Crimes Against Nature

"Your public servants serve you right."
--Adlai Stevenson

Liberal thinking this go-round was that if we just mobilized all the like-thinking Americans who'd been staying home from the polls from distain or ennui, we'd win this time.

We were wrong. We did what we told ourselves was our best, spoke out, moved on, assembled our numbers, made sure the choir was thoroughly preached to, affected the disaffected, and--we lost.

Our best has got to be better.

It's tempting to fume on the morning-after that the lesson learned is that half of the country lives on the far side of a bottomless chasm, believing that a (Christian) God is on the hotline to Bush, the world environment is ours to plunder, might is right, and women and gays are second-class citizens.

But the self-righteous right was merely the minority core of the Bush victory, not the deciding factor. I believe that those who cast what were the deciding votes for Bush look just like our friends. And that they voted for Bush not because they believe in his ultra-right views, but because they checked with their budget book and made selfish, short-term decisions about money.

Bush is the good buddy not only of the rich, but of the upper middle class. He lets you keep more of your capital gains. He's phasing out the inheritance tax. Four more years of Bush can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if you are in mid-level management and have a family with property. I think it was an all-too-easy choice for middle-of-the-roaders to make, particularly if they are sufficient isolated by geography or numbed by consumerism to be able to ignore increasingly poisened water and air and increasing class divisions in the world and in the nation.

Our mission between now and 2008 will be to bring an awareness of environmental and economic issues to those middle-of-the-roaders and expand their political consciousness so they will look beyond next April 15 and the next quarterly dividend. Your assignment: Read Robert Kennedy Jr.'s new book Crimes Against Nature. Then give it as a holiday gift to a Republican you love.

21

10 p.m. PST and according to CNN Bush is 21 electoral votes away from four more years of ruining the environment and the economy. I feel like throwing up.

In the meantime, wear shoes around here

Many years ago, I was up late working on a fiction writing project when my big orange tabby, Bosco, wanted to go to bed. He began walking along my bookcase, and, selecting a volume, pulled it out and let it tumble onto the floor. The volume? How to Sell What You Write.

Not long after that, I woke up on my birthday to find a tiny stuffed animal on my pillow, holding a little sign that said "Happy Birthday." I found out later in the day that my cat Betaille had stolen this from my nextdoor neighbor's house—she was a cat burglar any way, but how did she know it was my birthday?

A few days ago, Kaylee, the little Stripe Sister, began trying to tell me something. It started when I noticed she was coming into my office, standing up on the back of the sofa, and picking push-pins out of the bulletin board. She'd then take the push-pin and bat it around the house until it was lost under some piece of furniture.

That particular bulletin board is covered in memorabilia: Handmade cards, favorite snapshots, bookmarks, my tags from MacWorld and Northwest Bookfest--you get the drift. The bulletin board gets assembled slowly over time as a collage (similar to those "mindmaps" drawn by the touchy-feely facilitator-types at the non-profit bureaucracies where I used to work).

So this morning Kaylee is busy taking apart the last three years of my life. She's worked her way more than halfway up the board and can't reach any new push-pins by standing on the back of the sofa. Now she just launches herself onto the bulletin board, hangs there by her claws, and works at the next push-pin with her teeth. When she gets it, she releases the claws, pivots, and bounces down onto the sofa with her prize. Cards and photos are all over the sofa and the floor, where big Stripe Sister Zoe is helping play with the push-pins. Now even Sheba, the deaf white cat, is involved in the push-pin soccer game. (Don't try taking a push-pin away from her!)

I could get the squirt gun and stop Kaylee, but at this point it's fascinating to watch. Clearly, I'll have to build a new bulletin board--after she outgrows her push-pin obsession. In the meantime, we'll be wearing shoes around here.


The bulletin board bandit makes her getaway with another push-pin.

The one-click iPod for those who need it

Apple spoofs abound, but the Ashlee Simpson Karaoke Edition iPod ad is distinguished by the prankster's attention to tone and graphic detail.

Spring is here

The Eddie Bauer spring catalog arrived today. Yes, spring. What on earth can they be thinking? Their website appears to know it's still fall, moving in to winter.

Three cheers for the Bush family!

A group of distinguished members of the Bush family are been running a website that urges visitors "Please don't vote for our cousin."

This story got quite a bit of press today, but what's weird is that nearly all of the print and online news stories omit the URL, so readers can't go to the source. It took ploughing through several of the results of a Google search until I hit a site that included the address.

It was a pleasant surprise. Each of several Bush cousins contributed a photo and a long quote on why he or she had decided not to vote for George. Many of their statements were thoughtful and eloquent, and the site includes some of the most articulate refutations of Bush's "God and Country" blather I've read in the entire campaign. Unless you are a member of the Bush campaign pep squad, you'll relish the observations of people like Chris House, a teacher in Olympia, WA, Jeanny House, of Wisconsin, and Samuel Prescott Bush, who writes "I find it difficult to understand the patriotism behind giving tax breaks to corporations that export jobs overseas, leaving well-meaning and hard-working folks at home without a solid chance to support themselves. I find it incomprehensible that patriotism of the brand our president practices, includes ravaging our environmental policies, resulting in an immediate and lasting degradation of the environment for the foreseeable future, hurting my children and their children, the future patriots of this country."

The awful thing

When I was in Cupertino for the day Thursday, I overheard people say things like "yeah, he has the awful thing she had last week." It was only when I woke up Saturday morning, violently ill, that I realized what "the awful thing" was, and that I had brought it back with me. At its worst, I was so dizzy I couldn't walk up or down stairs. Couldn't remember being that sick since I was in Poland in 1983. It was apparently only 24-hour bug, because I feel nearly normal now--just a little weak.

But don't get this thing.

Interestingly, when I spoke with my doctor yesterday, he said it was a flu "but not the kind you get flu shots for." Which is good, since Zorg and I will be going up to Victoria, BC, next Saturday for flu shots; some clever marketing person at the Victoria Clipper set up a package deal that includes the cruise and the shot. After your shot, you have the day to sightsee in Victoria. (Three cheers for socialized medicine.)

Even Republicans are worried by Bush

Thanks to Mystical Forest for bringing this to my attention: a lengthy NY Times article documenting growing Republican--yes, Republican--concerns about Bush's competence.

The secrets of tub caulking

[IMPORTANT NOTE: An updated and more detailed version of these instructions is posted at:http://themysterioustraveler.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-caulk-tub-shower.html]


The caulk between the tile shower walls and the bathtub gets mildewed and every year we try to come up with a better way to replace it.

First year: Throw money at it
I called a bathtub re-caulking service recommended by a local consumer group. They sent two teenagers to futz around in the bathroom for a few hours, charged more than $300, and told us to keep the shower curtain open (between showers) to promote air circulation. Well, duh! We installed a more powerful bathroom fan that sounds like a 747 taking off four feet overhead. Neither of these strategies prevented the mildew from returning in a few months.

Second year: Do it yourself--twice
Inspired by several do-it-yourself articles, I prepared to recaulk the tub myself. Since the damp, mildewed area behind the removed caulk must be treated with a bleach solution and then thoroughly dried, and the new caulk must have time to cure without moisture, this involves taking showers in our other bathroom. Unfortunately, that's a tiny upstairs shower stall tucked under the eaves, and the shower head only comes up to chest level on my husband.

So I waited until he had gone on a long mountaineering trip to start the process. I peeled off the caulk with a special plastic hooked tool, and applied the bleach to the grout in the mildewed area. I noted that the grout hidden by the caulk was not only mildewed but crumbling, and took out decayed sections. This worried me, and I consulted a few of my handyman friends to see if I should re-grout before re-caulking. The concensus was "no," so I forged ahead (mistake #1). The last step in the process involved applying the silicon caulk (a tube purchased at the local hardware store--mistake #2) and smoothing it with a little plastic caulk-smoothing tool. It was much stickier and messier than I had imagined, the caulk rapidly drying and getting tacky. Of course, it was a this moment when the phone rang. My husband was calling from the mountain top. Holding the phone with the backs of my wrists while caulk got into my hair, I tried to sound enthusiastic for five minutes (fatal mistake). By the time I got back to the bathtub, the caulk looked and felt like day-old chewed bubblegum; there was nothing smooth about it. I carved off the excess glop with a razor blade, then called a handyman friend and made plans to start the whole process from scratch when my husband went on his next mountaineering expedition. For round 2, I removed the glop with a razor blade (an evening's work) and the next day my friend came and applied the silicon caulk. "It's not great," he said. No argument from me. But it looked slightly less blobby, and cost much less than $300. The mildew returned, on schedule, a few months later, despite fans and cleaning efforts.

This year: the grout/caulk combo and the miracle of dish soap
Fortified by more do-it-yourself articles, I stripped the ghastly mildewed caulk, bleached, and then panicked when I saw even more disintegrated grout. I called the experts at the local tile store. Could they recommend a subcontrator to apply new grout and caulk for me? The tile person snorted like a sommelier at the Four Seasons being asked for Kool-Aid and said they did not know anyone who would be interested in such a small job. He suggested that I call a handyman. I informed him that I could do just as crappy a job as a handyman myself, and I didn't want a crappy job. He started to laugh, and told me to come over to the store to get a good grout and a special professional caulk instead of the stuff from the hardware store. That night my husband came back from a trip out of town to find the tub devoid of caulk. The "when can I use the shower?" clock began to tick, loudly.

The next morning I went to the fancy tile shop and a salesperson listened to my tale of woe. She told me there is a grout/caulk combo used by professionals that looks like sanded grout and is extremely good at filling spaces and keeping a tub wall watersafe (tip #1). She handed over the sanded grout/caulk (a mere $9) and told me to put it on and smooth it. She recommended dipping my finger in a mixture of water and a bit of dish soap to really make it smooth (tip #2).

The good news is that her technique worked. But it wouldn't have worked as well if I hadn't followed advice from one of the articles and masked the area to be caulked, 1/8" up the wall and 1/8" on the tub, using wide painter's tape (tip #3). My own touches included 30 latex medical gloves (available in bulk at your local drugstore) and a large grocery bag. You'll see why. Here's the drill:

[IMPORTANT NOTE: An updated and more detailed version of these instructions is posted at: http://themysterioustraveler.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-caulk-tub-shower.html I suggest you refer to the new version instead of the following.]

• Make sure the area to be caulked is clean, bleached, and dried and all traces of loose grout and old caulk have been removed.
• Tape the area to be caulked, as described above.
• Apply the grout/caulk bead using a good caulk gun.
• Place the grocery bag next to tub.
• Using a series of latex gloves and dipping your finger in a small container of water with a little dish detergent, begin smoothing the caulk bead. If glove gets gunky with caulk, put on a new glove. Otherwise, you will smear caulk on everything. Dump sticky gloves into grocery bag.
• Once the bead is smooth, remove tape from the tub side of the caulk line and dump the tape into the grocery bag. The do-it-yourself article didn't mention that there will now be a bit of a raised edge on the caulk where the tape was removed. Get out the gloves and start smoothing that border flat. Then remove the tape from the wall, put on more gloves, and smooth that border.
• You may also want to grout/caulk a few inches up the inner corner (or corners) of the show stall. Apply a short bead of caulk, and smooth to join the main caulking.
• Recap your tube of caulk with plastic wrap and tape. Dump bag of trash. Wait 72 hours, then enjoy.

No on Initiative 83

How many times do Seattle voters have to reapprove the monorail before the coalition of NIMBY groups in the city "gets it" that most people want an environmentally sensible rapid transit system in Seattle?

Initiative 83 would ban Seattle from ever considering the building of any monorail systems. Well, that'll certainly save us from ourselves.

What are people so scared of? Is Seattle so "special" that we can't live with overhead transportation like Chicago or Boston? I grew up in a house on a lovely residential street half a block from the El (elevated train) in Boston, and no one minded it--and that was a low-tech system built in the early 1900s! Mostly, we bragged about the convenience of our location. It was a fabulous connection for our neighborhood into all the resources of Boston's downtown. Seattle's downtown is a place I now avoid because of egregious parking prices, ghastly traffic, and skimpy mid-day bus service.

I was particularly disheartened by the hysterical anti-Monorail protests of one community group that turned out to be affected by the proximity of a monorail exactly four days out of every calendar year.

Let's Monorail! (Once again)

The Editor sounds off

some of my young colleagues in the tech industry affect a writing style for email that's devoid of capital letters. when i get messages from them, i'm never sure whether to be offended (because they can't be bothered to reach for the shift key) or flattered (because it's the way they write to other hip young things). at the moment, i'm amused.

Unable to recall the rules for capitalization in the real world, they apply initial caps with a heavy hand. While editing content for a website recently, I got to deal with gems like "big Savings for new Members" and "take advantage of this Limited-Time Offer."

If that is the way they think capitals work, I can see why they aren't using them. There were paragraphs that looked liked 18th century poets had come back from the dead and were working in marketing.

Editorial note: using an initial cap for concepts such as "savings" is called personification. An example is: Big Business. Personification conveys a poetic or ironic flavor, and should be used sparingly.

Zorg, aloft

My husband, aka Zorg, is on his way to Chicago. Here's his report from Sea-Tac departure, filed via his Treo:

"Some dolt was annoying everyone at the departure gate by repeatedly and endlessly saying 'testing 1-2-3-4-5' over the PA.

"Finally another voice came on the PA and said, 'Okay, we all know this guy can count to 5, but can he make it to 7?'

"We all chuckled. After a short pause a voice started repeating the 'testing' drone again.

"Wasting no time, the heckler came back on and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, here at United we need to know how to count at least as far as 10.'

"We didn't hear any more 'testing' after that."

That's my cat, not the Thanksgiving turkey

Your vet might not tell you, but there are two ways to stitch up a cat after spaying. One is "internal" or "buried" stitches. The other is the traditional external skin stitches, in which the cat is laced up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Buried stitches seem to be a bit more complicated for a vet to execute but have some advantages: Since they dissolve, the cat doesn't have to go back for a second visit to have the stitches removed. And since they are invisible, they don't tempt the cat to pick at them and rip them out. Buried stitches are used for spaying feral cats that are released into the wild a day or two following spaying.

Our sweet-tempered cat Zoe, spayed a couple weeks ago, was so pathetic in her plastic collar than we asked the vet if her high-strung sister, scheduled for spaying later this month, could have internal stitches. He said absolutely yes. And he urged us to let our friends know they can always ask to have their cat spayed by a vet who uses that option. So: Spare everyone the grief, ask for internal stitches.

Now this is hot chocolate

It's not just the calories and cholesterol that are dangerous when you serve these chocolates. Chocolate Roulette promises an unforgettable experience, particularly for the individual who selects not one of the praline-filled bon-bons but the jalapeno-filled bomb.

Suggested antidotes include fat, milk, banana, cider-and-milk, and olive oil. Bon apetit!

Seattle Industrial Chic

Friends were over to dinner Friday night and we were discussing the extreme artsification of the formerly industrial areas of Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. My husband, who used to have his law offices in the Pro Lab building, was saying something about a building that had been across the street, Fremont Bolt and Screw.

"With that name, they probably turned it into an ultra-hip nightclub," I said, thinking myself very clever.

"No," he corrected me, "that would be The Screw and Bolt."

Domestic notes

Cat updates: Zoe has been released from her cone-collar. She appears to be fully recovered from being spayed.

Washing machine: After reading up on the Maytag Neptune washer and learning that a sizeable number of owners are complaining about mold growing in the gasket around the door, I bought a Whirlpool Duet instead. It uses very little water (apparently this is a characteristic of front-loaders), is gentle on clothes, and has fast, medium and slow spin options. Now, if the gas company would just stop losing all of the applications from people on our street (they've done it three times already), we can get the matching dryer delivered.

Repossession

I like to go to bed early and lie there listening to the seals barking down at Shilshole Marina and the rumbling of the trains heading north to Canada on the tracks three blocks west of us.

I don't often get to bed early, but Thursday night I did. However, if there were any seals or trains, they were drowned out by the sounds of a commerical truck going forward, backing up, and idling loudly. Our street, which dead-ends in an alley, gets so little traffic, and most of that local, that we can recognize nearly every car that goes by. This truck was definitely not on the approved list.

We got up and went to the French doors and saw an open flatbed carrying an enormous glistening white SUV. The truck appeared to be offloading the SUV in the alley. We watched, puzzled, as the strange SUV was placed in front of the house across the street, because it certainly did not belong to the family in that house. The truck continued loudly maneuvering around and seemed to be positioning itself in front of the small brown truck that belongs to our nextdoor neighbor. He's been in hospice for the past week, dying of bone cancer. His teenage daughter had reported that afternoon, as she played with our kitten on the lawn, that her father was in a coma.

"Repo," my husband said grimly. "They're taking his truck. They always come in the middle of the night, or when no one's home."

Sure enough, the nextdoor neighbor's wife's car was gone; she was visiting him at the hospice.

There was no possibility of sleep with the ruckus out in the street, so I went out and asked what was going on. "He didn't make payments on the truck," the burly repo man said, defensively. By now several other folks were out on their front porches, watching. Call me sheltered, call me middle class, but repo men were something I've only seen on TV or in the movies.

Eventually the repo folks got our neighbor's truck loaded, and drove off with it, and at some point they removed the huge SUV as well. When we got up in the morning, there was an odd, empty space on the street where our nextdoor neighbor's truck had always been parked.

It gets worse (the debates)

Four years ago, watching the Bush v. Gore debate, I noticed Bush pause with that deer-in-the-headlights look of his. I was struck by how much he looked like someone listening to something else...like a prompter. I speculated uncharitably that Bush had been implanted with a device that allowed his handlers to tell him what to say, and his bizarre pauses were caused by malfunctions or slowdowns in the transmission.

Apparently, it's true, though he wears the device rather than has it implanted. Read this sobering story in Salon. If you don't need as balanced a report, check out the site isbushwired.com which includes gossip, speculation, and reports of broadcast equipment at Bush appearances accidentally picking up a channel with a prompter's voice (a different voice, saying many of the words of the speech) during Bush's speeches.

It's only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to hack Bush's prompting channel while he's mid-rant--even just a nice blast of loud noise would be delightful to watch.

Ready for the recount

This should interest Zorg, J Leroy, Moonlion and all the other election geeks: I just got email from the Kerry campaign (I'm a contributor) notifying me that the FEC has issued a ruling that authorizes the campaign to raise money for a GELAC fund. Translated into English, the Kerry campaign can now begin to raise money for a General Election Legal and Compliance Fund that will be used to finance recounts. The Kerry message to donors is "we'll be ready this time."

I was sort of mystified, as I thought "the government" paid for recounts. But I can see how you wouldn't want to rely on that these days.

Zoe is a brave little cat

Zoe is back from the vet, wearing a big clear plastic cone-shaped collar on her head so she won't be able to chew on her stitches. In spite of running into everything with the cone, she is purring away and trying to live life as usual. We took off her cone and let her go running in the backyard and fed her dinner (no fun in a cone). Unfortunately, when she stops running around she sits down and tries to chomp at the stitches, so we had to put the get-up back on again. Kaylee is being a jerk and hissing at poor Zoe. Little does she know that in three weeks, it will be her turn to get spayed and collared!

Mount St. Helens webcam

If you are following the hot air from the volcano, instead of from the debates, check here.

Two kittens are better than one

In June we got a pair of kittens and all summer we've enjoyed watching them tear through the house and play. They're cheerful, affectionate kittens. Today, Zoe, the larger and more mellow kitten, went off to the vet to get spayed. Kaylee, the small, high-strung kitten, couldn't go because she went into premature heat and just got out of it yesterday. So I'm home alone with Kaylee. I have had my ears washed three times, my toes bitten, and found myself breaking out the catnip at 10 a.m. in the hopes of getting a respite from my new job as stand-in for sister Zoe. Sheba demanded to be let out of the house, and Betaille is hiding somewhere upstairs.

We should have arranged for a "loaner" kitten, I think.

Plain and simple

Here's a link to one of my favorite websites: Well written, easy to navigate and easy to use. Decidedly unglamourous, but it follows the basic principles of good web design for small businesses. The phone number is the most prominent feature on every page and the answers to basic questions (what are the services, how do I pay, etc.) are in a lefthand nav bar and thus always just one click away from the page you are on. Plus, there's a sense of humor throughout--check out the FAQ.

Only two more days til BlogACatMas

According to the Accordion Guy blog Friday is BlogACatMas, celebrated by posting the picture of a kitty on your blog. Don't ask me, it was his idea.

What's next?

Kaylee the kitten went into premature heat yesterday, and by last night was crawling around on her elbows and knees, trilling. It was pathetic. Even more pathetic--and somewhat alarming--was her sister Zoe, who was trying to help Kaylee out by performing the male role without the necessary equipment. By this morning both of them seemed exhausted. We're told Kaylee's first heat could last anywhere from two days to two weeks, and she can't be spayed until she's completely out of it. They were scheduled for spaying mid-October, but I immediately called the vet and got them to take Zoe this Friday, hoping she won't follow her precocious sister's example before then.

The phone, which lately seems to be controlled by a cosmic routing system that knows exactly when I'm in the shower or asleep, rang at 7:45 a.m. this morning. By the time I got to it, the caller had hung up, leaving no message. Caller ID showed it was our housecleaner, who then didn't show up for the weekly cleaning gig at 9.

It's probably just as well. By noon a garbage bag had leaked in the kitchen. At 1 p.m., a horrible "hrorrrping" sound had Kaylee and Zoe and me all standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the bedroom. When it stopped, we crept upstairs to find the walk-through closet, the bathroom, and the bedroom covered with cat barf, and Betaille glaring at all of us. I set about cleaning that up with spray cleaner and a roll of paper towels, with Kaylee and Zoe "helping." That, of course, is when the phone rang again. One of my contractors is coming over to look at the fence posts which are rotting out from under the fence (another reminder of the previous owners and their artsy cosmetic construction techniques).

After the work day (yes, I work full time from home) is over, I have to go down to the basement and have another go-round with the washer. It's objecting to full loads, and making its feelings know by accessing a cache of old dirt and adding that to the rinse water. I'm coddling it with medium loads and planning to buy a Maytag Neptune or a Whirlpool Duet. Recommendations, anyone?

Why Bush is going to stay in office

Bush is going to stay in office for two reasons:

1. Because he'll stop at nothing. Florida 2000 was just a taste of the nasty polling-place antics that will be going on in swing states (face it, the other states were written off months ago) in the final few days of the campaign.

2. Because, in our heart of hearts, most Americans want Bush in power. Even plenty of Americans who will go quietly to the polls and cast a sanctimonious little vote for Kerry will do so because they're secure in the knowledge that Bush's camp will figure out a way to stay out on top.

Bush's foreign policy is our dirty little affair. Here we are, with our ultra-luxurious lifestyles, laying waste to the natural resources of the world. Now we've got a president who's doing everything he can to protect those lifestyles by protecting the big corporations that make them possible. It used to be feasible for the U.S. to purchase other countries' resources by purchasing the regimes that controlled those countries. Now that it's become more difficult to keep those rented regimes in power, Bush has cut out the middle man and simply invaded an oil-rich country with the aim of setting up a structure the U.S. will control from the outset. That other nations and the UN would have no part of these goings-on has made it even easier for the U.S. (and even more terrifying for the people being invaded, but that's another story).

Bush has made it clear to everyone that his foreign policy consists of conquering and controlling the world's oil resources while repeating the words "fighting the war on terror" with all the sincerity of a jerk who, kicking and barging his way through a crowd, mumbles "excuse me."

The really scary part is that lots of people are secretly grateful. And just look around and you'll see plenty of people who are publicly grateful. They were brought up to believe that Americans have the God-given right to live like kings at the expense of the majority of the world's population. In their view, who cares if Bush is a buffoon, a lightweight, a dim bulb, and a hypocrite? He's defending, perpetuating, and glorifying "the American way."

Is it any wonder that skilled politicians like Gore and Kerry and even Dean end up looking like wimps and scolding nannies by comparison? What else is the anti-Bush message except: We're greedy hogs and we need to stop buying SUVs, sucking up power, eating strawberries in January, and swimming in a sea of packaging materials.

Yeah, people really want to hear that.

No wonder Bush has that smirk on his face.

Today in Afghanistan

Well, I'm not blogging much, but everyone else is. On the serious side, check out the new Today in Afghanistan.

On the lighter side, Kaylee and Zoe have started a diary on their Catster page. Look them up on the site and scroll to the bottom of their page to see the world from the perspective of two five-month old kittens.

More from Adlai Stevenson

My husband brought up another Adlai Stevenson quote that's all too appropriate for the current presidential campaign:

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." (from Stevenson's 1952 campaign)

Read more Stevenson quotes, and here's Slate's take on Stevenson's political appeal.

Why I'm campaigning for Kerry

During Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign, a woman at a rally called to him, "You have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson replied "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

Welcome to 2004. If you want to see the last of Bush and the cronies he fronts for, it's not going to be enough just to vote for John Kerry. You'll need to bring someone else along with you. Maybe it's a well-intentioned neighbor who gets "too busy" to go to the polls, or a newcomer to the state who hasn't registered yet. Get off your butt and get out the vote.

I'm not just voting for Kerry, I'm campaigning. My expectations of Kerry are modest and reasonable: I don't expect him to agree with me on every issue. I don't expect him to end the war, create millions of jobs, rescue social security, institute universal healthcare, legalize gay marriage, or save the environment. I do expect him to turn the ship of state slowly in those directions. Most importantly, I have every confidence that his administration will foster an environment in which we can discuss and work on these issues without the likelihood of being labeled anti-Christian, extreme, or wimpy, or--if we keep sounding off--getting labeled a "terrorist" and swept off to a prison where we will be held indefinitely without access to legal representation.

Whining about Kerry not being liberal enough for you? Get off it. It's not going to be Kerry's job, as president, to change America. It's ours. His job, leadership, is to return us to an environment in which we can do our work as citizens without fear.

Walla Wallas

Cookbook author Maida Heatter writes today in Salon about onion sandwiches. The article includes a recipe from James Beard. Heatter notes "Before Beard became famous for his cooking classes and cookbooks, he ran a catering business that specialized in hors d'oeuvres--and he told me once that onion sandwiches were his most popular item. He'd sold millions of them, he said. That may be, but I later learned that his recipe for them varied from publication to publication."

I have a better recipe, a non-hors d'oeuvres version, than the one she provides. It came from my late uncle Bob Anderson who demonstrated it one summer when he was visiting me in Seattle during Walla Walla season. Here it is:

• Black Russian rye bread (such as Bremner Brothers)
• buttter
• Walla Walla onion, peeled and sliced thinly
• Dijon mustard
• sugar
• lemon juice

Cover the bottom slice of bread with butter and the top slice with Dijon. Place sliced onions on the buttered slice, sprinkle the onions lightly with sugar (about 1/2 tsp. for a small sandwich, and 1 tsp for a large sandwich) and then dampen the sugar with lemon juice (1/2 to 1 tsp.) and top with the Dijon-spread slice.

Caution: It's essential to make this with very fresh, in-season sweet onions. Regular yellow or white onions will taste bitter, and older sweet onions will make you think that Heatter, Beard, Uncle Bob and I are all crazy.

Good news in the polls

The Seattle Times reports today that Mark Sidran is gaining on Deborah Senn in the Washington State Attorney General's race, great news for anyone who watched Senn ride roughshod over the state healthcare system during her notorious tenure as the state Insurance Commissioner. Her name recognition is higher than Sidran's, but for all the wrong reasons.

I find that Sidran is a sharp, principled guy who can stand up and take it if (gasp) someone doesn't agree with him. I don't agree with all of his actions as Seattle's city attorney, but I respect them. I could go on at length...but Al Franken says it so much more entertainingly.

Summer's end

Summer means fried clams and chocolate malts. So yesterday I walked down to Gordo's on Seaview for lunch. Seaview Avenue looks like the main street of a small, Northern California coastal town; the sort of town where the private investigator in a 70s movie drives to question an obscure and reluctant witness. Restaurants, boatyards, and marinas line the water side of the shore road, and an assortment of shacks, beach cottages, and 60s-era commerical buildlings (stucco with bulbous brown-tinted windows) line the other side. No cross streets--a railroad runs behind the buildings.
Gordo's take-out is in one of the shacks, with wooden picnic tables on the front and side. Judging from the pop-art font on the signage (listing every item on the menu) Gordo's has been there a good long while. While the food is hardly health food, the portions are modest, and inexpensive. My little bag of clams and a medium-size malted came to under $5, and the clams were as close in taste (though not texture) as you get to Cape Cod style fried clams on the West Coast. The malted had a subtle cocoa taste--not sickeningly sweet like most of the soft ice cream that turns up at more commercial places.
Next to Gordo's parking lot is Abbondanza, an outdoor lot filled with concrete garden art surrounded by a chain-link fence. The art ranges from the tacky to the chic. They have dark gray Japanese lanterns, elegant green leaping fish designed as fountains, cross-legged Hindu gods, huge Buddha faces, elegant Greco-Roman pedestals, elaborate English planters, and New Age wall plaques of suns and moon. I saw bunnies and, I think, some gnomes and gargoyles in there as well. And some statues of the Virgin Mary. And some Grecian nudes. Every September Abbondanza has a huge 50-percent-off sale, advertised on with posters on phone poles all over North Seattle. Otherwise, it's rarely open. It's definitely where the private investigator would be snooping around, looking for the mysterious witness. Then he'd go next door to Gordo's and get some clams.

Blogging fantasy

In the early days of the internet, you'd stumble onto sites that were so esoteric as to be incomprehensible. Today, most sites fall into a readily recognizable pattern. Yawn. Well, here's one that will have you pondering. Check out a couple of blog listings; scroll all the way down to the bottom of a page. Not sure what's behind this, but someone's sure gone to a lot of trouble to create it. And, yes, The Mysterious Traveler Sets Out is listed.

Firefox

Mozilla's new Firefox browser gives me access to more blogger composition features and shortcuts. Very cool. Very very cool. Soon I'll be abusing things like font sizes, bold, italics, and lists. And colors.

Spoiling the kitties

A few new products for our feline friends:

Beastie Bands are ultra-lightweight stretch material cat collars with velcro closures. They are the perfect first collar for kittens. (Kaylee demonstrates.)

You simply cut the collar material to adjust the length (so the poor kitten isn't running around with extra collar flapping). And there's a small grommet so you can attach a little tag. We made "trainer" tags for the kittens on the machine at the pet supply supermarket. These are just tiny metal tags--the big plastic reflector tags the adult cats wear would have been ridiculous.

The Self-Warming Cat Cushion from Petsmart actually requires a cat to supply the power. This faux-fur plush pad has a lining made out of reflective material (a space blanket?) that reflects back the cat's heat. Our cats love it. Completely washable.

The big find was the Berber Deluxe Slumber Ball from Drs. Foster and Smith. The 26" medium size slumber ball is an immense ball of ultra-light fiberfill covered in synthetic berber fleece. A big cat like Sheba climbs on and sinks slowly into the middle, purring furiously. Show 'em, Sheba:

The kittens like it too but since they don't weigh enough to compress the ball, they tend to slide slowly off while sleeping. I'm trying to imagine what the large (32") slumber ball would be like--perhaps if our next cat is a mountain lion...These are completely washable, but you'd have to have a big washing machine.

Last but not least--we came across tiny round faux-fur throw rugs at Fred Meyers called Faux Katti. Despite the name, these are not in the pet department, but in the rug aisle. They have non-skid backing, so you can put them on the floor or the desk and the cats won't go surfing all over the room on them. We had been putting fleece throws on our desks for the cats to hang out on, but the rugs are much better. The cats think so, too.

Farewell to Fremont

Twenty years ago, the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont was a hillside community of old clapboard houses anchored by a commercial crossroads of cafes, vintage junk stores, and artisans' shops. The inhabitants were aging hippies, youthful artists, and everyone in between. I used to go there to hang out for hours over big breakfasts (late in the morning), cheap teriyaki (late at night), and gooey pastries and coffee (all afternoon).

Flash forward. A behemoth natural foods boutique supermarket now stands at the heart of the Fremont universe, next to a condo/office building encircled with gleaming metal trim that resembles high-end barbed wire. A famous software company inhabits a sprawling complex across the street. Many of the people on the street sport the company's security badges. Vintage is gone; reproduction vintage abounds.

If you are in the low-ceilinged, crowded underground parking garage beneath the natural foods shrine (where I was at noon today) you might get the sense that something is wrong in Fremont. Take a deep breath. The air smells of rotting produce and garbage--organic, I'm sure, but decidely unpleasant. Watch out for the pricey sports cars and immense SUVs circling the garage in a hunt for spaces. They are driven by attractive young women wearing up-to-the millisecond fashion or graying, middle-aged ex-hippies wearing expensive dress casual. Everyone is wearing an expression of impatience and disgust as they wait for you to scurry across the road—or don't wait, and zoom right at you. This is not a friendly place.

I'm here for my first lunch with a group of area professionals who gather once a month at a restaurant in the middle of Fremont. I walk in to a high-ceilinged, wood-paneled quasi-Asian bistro. The noise level there is comparable to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The waitress points out the professional group, crammed together at four tables without a seat to spare. This is not a place I want to be. I walk out and head back to the parking garage, where I patiently extricate myself from the cramped spot, waiting while the driver of the SUV in front of me indulges herself in a meditative trance in the middle of the exit lane. Then I work my way, block by block, out of Fremont, each intersection gridlocked by a truck or a van trying to get into a parking space or around another commercial vehicle. Perhaps a Bostonian could feel at home here.

Eventually, I'm on Leary Way, headed back home to Ballard. I park on Ballard Avenue, go into Burk's Cafe, order a gumbo with tasso and an iced coffee, and sit in the cool restaurant watching people stroll by on the quiet cobblestone street outside. A Beau Jocque zydeco CD plays in the background. I recognize several of the people lunching in the courtyard. One of the kids from my drumming class comes in and we chat about what they covered in the Tuesday class I missed. The restaurant packs up my leftovers for me, and I head back to the car.

On the way home, I stop at Limback Lumber to pick up a piece of plywood I'll be using to winterize Betaille's outdoor cat shelter. The salesman recognizes me; he goes back and cuts the plywood to the exact size I need. I recognize two of the five contractors who come in while I'm there.

Like a few other older businesses on Leary Way, Stone Way, and Elliot Avenue, Limback maintains a large reader board atop their building. On my way out, I look up and check out the latest.

"Ballard's a-changing," it says. "But we aren't."

Amen.

[FOLLOW-UP NOTE: In summer 2006 Limback took down their reader board, leaving me to wonder if change had caught up with them at last. Fortunately, it was just temporary while the building was re-roofed. -- MT]

Pears everywhere

It's hard to walk across our patio without being hit on the head by a big, falling pear.

Whomp! Guess I need to get out there and pick them.

I'm never quite sure what to do with pears, other than slice them and eat them with cheese or poach them in wine. You can't really put them on cereal, pear cake isn't as interesting as apple cake, and I'm not into making elaborate tarts and stuff just to get a few pear slices on top. Pear jam? Pear sauce? Brandied pears?

Tonight I researched pear soup and came up with a surprising number of recipes. Some of them date back to European medieval cookery.

Categories include:
• Sweet, chilled pear soup: usually with other fruits, pureed, seasoned with aniseed, and often served for dessert.
• Savory squash and pear soup. All sorts of squashes, sweet potatoes or yams join pears and onions.
• Pear soup with melted brie: involves chicken broth and sounds pretty good.
• The weird ones: pear soup with broccoli, etc...
• My favorite: roasted eggplant, red pepper and pear soup. The recipe, credited to the Mistral Restaurant in California, makes 3-1/2 gallons of the stuff and involves 14 pears.

Turns out you can stuff pears with cheese (blue cheese, cream cheese, ricotta cheese) and bake or grill them.

And I did manage to come up with a recipe for brandied pears:

Scald and peel the fruit; make a syrup of half a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit; drop in the pears, and, when done, put in jars. Boil syrup a little longer, and allow it to cool; then add one pint of brandy to each quart of syrup, and pour over the pears.

Bon apetit!

Thud.

Bad beginnings

I work up around 7:45 this morning to see the white cat slinking guilty off the bed. Sure enough, she had barfed on the blanket. I whisked the blanket onto the floor, rolled over, and tried to sleep for 15 more minutes while the kittens rocketed around the bedroom in pursuit of the white cat. The white cat took refuge on a high shelf, then began moving items on the shelf off the edge and onto the floor to alert me to her predicament. As she worked her way over to a glass candle holder, I got up and got her off the shelf. Confident I was ready to get up and feed them, the three felines thundered downstairs.

I showered, dressed and sat down to work at the computer. At 11:30 I remembered I'd invited someone to lunch. It was not someone I wanted to have lunch with, so the cooking (Mark Bittman's version of salad Nicoise, from How to Cook Everything) was more fun than the actual meal. After the guest left, I remembered the blanket upstairs, took that down to the laundry room, and ran a load of wash before sitting back down to work. At 3:45 I went for a walk. My neighbor Henry was out working in his yard, as usual, and I remarked on his ancient metal trash cans--they really have attained collectible status! As I got back from my walk, my husband called with his daily report and we discussed how to keep the more enterprising kitten from flying, leaping, and slithering out the door at every opportunity. Then it was back to work, which is pretty much tying up lots of odds and ends this week while my boss is on vacation.

This evening I wind up the final phase of our anti-flea campaign, spraying cat tree Number 4 (which is outdoors drying off from being carpet shampooed yesterday) with Adams Inverted Carpet Spray. I haven't found any fleas on the cats for several days, but I want to be vigilant while the weather is still good and I can take the cat trees outdoors to be sprayed.

The kittens are now taking Frontline (the genuine veterinary version), but before they were old enough for that treatment, they managed to infest the house. Fortunately, we have hardwood floors and leather furniture, so I've been able to address the flea problem by washing the cat beds every couple of days and taking each of the cat trees outdoors for washing and spraying. Adams Inverted Carpet Spray (I just love that name) is supposed to be effective for more than 200 days, so we should be safe until next spring.

Adieu, Julia

ABC News has a wonderful obituary for Julia Child.

I met her in 1980 when the Meriden Record-Journal assigned me to write about a local chef (from Wallingford, Connecticut) who'd been asked to cook lunch for Julia Child while she rehearsed for a show at Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. I arrived at the theater and was given the brush-off by a snotty young theater employee who left me to cool my heels in the darkened lobby. Suddenly a door flew open and very tall woman peered into the lobby--it could only be Julia Child. I identified myself and explained I was there not to bother her but to write about the local chef. "Marvelous!" she whooped, putting her arm around me and ushering me into the theater. She had a kitchen set up on-stage, and her husband was sitting on a stool, reading the newspaper. Child hustled me backstage to a corner where the local guy and his assistant were freneticly attempting to prepare an elaborate lunch for America's most famous chef on a small table using a couple of electric frying pans.

"Oh, it's going to be wonderful," Child assured all of us. And it was.

Here's a story about all the folks visiting the Julia Child kitchen exhibit (her actual Cambridge, Mass., kitchen) at the Smithsonian to pay tribute to her.

San Jose airport, revisited

Stuck in the San Jose airport tonight and not sure when the plane, scheduled to take off 11 minutes ago, will arrive. I'm connected to the internet using the Wayport WiFi service ($6.95 a day), and wondering why airline terminals are filled with people with laptops but pretty much devoid of electrical outlets for recharging them. I remember writing about this problem 12 years ago for my Mac user group newsletter; it's appalling there's been no noticeable improvement in the interim. I suspect that people who commute more often than I do simply carry a spare battery (about $100 for most laptops) with them.

The 5 p.m. to Phoenix is now boarding (more than 2 hours late) so that doesn't bode well for our flight.

Now they moved us to another gate....

Yet more alarms at night

When I babysit, my favorite story to read to kids is James Thurber's "The Night the Bed Fell," in which the visit of hypochondriacal cousin Briggs sets off a chain reaction of nocturnal disasters in the already volatile Thurber household.

We've had a couple nights like that here this week. Monday night someone exploded fireworks on a barge anchored in Shilshole Bay a few blocks below our house, terrifying the cat who sleeps at the head of our bed so that she pounced, snarling, across my pillow on her way out of the bedroom.

Last night I was awoken by the crash of pottery down in the living room. Sheba, the deaf white cat, spends the night racing between various first floor windows, "guarding" the house from racoons, possums, and neighborhood cats. Something on the front porch scared her badly enough that she leaped onto the fireplace mantel, displacing a Mission-style yellow vase that shattered on the hearth below. I went downstairs and found Sheba, purring in terror, under the coffee table. All the racket had awoken the kittens, who sleep in the basement, and they were meowing and scratching at the door of their room. Betaille, the cat from the head of the bed (who had been hiding under the bed in case of more fireworks) came tearing down the stairs to be let out the front door. By the time I got Betaille out and Sheba comforted, and went back to bed, the fun had just started. Alaska Airlines, which has a flight path directly over our street, seemed to be staging an invasion of Sea-Tac airport. Then the seagulls started up, and the train went by, and the newspaper delivery person, who must be earning money to afford a new muffler, roared down the street thwacking newspapers onto the porches. My husband began snoring softly, with overtones that sounded like a phone ringing far, far away, though not quite far enough.

I knew better than to complain. A bleary sleeper is no match for those who are abroad in the night. In the Thurber essay "A Succession of Maids," Mrs. Thurber wakes in the wee hours to hear Gertie, the family's housekeeper, coming in from a night on the town, crashing into chairs and tables as she makes her way to her room. "What are you doing?" Mrs. Thurber shouts inanely. "Dusting," replies Gertie.

Geek lifestyle

Popular Science writer Larry Smith spent the first 10 days of 2004 using no technology less than 50 years old. Ironically, much of his article is still about chasing technology. Only instead of checking out the latest iPod, he's visiting old technology shops buying typewriters and black and white TVs. I think he missed the point that there weren't enough geeks around for there to be a geek lifestyle in 1954. Had he been a genuine 1954 geek, he'd have been putting together a ham radio operation, or building a Heathkit stereo or television.

Smith's article holds few surprises--quite the opposite of "And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon," Paul Di Filippo's mind-blowing, and wildly amusing SF story about quasi-sentient 21st-century household objects that gang up on their owners. You can find this gem online (scifi.com), and in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 21st Annual Collection.

Life with kittens: Insect phase

The kittens have entered their insect phase: They have long legs, spring like spiders, and are definitely pests. This morning I opened the front door to let Sheba out and, like most adult cats, she paused on the threshold to ruminate about life. Meanwhile Kaylee, the smaller kitten, launched from the staircase, crossed the livingroom in three sproiings and flew right over Sheba out onto the porch. Kaylee was temporarily stunned when she landed, enabling me to grab her--which is why I'm writing this rather than crawling around in the neighbors' shrubbery cooing "here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

Zoe is still busy collecting and shredding credit card receipts. MBNA called this morning, trying to upgrade me to something, and asked if I was "the primary card user." Zoe trotted by with a receipt and I considered letting the sales rep talk with her.

I set up the Panic Mouse and let them play with that while I was working. But eventually Kaylee came in and got interested in the cursor on the screen. I decided to amuse her by playing a QuickTime movie, and Googled "kitten movie." To my surprise, the third result I clicked on was the kitten movie I'd made of Kaylee and Zoe, so Kaylee ended up watching her younger self rip apart our diningroom curtains and wrestle with Zoe. I grabbed the new digital video camera and quickly taped her pawing at her own screen image...yes, this is getting ridiculous.

Cats' past lives

On my bulletin board is a copy of the famous New Yorker cartoon showing a couple and their horrified guest as they come upon the family cat savagely attacking an upholstered chair. The resigned owner explains cheerfully "We believe that in a former life she was an editor."

I'm sitting here watching our kitten Zoe as she selects a credit card receipt from the bowl on my file cabinet and carries it off to the livingroom to be shredded. When she finishes with a receipt, the ink is invisible and the paper is perforated to limpness with thousands of tiny pinpoints of claw marks. Then she comes back and carefully selects another. I check the name of the store as she goes by to make sure it's nothing I need to save.

Her sister Kaylee cares nothing for finances, but appears to be planning an assault on the bookcase. Lightweight and powerful, Kaylee is able to go halfway up the flat surface of a door before losing momentum.

Hot

Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot.

The fan on my iMac was running unusually loudly this afternoon. I realized it, too, was hot. It's now 9 p.m. and 88 degrees in our livingroom, even with both the front and back doors open and a fan running. The upstairs, a converted attic, is unspeakable. The basement TV room is about 78.

Perfect weather to listen to a ballgame on the radio. The Mariners are leading Anaheim 3-2 in the 7th...

Perhaps it looked good on paper?

Everytime I battle my way into one of the ladiesrooms in the Southwest terminal of the San Jose airport, I expect to encounter a group of architecture students taking notes on the utter idiocy of the bathroom design. It must be a textbook example of how not to design a public restroom.

The doorless entrances are twisting, narrow corridors that put luggage-toting women entering the room on a collision-course with women who have washed their hands and trying to find the paper towel dispensers. The two towel dispensers are positioned at the far ends of the long counter lined with sinks. Anyone who has used one of the five sinks and needs a towel must back away from the sink, hands dripping, leave her luggage blocking access to the sink, and clamber over the luggage of every other woman at the counter before colliding with the incoming stream of travelers entering next to the towels. Dripping, leaping and exhausted, the handwashers look like Pacific salmon heading upstream.

The toilet stalls are obviously the work of the same clueless designer. They can accommodate a toilet, you, and your luggage—but whoever designed them did not take into account the fact that the user would need to open the door to get herself and her luggage in and out of the stall. (Perhaps they though she'd heave the bag over the top, or push the bag in and vault over it?) I admit that I take the risk and leave my luggage outside the stall door. My bag is large, and my reasoning is that anyone trying to make off with it would get stuck in the bottleneck at the towel dispensers long enough for me to flush, get out, and reclaim my bag.

The looks on the faces of women as they try to get into those stalls range from grim determination (frequent fliers, they've been there before) to horror and panic--that usually from women who must try to figure out how to squeeze in with both their luggage and their squirming kids.

The restroom entrances are dog-leg bends without any doors, so the exterior signage for "Men" and "Women" must be posted elsewhere (such as high above the doors). Since the restrooms for "Men" and "Women" are right next to each other, it can be tricky to differentiate between the two. At least that's my explanation for what I witnessed a few weeks ago. I was sitting in a Southwest waiting area, facing the restrooms, and noticed a male business traveler clearly looking for the facilities. In his hurry, he turned one entryway too soon. There were shrieks from a herd of female towel-seekers; he emerged red-faced and hurried down the concourse, headed in the direction of the International terminal where, one hopes, they have normal restrooms.

Music for the Mariners

I went to my annual Mariners' game last night—seats behind third base for a Red Sox game were my gift to my mother for her 86th birthday. (And, yes, seats in a decent section are worth $120 each.)

It was about as good as baseball gets. Both teams are having lousy seasons, characterized by weak hitting in the bottom of the order for both. But it was a tight game, with lots of runners on base and full counts. It went extra innings, displayed a total of 10 pitchers (!), and included stolen bases, errors, hit batters, brilliant line drives, sacrifices, bunts, home runs, and a grand slam. About all we were missing was a manager yelling at an umpire and stomping on his hat--but they probably don't do that on the West Coast.

Pitching ranged from excellent (Boston's Arroyo went 7 innings, allowed only 1 run, and got Ichiro to strike out looking in the 6th) to wild (Seattle's Villone and the Sox's Foulke, who each hit a batter). I'd never seen the Mariner's reliever Mike Myers pitch before--his pitch appears to be underhand, quite fast, and, with two out and a runner on second in the top of the 11th, saved the game by befuddling Johnny Damon into flying out.

Safeco Stadium is a great stadium, well lit without glare, outdoors yet sheltered, and very "retro" in its feel. The fans were for the most part well-behaved. Though I think it's rude to depart in the 7th inning just because your team is losing at that point. And, as it turned out, it was stupid as well.

Initially I was appalled by the snippets of loud rock and pop music (not organ versions, but the actual tracks) that blast over the loudspeaker after every play. I fantasized that if I were Paul Allen I'd pay to have an evening in which the only music would be the traditional ballpark organ (the Mariners have a good organist). But I had to admit that the DJ programming the tracks was pretty damn sharp. After a runner was caught between first and second, he (she?) played The Clash ("Should I Stay or Should I Go?"); as the coaches huddled to discuss yanking a beseiged pitched, it was the Dave Clark Five's "Do You Love Me?"

If you've lost touch with baseball, this season with the Mariners could be the time to get back in the groove. Safeco Field is probably one of the best fields in baseball (terrific food, including the suishi bar featuring the Ichiro Roll, and Hebrew National hot dogs). And, if you haven't seen the brilliant fielding and selfless batting of Ichiro Suzuki, you haven't seen baseball as an art form.

A nice place to follow the games is on the Major League Baseball section of the well-designed Sports Networks site, where you can see plenty of game info absolutely free: Previews, Matchups, Lineups, a wonderful narrative Log, a Wrap, and the Box Score.

For tickets, try the official Mariners site, which will lead you to TicketMaster, or, for good seats, go to the Mariners section of Stub Hub where you can pick up tickets that season ticket holders are selling. The closer you get to game day, the cheaper the ticket prices.

10 good things this weekend

1. Free lunch. I had lunch at a local breakfast/sandwich place, family owned. When I went to pay, the fellow at the register asked me how long I'd been a customer. "Twenty years," I said. He smiled and said "I thought so," and said that many years ago, when he'd been working on the kitchen weekends and learning the business from his uncle, he'd seen me jump up from breakfast and bus tables to help a swamped waitress. Now he owns the place--and he wouldn't let me pay for my lunch!

2. Free beret. Every summer a 60-something woman who lives a few blocks from us has a huge yard sale. It's very cool, and a little scary, because it's obvious she has a house just overflowing with items: Vases, boxes, candleholders, baskets, rugs, kitchen items, etc. The sale is on tables all over her backyard, amidst a garden with beautiful flowers, shrubs, and vines. At the back of the garden is a shabby chic garden shed with strange metal items hung all over the exterior and all sorts of treasures inside. It's clear she'll never get rid of it all, no matter how many yard sales she has. I bought a hooked rug, and then noticed a purple sequined beret. She went in the garden shed, got me a mirror, and we agreed the beret was just right. And she insisted on giving it to me! I felt like I was being officially initiated into the cult of Crazy Old Bats. It could be worse. I could become one of those uptight old gals with astroturf on the porch stair, black wrought-iron railings, plastic ducks on the lawn, and plastic pots with bright red geraniums and bright purple lobelia.

3. Kittens. The kittens, now named Zoe and Kaylee (after the characters in Firefly) are 11 weeks old. They have the sweetest dispositions, and want to curl up in your lap and get petted.

4. Salad. I bought two enormous bags of gourmet salad greens at the Cash and Carry for a party we had Thursday. Now we are living on leftover greens. They're so delicious you don't even need to put salad dressing on them--just a few drops of vinegar.

5. Quail eggs. Ken brought us a half-dozen quail eggs Thursday. I can hardly wait to make French toast.

6. Karam's garlic sauce. While planning a huge salad for a potluck this evening (those salad greens!) I remembered Karam's garlic sauce. Fortunately, the QFC still carries it. Outrageous stuff. I used it, tempered half and half with vinaigrette, as the dressing for a Greek salad.

7. The storage locker. Every time I visit our storage locker and imagine all the stuff in there (30 boxes of Stanglware, a trunk full of vintage comics, the original boxes for all our computer gear, a dozen framed paintings we don't want on our walls, and extra pieces of our vinyl flooring, marmoleum, and Corian) cluttering up the garage instead, I want to get down on my knees and bless the person who invented storage lockers.

8. My husband. Who let me weasel out of going to the potluck this evening.

9. SF collections. So I can read without getting so wrapped up in a full-length novel that I stay up until 2 a.m.

10. Sheba, our deaf white cat. She has stopped attacking the next door neighbors' cat. The means we can now let her outside without hearing the bloodcurdling screams of her victim--and the victim's owners.

Need DayDoubler for OS X

A useful Mac utility called DayDoubler was mentioned in the MailBITS section of a 1994 issue of TidBITS. Does anyone know if it's now available for Mac OS X? I didn't try it at the time, but I think I could use it now. Here's the description of the original version:

DayDoubler is a new product from Connectrix that gives you those extra hours in each day that we've been asking for. Using sophisticated time mapping and compression techniques to double the number of hours in the day, DayDoubler gives you access to 48 hours each day. With the shareware hack MaxDay, you can easily stretch your day to 60, 72, or even 96 hours! Connectrix warns that at the higher numbers DayDoubler becomes less stable and that you run the risk of a temporal crash in which everything from the beginning of time to the present would come crashing down around you, sucking you into a black hole.

Should this occur, be sure to reboot with the shift key down.

I tried contacting the fellow who reviewed the product for TidBITS, but mail to his halycon.com email address bounced.

Turquoise moth (test)

Every night there is a small bright turquoise moth in our bathroom, visiting our cat, who seems very excited to see it. I searched the internet for information on turquoise moths, but all the information was about mottled, pale turquoise moths. This one is plain, bright, turquoise--verging on a blue-green.

Any ideas?

The revolt of the machines

I'll bet there's a "law" of some sort describing the tendency of household appliances to malfunction in groups of threes. I've always referred to it as "the revolt of the machines," and it seems to happen every couple of years. It's happening right now: First it was the coffeemaker (flooding); then the toaster oven (powering on and off at will); and finally the ancient fax machine (choking when I tried to fax a multi-page fax).

It was only after replacing the fax machine and discovering the problem was not with the old machine but with my employer's fancy fax server (it was accepting the first page of our faxed expense reports, then cutting off the connection) that I came to the chilling realization: Somewhere in the house, there is a third appliance getting ready to fail.

While ironing in the laundry room tonight I heard a tell-tale screeching from the washing machine. It sounds as though a belt or some such is in dire distress. Oh no! That machine has got to hold out until the gas company runs a line to our house in the next month or so and I can get a washer/dryer set with a gas dryer.

Maybe the cheap clock radio would like to sacrifice itself?

Why Senn stinks (hint: look at her record)

Attorney General candidate Deborah Senn says all the right things about being the consumer's friend in government, but try turning down her blaring audio and taking a look at her record as state Insurance Commissioner. She managed to chase most major health insurance providers right out of the state of Washington and virtually eliminated any competition among the few surviving institutions. For consumers in many parts of the state, there isn't even a choice of healthcare insurance plans any more--it's one-size-fits-all, and the fit is tight and skimpy.

Seattle Times columnist Bruce Ramsey does a great job of analyzing Senn's modus operandi on today's editorial page. I urge you to read it if you plan to vote for an Attorney General candidate this year.

Professional Cats

Isn't it time you put your cat to work?

Hot...on the trail

My mother brought me the July 5 issue of The Nation because she thought I'd like the cover (that's an essay in itself--my mom's criteria for judging things) and I started to leaf through it. "Sex and the Stepford Wife" by Katha Pollitt is a real treat. Pollitt is up there with Calvin Trillin as one of the most stylish polemicists around, and this essay is an absolute gem. Her light touch softens you up, as she describes the shop windows in upper West Side Manhattan ("where the standard femine garb has for decades been Hot Sicilian Widow") sudden being filled with "frilly getups straight out of a Stepford shoppe."

Then Pollitt goes in for the kill. "Women have learned to describe evereything they do, no matter how apparently conformist, submissive, self-destructive or humiliating, as a personal choice that cannot be criticized because person choice is what feminism is all about. Women have become incredibly clever at explaining these choices in ways that barely mention social pressures or male desires."

While I agree with her, I also feel strongly that she's seeing things through an upper West Side, or at least an East Coast, lens. Out here in Seattle there is no Hot Sicilian Widow look on the hiking trails or at the home improvement stores—but there are plenty of women, and far more than you'd have found there 40 years ago.

BTW, have you checked out the game all the Democrats are playing? Sign up (free) to play Republican Survivor.

Getting (rid of) your goat

My friend Barclay sent me this excerpt from a recent posting on eBay:

Featured by my auction house is a ART DECO World War II STANGL Goat Ram Unicorn looking vase . THe history of this vase is that it was in my grandmother's house since the War, and my father says he always remembered seeing it around. Now this is what happened. When my father married my mother, the mother in law, Evelyn, gave the green goat to my mother, Hilda. But Hilda always hated the green goat but knew since it was her husband's mother that she was stuck with it because every time Evvie came to visit she was asking where she was placing the green goat unicorn in the house. So Hilda always had to have it displayed in some fashion around the house, and it served as like a migratory goat all over my mother's house since she could not throw it out.

So you are asking why is it on Ebay?

Well, now that Evvie is up in New Jersey, and now she is in an assisted living facility, my mother is now free and in the clear to get rid of the goat. She is cleaning out the house of all the stuff she could not stand but which she did not want to offend Evvie. WE ARE IN THE CLEAR!!! EVVIE WON'T FIND OUT!!

I think most of us have a green goat or two of our own around the place. Mine is a rooster. Specifically, a Restoration Hardware silverplated rooster cocktail shaker someone gave us as a wedding gift. A few years ago, I was rummaging around in the basement, preparing for a yard sale, and found the cocktail shaker, still in its original box. "Do we want to keep this?" I asked Brady. "What is it?" he asked. I explained, and for a moment we both tried our damndest to imagine that Bertie Wooster might come over for dinner and we'd need it to make martinis. No luck.

The silver rooster cocktail shaker was sitting happily on the table at the yard sale when my sister-in-law's car pulled up. A few moments later I noticed she had picked up the shaker and was waving it around under my husband's nose. Since there was no gin it it, and it didn't seem, from her tone, that she was planning to buy it, I figured we were about to find out where the rooster had come from.

Rats! Back it went into the house, and into our little china cabinet--where it has yet to be used for anything. Though my current plans are to migrate it gradually back down into the basement.

Waring Ice Cream Parlor instructions

Here, by popular request, are the slightly edited and abridged basic operating instructions for the circa 1972 Waring Ice Cream Parlor ice cream machine. The Mysterious Traveler urges anyone in need of the original instructions with the full set of recipes to contact Waring.

INSTRUCTIONS

What you need:

Four trays of ordinary ice cubes
One 26-oz box of ordinary table salt
Two cups of cold water
Ice cream mix of your choice

What to do:

Place the ice bucket onto the motor and base assembly and rotate the bucket until it drops down over the raised stop lugs on the base and sits firmly.

Pour ice cream mix into the cream can. For most desserts, the liquid level will be below the "fill line" stamped into the can wall. This is so the mixture will have room to expand. Some desserts, like sherbets, expand less so the liquid mix can be above the fill line when you start.

Stir mixture, then insert the dasher into the cream can so that the rounded ball end of the dasher's shaft sits in the matching indentation in the cream can.

Place the transparent plastic can lid over the top end of the dasher and snap it into place over the rim of the cream can.

Place the loaded cream can into the ice bucket, making sure that the drive socket indentation in the bottom of the can engages with the drive shaft protruding from the bottom of the ice bucket.

Sit the socket located on the underside of the support arm onto the hexagonal tip of the dasher shaft that extends up through the can lid. Grasp both ends of the support arm and rotate it until the ends drop into the cutouts in the rim of the ice bucket. Press down lightly on the ends of the support arm and rotate the support arm\ counterclockwise until it is securely locked into place.

Processing:

You are ready to fill the space between the cream can and the ice bucket with ice, salt and water, which will lower the temperature of the contents of the cream can.

Start by plugging in the Ice Cream Parlor. The cream can and cover should now rotate counterclockwise while the dasher remains stationary.

With the motor running, pour 1 cup of cold water into the ice bucket. Follow with a layer of ice cubes, one cube deep. The sprinkle 6 level tablespoons of salt evenly over the layer of ice cubes. Continue layering ice cubes and salt, layer by layer, until the ice bucket is full. Add any remaining salt, and then slowly pour the remaining cup of water evening over the top layer.

The processing time and volume of the finished product will be influenced by factors including:
1. Initial temperature of the mix being processed
2. Variations in the composition of mix ingredients
3. Amount of salt, ice and water used

Processing time will take between 20 and 50 minutes. As the mixture freezes, thickens, and expands, the motor will begin the labor and slow down. It will come to a near or complete stall and that indicates that processing is completed. The Waring Ice Cream Parlor should never be allowed to operate more than 50 minutes before unplugging.

When processing is completed, but sure to unplug the Ice Cream Parlor. Remove the ice bucket from the base assembly. Remove the support arm from the ice bucket by pushing down gently on both ends, rotating clockwise and lifting off. Wipe any ice or salt from the can lid, and lift the can out of the ice bucket with lid and dasher in place.

The processed mixture can be served immediately, or put in the freezer to harden. Use a wooden spoon or plastic or rubber spatula to remove the mixture. If you wish to harden the mixture, stir it to blend hard and soft portions. You can harden it in the cream can, or spoon it into plastic freezer containers, allowing 1/2 inch for expansion. Pack mixture down to exclude air pockets, and place waxed paper or plastic wrap over the mouth of the container before putting a lid in place.

Place covered can or containers in the freezer for 1-2 hours. It may be necessary to temporarily lower the freezer temperature to get the mixture to set firmly.

Tips:
More salt (up to a full box) = faster processing and coarser texture
Less salt (down to 1/2 box) = slower processing and finer texture

Notes:
Be sure to wash the cream can, dasher, can lid and support arm in hot soapy water before and after each use. Parts are not dishwasher safe.

Mysterious Traveler on hiatus through June 18

In memory of my dad.

Once upon a time, there were three aliens...

When I was a little girl growing up in the D.C. suburbs, my dad and his friends would sit around late at night in the summer, drinking martinis and gin and tonics, and talking about their work.

One of my dad's friends, George Hoover, was studying UFOs. He'd given my dad a copy of a report called "The Blue Book," which I found in a box of files and enjoyed reading. The Blue Book was a photocopy of a book about UFOs that had been annotated. Apparently George and other folks suspected that the annotations were written by aliens commenting on the validity of various passages in the book.

It made for fascinating reading! One evening George, who was also investigating ESP and psychic phenomena, told my dad that the next time he visited us, he was going to walk right through the wall of our new family room. "I wouldn't do that," my dad said. "That's where I put all the wiring."

My folks have moved several times since Virginia, and I suspect my mom dumped the Blue Book somewhere along the way. This page on About.com has a summary of the Blue Book project that is very much the way I remember hearing about it during the 1960s.

Which type of blogger are you?

My hat is off to kpaul at Kuro5hin who classifies the types of bloggers. Read it and blush!

Fear

Someone mentions a book you should read, and a few hours later someone else, from quite a different area of your life, recommends the same book. That happened to me last week. So I ordered the book, Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us from Violence, from Amazon, and it arrived yesterday. I'm halfway through it, and impressed--though, like many self-help guides, it's one point followed by numerous anecdotal illustrations. The author, Gavin De Becker, has a point that's a good one (that we need to listen to our fear) and his anecdotes are full of the unexpected, such as why ignoring threats is often the best way to handle them and why it's important to disengage from a threatening situation at the first opportunity. De Becker is not a journalist, but a security specialist, so he brings actual depth to the book.

Though many of the Amazon reviewers were so wrapped up in their own political agendas they could barely spare a few words for the book itself, rest assured this is not one of those "men are evil stalkers, women are saintly victims" screeds. In fact, the best anecdote in the book was the story of how a travel agency owner (male) was approached by a prospective business partner (male) who turned out to be a pest, a stalker, and a filer of groundless lawsuits.

Why were people recommending this book to me? The first recommendation came because of my puzzlement over how to disengage from a casual friend who had tried to make me feel responsible for helping her rehabilitate her screwed-up husband; the second recommendation was from the Seattle police officer who met with our local neighborhood group and was fielding questions about how to protect young children from predators.

In the past (my undergraduate degree is in psychology) I'd read quite a bit about why some people develop into sociopaths. But since I never pursued a career in therapy, I find I'm now less interested in understanding sociopaths than I am in avoiding them. I wish I'd had the avoidance skills 30 years ago, and could have back all the time I wasted trying to deal with these creeps politely.

If you find yourself dealing with a "friend" or colleague who "feels wrong" (you feel sick when they call, you feel like your energy is sucked out of you when you talk with them, you find yourself somehow obligated to do things for them), the De Becker book is a must-read.

Peach ice cream and why I blog

As you've noticed, I'm not running a discussion forum here. (Having belonged to a BBS for many years, and lived through my share of flamethrowing, just the reading phrase "discussion forum" can evoke the gag response.)

I guess I'm in it for one-on-one exchanges, trading information and inspiration on the broadest electronic market possible, via Google. Tonight I logged into my gmail account and found just the sort of message I live for: A woman in Central Texas was writing because she wants to make ice cream with the local seasonal peaches, but can't find the instruction book for her circa 1970 Waring Ice Cream Parlor. I'd blogged about using my vintage Waring, she'd Googled and found the blog entry. I dashed downstairs to my pantry, got the booklet, and typed out the key instructions. Somewhere in Central Texas, someone will be enjoying peach ice cream! And, come to think of it, maybe I'll whip up a batch this weekend, too. The peaches they had at the Ballard Market a couple weeks ago--not freestones, but the clingy, messy kind--had spectacular flavor for desserts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can find the full Waring Ice Cream Parlor instructions here.

Little Stripe and Big Stripe

Meet the Stripe Sisters.

Site feed

I've added a site feed link (see list at right). Please send mail to Mysterious Traveler to let me know if you have success (or problems) using the site feed.

Pacific Northwest Blogs

I've joined a blog ring called Pacific Northwest Blogs. Wonder if there are blog rings for cat owners, gardeners, etc.?

So, what happened?

Here's the follow up to the "Breaking up" post a few folks have commented on:

As might have been anticipated (or recommended) by anyone reading the "Breaking up" post, I had a half-hour meeting with a good therapist before getting in touch with the soon-to-be-former friend. He had some good suggestions, observations and predictions. Among the predictions: That she might contact people, asking them not to tell me she'd been in touch, and give a self-serving and misleading account of our conversation.

Bingo.

The break up conversation itself was very low-key. I told her that the past year of unfolding revelations about her husband's repeated dishonesty in their marriage had made me so uncomfortable around him, and her, that I didn't want to continue the friendship. She said "fine, have a nice life," and "bye." I was greatly relieved, until a few hours later someone came to me asking if it was true that I'd broken up the friendship because her husband was having job difficulties. Of course, she'd asked the person not to say that she'd contacted them with this information.

Huh?

We discussed how to set her straight for about two minutes, and then it slowly dawned that neither of us had any obligation to get back to her about it.

It was a lovely, lovely feeling.

I've probably used up a large chunk of my allotted karma for June, but it feels like a good investment.

Breaking up

"You're going to break up with her?" my husband said in surprise.

I'm in the odd and uncomfortable position of disentangling myself from a friendship. It was probably always a friendship more enthusiastic on her side than mine, but I had a great time doing things with her. She likes museums, nice restaurants, and exploring new cities, is an energetic and resourceful traveler, and has enough money to stay at charming bed and breakfasts. Taken two or three days at a time, her tics--the little moues of displeasure if service was not sufficiently deferential, the condescending manner towards people she perceived to be of a lesser social position--were easy to overlook. She was extremely generous with gifts, but I assumed that was part of her marketing profession--the instinct to make people feel in her debt so they'd do what she wanted. It made me feel uncomfortable, but only mildly so.

So, what happened to upset this balance?

She got married to a loser. In the five years that I've known her, she'd dated a number of men, all of whom she found in some way wanting. Then, two years ago, she disappeared off the radar for a few month and reappeared, engaged to one of the biggest zeros I've ever met. Charmless, neurotic, hypochondriacal and boring (I'd once sat through at two-hour dinner with this man during which he'd never once smiled and had contributed fewer than 10 words), he nevertheless had the one characteristic missing from all her previous relationships: He worshipped her, and would do anything she wanted.

Despite her extensive efforts, their wedding was flat and charmless. Her parents and friends were clearly not impressed by him. He didn't seem to have any friends. His family seemed pleasant but oddly nervous, perhaps unable to believe that he was getting married to such an attractive woman.

I went through the wedding festivities sort of numb. Several months earlier, I'd considered telling her he didn't seem right to me, but if you tell someone that and they then go ahead and marry the person, it's rather uncomfortable.

Shortly after the wedding, she found out he'd lied to her in oh-so-many ways. Turns out he didn't have any money, any vacation property, or any retirement savings--but he did have a huge pile of debts and an abysmal credit history. He'd been employed steadily for more than a decade, so the mystery, which has never been solved, is what he spent all his earnings on.

As all this unfolded, I was the recipient of panicked phone calls, and gave her what I thought was good advice about the need to see therapists, financial planners, even private investigators. But the months have gone by, and the upshot of it is that she's decided to treat him like a helpless invalid and enlist her friends to entertain him, comfort him, help him get a new job (he hates the current one) and listen to her talk about what a sweet man he is.

Stop this train; I want to join the stampede getting off.

If this were some temporary phase--like a family illness, or a divorce--that she were going through, I like to think that I'd weather the unpleasantness and stick by her. But this is clearly a permanent way of life she has chosen. Some of her friends have already opted out, and she's becoming increasingly clingy to those of us who are left.

Of course, I've tried hinting that I'm busy with my own life, but she's not the type who takes (or even recognizes) a hint. She keeps calling on a near-daily basis and proposing get-togethers. How can I get up the courage to tell her I have no interest in helping her rehabilitate the leech she married, that he makes my skin crawl, and that she's become an incredible bore since she got into this mess? I think of all the wonderful friends I don't have time to call or get together with because I'm busy fending off her calls and worming out of her invitations, and it makes me want to scream.

Stabbed by a Label?

Some months ago, National Public Radio's Morning Edition show did a segment on the changes in clothing labels ("100% rayon--do not machine wash" etc.). A light went on for me as they described how manufacturers can, and do, save 1 or 2 cents on the manufacturing cost of each individual garment by having the sewn-in labels printed on stiff material with sharp edges instead of on soft, silky material. Listening to the show, I realized I had recently stopped ordering clothes from one of my favorite mail-order houses because I associated wearing their shirts with a literal pain in the neck. Since none of my clothes are designer garments with resale potential (!), I got out the embroidery scissors and removed the labels from t-shirts, nightgowns, blouses--anything likely to be next to my skin. New clothes get a one-month grace period (in case they might have to be returned for a manufacturing defect) and then--snip! What an improvement, plus no one is every sidling over to tuck in a label at the back of my neck.

Removing stiff tags does a lot to improve towels, too. If you think you might someday want to see the style number or color code of the towels, leave one tag attached on the bathmat or a wash cloth.

Your kitty needs his/her 15 minutes of fame

Get out the Digital Elph and start clicking so your feline can be part of the Infinite Cat Project.

"Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty..."

Too early Thursday morning

This morning I went to a 7:30 donor's breakfast for the Puget Sound Revels, held at St. Mark's Cathedral on Capitol Hill. Getting there involved a short, unpleasant look at the I-5 bridge traffic, which I ducked under via Roosevelt, reminding myself to be very, very grateful that my office is in my house.

Not being a morning person, I was pretty startled to have a chorus of folks who obviously are early risers belting out English folksongs while I nibbled on a scone. The company was good, though, and so were the bumperstickers I saw in the St. Mark's lot on my way out, including "Bush on Mars in 2004." (For more such statements, see this site.)

Such humor, from a few months back, seems so quaint. Today the upcoming election is looking less like a political contest than a grotesque encounter between a traditional politician (Kerry) and a slime-covered creature from the black lagoon. How do you even began to get a strategic grip on something as putrid as the Bush presidency? No wonder Kerry acts rather puzzled.

I confess I'm waiting for the political cartoonist (David Horsey, perhaps?) who dares portray a pileup of members of the current administration, hooded and naked, with a couple of Iraqi citizens standing grinning behind them. It would be no less revolting than hearing Rumsfeld boast to reporters about his way of dealing with the public outrage about prisoner abuse ("I've stopped reading the papers," he chortled).

New England Clam Chowder Recipe for the West Coast

Tonight's scheduled rant about people who spontaneously call me during the workday to pointlessly yak and yak and yak (forcing me to work into the evening to make up the lost work time their interruptions cost me) is postponed.

Instead, here's a great clam chowder recipe, which includes info from the The New England Clam Shack Cookbook and Mark Bittner's How to Cook Everything (both available on Amazon) as well as from the Shady Rest West kitchen.

New England Clam Chowder for the West Coast

3 cups of cooked, frozen, West Coast clams (little clams) from a good seafood shop
3 cups water
1/4 to 1/2 lb. bacon, finely diced
2 Tbs butter
3/4 cup finely chopped sweet onion
1 to 3 Tbsp. flour
2 ribs celery
2 8 oz. bottles of Snow's clam juice
4 to 6 cups of diced potatoes (thin-skinned, waxy types hold up best)
1/4 tsp. finely ground thyme
2 tsp. salt
several grinds of pepper
1 cup half and half
1 cup light cream


Thaw frozen clams by heating gently in a soup pot with three cups of water and two tsp. salt. After clams thaw, let them sit in the broth.
In a large pot, sautee the diced bacon on very low heat until the fat is golden. If the bacon is fairly lean, add up to 2 Tbsp. of butter before adding the chopped onion. Then sautee onion gently until soft.
Add the flour to the bacon and onion and mix thoroughly, quickly adding the two bottles of clam juice and bringing it all back to a simmer as the flour thickens the broth. Drain off the clam broth from the clams (it will have reduced to about 2 cups) and add that as well. After the thickness is stabilized (this is not a particularly thick chowder) add the thyme, whole celery ribs, and diced potatoes and cook on low for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are just done.
Remove the celery ribs and add the clams, half and half, and cream. Add more salt, if needed, and several grinds of pepper.

At this point, you can either cook for another five minutes and serve, or you can can cool it slowly and then refrigerate. If you refrigerate, serve in the next 48 hours, adding whole milk or more half and half if the chowder seems too thick.

You can add butter just before serving, if you like. Accompany with saltines or, if you can get them, oyster crackers.

Warning label: This recipe is not kosher, it is not vegetarian, it contains carbohydrates, and it contains saturated fat.