To Make You Laugh

First I went here:

http://www.weirduniverse.net/

to watch this skunk video but had more fun looking at shoes I'd never wear.

My Town Monday: How to Eat Chili Dogs

Today, I'm writing about My Town of Origin. I grew up in Cincinnati where chili is so well loved, there are restaurants where they serve only Cincinnati Chili. If you've never had it, well, you've not yet lived. It is rumored that the recipe arrived with Greek immigrants and is as much a secret as that for Coca-Cola. Still, families try to approximate the seasonings, to make it at home, especially if you no longer live in Cincinnati and can't run to Skyline or Gold Star for the real thing.

It can be eaten several ways: as a bowl of chili, over spaghetti topped with cheese and/or onions, or on top of a hot dog for a chili dog with cheese. Not having grown up with Skyline Chili, my poor culturally deprived family tries to eat chili dogs straight on. That is, they hold the dog perpendicular to their mouth, causing them to get cheese on or up their noses as demonstrated below by Lauren.

Even though they have cheese on their faces, they seem to ridicule my obviously well-honed technique for bringing the chili dog in obliquely to the corner of my mouth, leaving my nostrils free of cheese. Here, Lauren tries to approximate my technique, but obviously, I have some more coaching to do. Too much head turning in the photo below. Obviously going to get cheese up the old schnoz.



You'd think I'd get a little respect, having eaten these all my life, but nooooo, it's just too much fun to poke at the old lady.

Other interesting (or not) facts:

The restaurants are called "chili parlors".
My dad once lived over one. Said the smell of chili cooking in the morning was nauseating.
Chili spaghetti is served with oyster crackers. I remember in high school that "wise guys" would sit down and ask for just an order of crackers (or cheese) to fluster the waitress. Those kind of guys annoyed me. Grow up, already, I thought.
You can now get Skyline Chili frozen and in a can.
Cincinnati Chili contains cinnamon.

Visit my town by making chili without ever leaving your home!

Part of My Menagerie

The Little Chickie that hatched the other day has been soundly rejected by its mommy, despite repeated attempts to reconcile them. Many chickies are raised without mamma and she is doing fine.

At the same time, we have a foster kitten from Animal Control. It, too, lost its mommy early. She was the only one (of four) that survived being dumped. We are watching to see that she lives before adoption (or until we can't bear to part with her).

They are too young to know that one eats the other, normally. As you can see, the two Japanese Chin dogs (I had to put "dogs" 'cause they're so weird looking you might mistake them for hairy rats) love licking both babies. Paris, (on left) might mistake them for squeaky toys and can't be trusted.

Other notes:
Sadly, Clay (rooster) is not going to make it. Though he rallied at first with the vitamin, I think it was too late to reverse the paralysis which now seems to be in his lungs. On the other hand, chicken management has become easier with all the hens in one coop.

It is cold here - high of 45 F. I don't like cold.

Homeschooling Chez Moi

Science Friday: New Chicks

I'm always amused at city folk that ask me if we have to have a rooster to get eggs from the hens. (The answer is "no".) We've recently hatched yet another egg producing a yellow chickie (see left). This was an egg taken from the new red hens and due to its color, is likely sired by their half or full brother, Clay. It seems to be a trend - inbred chickens - as we considered with the parentage of a chicken hatched a month ago, he should likely be named Oedipus (rooster Lester with his mom, Ara). I suppose breeding management should become a school topic here. (I am waiting for some wise comment about inbreeding and Kentucky. Go ahead. I was born in Ohio.)

After the chickie was hatched, Raven (the surrogate mom) continued to sit on a few eggs, one of which hatched today. She promptly began pecking at it, and though we might think she was just trying to get it on its feet, she looked decidedly not nurturing. The chick is now under a heat lamp. Generally, all eggs hatch together because the chicken will start incubating them all at the same time. A well-meaning child placed said egg under the chicken two weeks into her incubation of the first egg, putting its hatching two weeks off from its sibling. The newest chick appears to be part Lester, part "Hawk" (William's name for one of the new red hens) and therefore, isn't inbred.

Speaking of Lester, I promised him to someone else just as Clay, the nicer, younger rooster developed paralysis. So Lester is gone, and Clay looses more control of his body daily. I finally called a large animal vet for advice. He suggested Riboflavin (B1 or B2) deficiency and that I freerange (do that) and feed good poultry feed (also check). So, I got him some Vitamin B drops from the pharmacy in a desperate attempt to save him. It is not likely to work. So for the first time in a long time, no rooster in my yard calls to tell the sun to get up. No worry. Oedipus is either a rooster or very, very disturbed. Or both.

The hatching was timely, as we just watched Magic Schoolbus "Cracks a Yolk".

The Impact of Technology on Music: How Has the Quality of Music Changed?

Guest Blog by Lauren
Lauren wrote this essay for a class she is taking. I thought it was interesting and wanted to share with you.
Copyright 2008 Lauren and LifetimeLearning

From the early twentieth century, music was listened to by many through the use of the record player. Through advancements in technology, the cassette tape was made available, then the Compact Disk. (CD) The switch was made to mostly digital recordings on cassette tapes and CD’s for convenience, but some of the quality of sound that record players have because of analog recording has been all but lost. Increasingly, the people of our modern-day culture have settled for less quality for the convenience of the newest gadgets and gizmos, though there still remain a few audiophiles that hold on to and strive for the perfect sound. The quality of music has also been impacted by wide availability of music on the Internet.

Analog vs. Digital. What’s the difference? In analog recording, the actual sound waves are carved into a surface of a vinyl record. Sound is produced when the needle of the record player vibrates, and the sound is amplified through speakers. So the sound coming from the record player is directly related to the original sound when it was recorded and every sound is recorded in its entirety. In digital recording, the sound is converted into a sequence of numbers. The numbers can be played back through a CD player, or another form of player that “reads” the numbers and sound is produced. One example to help understand the difference between analog and digital is the comparison of a film camera vs. a digital camera. In a film camera, the film is the exact light representation, what your eyes see, whereas a digital camera is a digital interpretation of the light sensor, converted into numbers just like making a CD.

Quality. What about it? When you think of the “quality” of music in general, there are two different ways to think of it. One is quality of sound, either by the way of recording (analog or digital) or hearing a certain range of notes with no scratching or static within it. The other way of thinking is the quality of musicianship of the actual musician performing the piece. Now, everyone has their own opinions about what is “good, quality music,” but if you were given the choice of listening to a recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra or a recording by some town band performing the same piece, which would you choose? This question could be unfair in a way, because in some cases it would depend on the music education of the individual answering to be able to answer such a question. But regardless of the music education an individual has had, most people can pick out what sounds good, and what doesn’t, if given the opportunity to listen to the recordings side by side. Yet, in our modern day, most people have grown accustomed to the way things sound. For instance, I own an iPod, and I thought iPods had excellent sound quality. But in comparison to an analog recording, it doesn’t hold a candle to the sound produced by a record.

How has Technology Changed the Quality of Music? It used to be that everyone listened to music from a record player. But we traded in better sound for convenience for both recording and listening. There are certainly benefits of recording digitally, which music producer Robert DiFazio explained in an interview. Basically, when you’re recording digitally, it’s possible to fix any little mistake. You could pick any place in the entire piece and move things around and make them sound just “right.” Or if the artist messes up, he wouldn’t play the whole piece over again, you could just record over that spot. But is that necessarily good? DiFazio said, “…one can make the argument that digital recordings have lowered the artists’ expectations of themselves.”
This argument grows closer to the truth each day. If music artists record their music digitally, and do start to have lower expectations of themselves, will the ability for these artists to reproduce live music be something of the past?
The comparison to recording analogically is a little different. DiFazio spoke of what it’s like when recording by analog:

“When the clients know that the tape is running, they are on point. They are not expecting me to perform a miracle as soon as I hit stop. ‘Oh I was off key,’ ‘Oh I was out of time,’ ‘Oh can you move this snare drum around.’ No! This is a tape machine, this is no different than what you have in your cassette player. You can’t just cut those individual sounds out and move them around. You have to cut out the whole thing. If you all screw up, then maybe I can fix it. But if just you screw up, then maybe this isn’t a keeper.”

It’s easy to see that recording digitally has changed the way music is produced and the way it is heard. In an interview with Carl Beatty, he explained the difference of sound between digital and analog:
“…what digital doesn’t do well with is low level signals. In terms of ambience and all the things that make the reverb (reverberation) kind of incoherent and out of phase, that’s all low level detail. So if digital is not handling that, or doesn’t know how to handle that stuff, you can hear it in analog.”

He also explained that the average person just doesn’t care if the sound quality is not that great:

“I think it’s personal. I used to say to my students, ‘people don’t care what it sounds like, the average audience doesn’t care what it sounds like. It’s been proven…”

So how did we slide down this slippery slope of poorer quality music? Between the growing availability of music and the advancements in technology, which continue to provide convenience over quality, we have come to where we are today. Yes, the quality of music has changed. But the question remains, will the sound we have now remain the same? Or will technology continue to advance and recover the quality of sound we once had in analog recordings?




References:

Robert DiFazio. December 2007. How Analog and Digital Recording Techniques Influence the Recording Process. http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/how+analog+and+digital+recording+techniques+influence+the+recording+process

Carl Beatty. October 2007. Can Digital Recordings Sound as Good as Analog?
http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/can+digital+recordings+sound+as+good+as+analog

Wordless Wednesday - Gotta Light??

Jack Nicholson as a Pumpkin

Temptation by Anna

This oil painting of William was created by Anna from a photograph taken by In the Good Shepherd's Care. The photo of the oil painting doesn't do it justice, but you can get an idea of her wonderful talent and hard work. I continued to be amazed by my children.

Textbook French

Anna is learning about the weather and temperatures in French. Trying to help her lessons and conversation, I am relearning French as I am able. We were discussing yesterday that the French say, "J'ai chaud", literally "I have hot" to say that the person's body is experiencing rising temperatures. To say "Je suis chaud" or literally, "I am hot" means to express one is gay. I asked how she knew that it meant that and she said it was right there in the textbook. I took four or five years of high school and college French, and they never told me that. I guess times have indeed changed.

William's pumpkin

Anna working on her pumpkin

Lauren's pumpkin

Science Friday - Slugs

Chicken Notes

Lester is PU: Pending Pick Up. I had one claimant on Freecycle that said she'd take him. I didn't mention his full name (Lester the Molester). He's quite aggressively, ah, making sure his gene pool gets passed on. The hens are getting edgy and have a crazy, glazed look in their eyes. The two older ones sometimes stay in the coop all day, hiding and have said they are too old for that uh, carrying-on.

If Lester leaves, that means I can move the three large young chickens into the coop with two old ones, quit climbing under the deck to retrieve eggs (as they will lay in the coop box), and the bantams with chicks can go in the triangular chicken tractor. Of course, I'll have to give up my reputation in the neighborhood as the crazy woman who has chickens in her house. Well, the bantams come in at night, having no coop of their own, and I put them in dog crates, which aren't 'coon proof.

Raven, the one that has been sitting FOREVER, even trying to steal her sister's eggs, finally hatched a very tiny yellow chick. Mother and chick are doing fine. Raven is now potty trained. Still sitting on two remaining eggs, she is carried outside once a day where she stands tall, gives the Rebel yell, flaps around the yard squawking, and then poops like a Clydsdale. She follows me about the yard, expecting me to protect her from the big hens that try to attack her. She dutifully returns to her eggs and cage after her walk and catching a few bugs. I suppose I'm the only person I know with a potty trained hen.

Clay, the rooster (photo right) hides under the deck all day if Lester escapes his fencing, like he did today. Somehow, Clay has injured one wing, which hangs down low. I've examined the bones and nothing is broken. Perhaps it is a ruse to keep Lester at bay. He will be happy to see Lester go. And when he does, I'll have everyone in a coop without having to build a new one before winter.

That's Embarrassing!

Don't get me wrong: cell phones are wonderful inventions. Sometimes, I wonder what we did without them. But just because you can talk from anyplace, doesn't mean you should.

Comments on your worst cell phone encounters?

At the Kentucky Railway Museum

My Town Monday - Flavor

Once upon a Main Street, there was a hardware store. Not just any hardware store, mind you, but a magic time machine hardware store. The door stood propped open in the summer months, as they had no air conditioning. Many feet over the years had worn an indentation in the wooden aisle way. As you walked past the gum ball machine to the back, you passed rows of disorganized gadgets of all sorts. Mid-store, a counter divided the shop in two, and behind the counter stood people who knew where every nail and screw was hoarded in shelving behind the counter.

Instead of buying 1000 nails in a box, you could stand at the counter and describe your task, and that you needed only 10 nails to complete it. Knowing exactly what you needed, the sales clerk would disappear and return with 10 nails which were dumped into a paper sack. People stood around chatting. A bulletin board was littered with the business cards of local tradesmen.It was small town USA.

During my tenure here in this town, the owners, aged and ready to retire, sold the shop reluctantly, and promised to try to sell to new owners that would keep the shop open like it was. The new owners tried, combining the hardware business with their real love, computer services. With competition from StuffMart and large you-do-it stores that opened within a fifteen minute drive, the hardware store couldn't survive. They expanded the computer and laser services business, closed the hardware business, and a little bit of history died.

I know I'm not the only one who mourns this bit of history that has passed. Recently, dh and I went to dinner with new neighbors who asked why we settled in "My Town". Dh began, "Well, there used to be this hardware store on Main Street..."

You Really Know You're a Hayseed When....

Friday, my girls and I ventured to the city to listen to a presentation specifically geared to homeschoolers by a university . Except for the lack of coffee which I thought would show better hospitality, we were well treated and enjoyed the informative presentation in a very nice auditorium. As I sat listening, the air conditioning kicked on and the air circulated a bit. Sniff, sniff. Someone had a problem. I did the little look around to see if anyone was squirming in their seat or looking embarrassed. No, no reaction. Maybe it was nothing.

A little while later, I was again greeted with a less than pleasant aroma. Man! I took a breath mint from my purse. Maybe it would mask the odor. Then, I noticed that the aroma occurred when I uncrossed one leg and crossed the other. I switched again. Yes, it was me! OH, NO, I had horse manure on my shoes! Here I was all in my new clothes thinking I was so spiffy and non-homeschooling-mom looking and I smelled like a just laid green horse turd. (For those of you who are not cognoscenti, green horse manure is much smellier than the blacker apples.)

I knew how this happened to my good Lands' End shoes. I'd gotten ready to go play "welcome wagon" to our new neighbors, putting on my good shoes, when we noticed that the miniature horses had ventured in with the big horses. Though they sometimes get along, we decided to put them in a stall before leaving in the event they might start running or messing with the neighbor's horses. In doing so, I stepped in it, literally. That day, I quickly changed shoes, and the event went out of my mind until that afternoon in the auditorium.

I quietly slinked out to the women's bathroom, took off my shoe and sniffed. And, about fainted. I began cleaning the shoe in the sink, praying that another homeschool mom didn't hear nature's call and come in and see me smelling the bottom of my shoe. I got it cleaned but then noticed that my shoes were suede and now had clear water marks on one shoe, not the other. So, I quickly put water on the other shoe. Thankfully, it was raining that day. No one would notice.

I slipped back into my seat, crossed my legs, and breathed a sign of relief. No one knew I was a yahoo. Then - the air kicked on and I smelled it again. And again. It wasn't my shoe. I don't know what it was, but at the very least, I knew my shoes were now clean.

A New Diet

It only occurred to me for a second. But, you know the saying, "He eats like he has a tapeworm"? That must mean that people with tapeworms can't keep on the weight, right? So, earlier this week, the cat rubbed all over me, leaving a tiny tape worm segment on my arm. At first, I thought it just a cat booger, but cat boogers can't expand and contract independently now, can they? And so, just for a second, only a second mind you, I wondered if I had tapeworms, would I lose weight? Could I start a new diet fad where you could eat all you want? I'd only have to swallow...Then, I threw up a little in my mouth thinking about it. I did not try to save the worm like Robin, rushing it to the vet's office. I did, however, send Lauren to the vet's to retrieve worm killer. And banished the cat to the outside for a couple of days.

Read Pitawoman's blog for another new diet fad.

Backyard Science Friday: I have photos...

...but I won't share them. Last night, Lauren came in just at nightfall. She had been "freaked out" down at the creek. There was a dead, hairless, green alien thing in the creek. Drawn there by our dog Daisy's barking, she spotted it in the dark with her flashlight. The smell was overpowering. Then, Daisy rolled it it. What is it with dogs and terrible smells and wanting to wear them like eau de cologne? It was reported that it resembled a pig in the fading light. I wondered which neighbor had taken up a new hobby? Daisy got a late night bath.

This morning, William and Lauren put on dust masks to go do a little forensic anthropology with me. It was an opposum that had apparently lost it's hair in the um, process. I took photos, but since many of you read this blog in the morning or over lunch (I am told), I'll spare you.

Do you have something to share in your backyard? Leave me a comment and I'll link to you.

Turtle Man

My dh said, "Please tell me he's not from Kentucky." He is, and we're probably related.



Thanks to my friend, Becky (who won the county husband calling contest at the county fair) for the link.