lived remarkable (and tragic) lives in the public eye. Their perseverance though different ways of dealing with that tragedy is as fascinating as it is inspirational. CNN also aired a documentary “Nothing Left Unsaid” a few weeks ago that mirrored the book. I waited until I finished reading to watch it. As always, I’m glad I read the book first but it was interesting to add the visuals.
As for the knitting, it’s been a lot of mittens, because what child doesn’t want a pair of mittens for their May birthday? (As cold as it’s been, I’m not ruling out the potential for them actually to be used before next winter.) 😉
Linking up with other Yarn Along posts about reading and knitting.
Lessons from Week Two of Obedience School
If your dog wakes up acting like an a*****e, he will likely spend the rest of the day as such. Letting him sleep for eight hours straight will only aggravate the situation when you want him to act like he’s heard the word “heel”. Or “sit”. Or even his name. He will then cap the performance by crying plaintively, laying on his back with his feet in the air looking shockingly like the last dog:
***sigh***
Do You Think I’m In Trouble?
Brown nose, plant in my mouth, laying in a garden: that face says it all.
Catching Up With Ketchup
If you were in Canada last winter, you no doubt heard that French’s ketchup is now being made with tomatoes grown in Canada and made into paste at the former Heinz plant in Leamington, Ontario that was closed 2 years ago. Leamington has always been associated with its tomatoes and the ketchup plant. The gift bags we received from a meeting there years ago even had little bottles of Heinz ketchup.
I have to admit, I’ve always been a Heinz ketchup girl. I remember trying other ketchup in restaurants as a kid and not liking them as well. (That could also be related to my overall fussy eating specific food choices as a child). I like the idea of buying products made in Canada, but I also like my Heinz ketchup. It didn’t really matter for a while because French’s ketchup was almost impossible to find in stores. A couple of weeks ago I came across a couple bottles of the “buffalo ketchup” and thought I’d give it a try. I tend to like spicy foods, but the ketchup wasn’t “hot”; instead it had the flavour of buffalo chicken without the heat, blended with the tomato-y ketchup. I think it’s probably better to transition with a slightly different ketchup, so I’m ready for bbq season with my Canadian tomato based ketchup.
PS: I was a little weirded out by the “1 bottle = 1 meal” but then I saw this and it all made sense:
Thursday Night
Thursday night almost 200 people turned out for a community policing meeting on the island. The focus was on drug use. I don’t think our community is unique in this being an issue, but our isolation and size allows a focus that may not be as clear in a larger area.
Drug addiction is a complicated issue. Causes and recovery don’t fall under the jurisdiction of a policing forum. That’s a more complicated, but just as important, element. Policing can address possession and more critically trafficking. Policing also addresses the traditional byproducts of drug issues: breaking and enter, theft, and other crimes to fund the habit. We have the benefit of a productive economy so there hasn’t been a spike in these events. There has been an increase in other byproducts (like abandoned needles) that generates a plethora of other concerns.