Happy Hanukkah which begins tonight. The image of latkes is by Jonathunder on Wikimedia. Latkes are really delicious and there are many recipes for them. I like ones like the ones in this image. Grated potato with a little flour, eggs and some onion and fried in oil. You can find many recipes on the internet. I like them with a little sour cream on top. You can cook them ahead of time and freeze them for future use.
This image is from the recipe page on Food Network.com
Hope you have a good week and a happy start to the Holiday Season.
I wrote this post last year and decided it was a good one for today’s Stream of Consciousness on the word “miss.” When you don’t check into WordPress or Facebook each day, do you feel like you are missing something? There is a popular phrase for that called “the Fear of Missing Out” or FOMO. This whole week, I feel like I have been recovering from the Thanksgiving weekend activities or maybe it is because the weather is getting colder here in Southern California. At least colder at night and in the mornings. Puts me into a sleepy, hibernating kind of mood. The leaves are falling off the trees, except for the palm trees. I feel like bundling up with a good book or movie. And I think my old post, with a bit of editing, from last winter will be new to many people so here it goes:
I know this is true but I had forgotten. When you are wrestling with an issue information will start popping up about it all around you.
Today I opened my email from Idealist Careers and here was a post about something I had been thinking and writing about myself. The post was called Embrace JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out by Allison Jones. In it she linked to another blogger Anil Dash who had written on this topic as well. JOMO is a response to FOMO or Fear of Missing Out.
I get a little crazy with all the acronyms. Believe me, it is not that I have never seen an acronym before because in my work life there were plenty of them. It just seems like, with all the frenzied communication, we are all talking in acronyms. When I first saw FLOTUS it reminded me of flatus and I thought of gas. POTUS, a potted plant. Well maybe these acronyms are a lot of hot air after all. But I digress.
The gist of the blogs about JOMO and mine is that we can be selective about all the social activities and interactions that are asking for our participation these days. We need to be in touch with ourselves and what our needs and priorities are. There is great JOY in taking time for our private lives and quiet pastimes alone or with our friends and families.
Other bloggers commented on my post with similar sentiments. The need to find a balance and find the JOMO.
Now to curl up with that good book and I have a nice cup of coffee right here.
Thanksgiving Day is past and many of us are resting on our laurels for another delicious Thanksgiving dinner. My family prefers the traditional roast turkey with stuffing inside the bird, and the extra that does not fit in the bird in a casserole. I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner almost every year of my marriage and I even made it a few times before I was married. I remember, when I was in Nursing school, I made Thanksgiving for my family at the house I shared with fellow students in San Francisco. I stayed up practically all night trying to make the pie crust for the Pumpkin pie from scratch like my mother did. I threw out so much flour and shortening because I couldn’t get it to the right consistency. If you handle it too much the dough becomes stiff and will not be flakey when baked. My mother came over that day and I told her I was having problems with the pie crust. She whipped it together in a flash. She said you have to get a feel for it. My mother’s pie crust was wonderful. I have never been a pie maker and usually buy the pies from a good bakery.
The stuffing was another skill my mother had mastered and my recipe comes from my memory of how she made it. I have made it so many times and sometimes the ingredients have changed very slightly over the years. Thankfully I get the turkey and stuffing right according to my family. In earlier years, I prepared the entire meal by myself. Anyone who has made a big family dinner like this knows how much work it is.
In recent years, it has become a group effort with my daughter and husband pitching in with some of the preparation and cooking. My daughter is a very good cook and will come up with delicious dishes to add to the feast. She is usually in charge of the fresh mashed potatoes. This year she made roasted garlic mashed potatoes and a delicious mixed green salad with persimmons, pomegranate, and toasted walnuts. My husband makes the cranberry sauce and does some of the prep work by chopping vegetables for the stuffing.
We were away from home this time, at the in-laws house in Palm Desert, with one of our brother in laws. It is always a bit strange working in someone else’s kitchen but we managed to pull it off just fine. And according to my family the stuffing was great.
It’s Turkey Lurkey Time. Time to kick off the holiday season with Thanksgiving, that is Thanksgiving in America. Wishing you Happy Thanksgiving. I want to wish everyone PEACE and JOY in the upcoming season.
Here’s something a bit silly from the play Promises, Promises. I hope it gives you a little smile.
Why can’t we just stick with one word for too? When I looked up its definition I found that also and as well are considered to mean the same thing. I have noticed that “as well” has taken over for too at the end of sentences where too used to be. I feel this is great injustice to too. I do not know how as well won out over too. What’s so great about as well? To me is sounds so stuffy and cold. The word too is almost musical. It is friendly and inclusive, like when we say me too or I love you too. Doesn’t it sound a bit stiff to say I love you as well? And too can be very enthusiastic and over the top if it wants to, like too much, too big, too funny, too cool and anything else you want to indicate is above average. And it takes up less space than as well to boot.
There are many indescribably beautiful natural sights in my home state of California. I am not a flowery writer who can speak poetically in my description. Even if I were, I think the beauty is so great that words can not do it justice. One of the natural wonders that come to mind are the coastal redwood groves off the Avenue of the Giants in Northern California. The trees are so big they give you the impression of being in a prehistoric landscape. Some of the trees there are thousands of years old. They are resistant to insects and fire but are threatened by the wind effect that has been created by the new freeway that was put in near there. Some of the trees are getting blown over. Another indescribably beautiful sight is the view from the coastal Highway 1 on a sunny day. The section between Monterey/Carmel and Cambria are particularly magnificent but I like the view between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay as well. If you get a chance to visit San Simeon take a look toward the ocean from atop the hills there. The Hurst Family has kept a large swath of land from the castle down to the ocean free from development by giving the land to a nature conservancy. Thank you Hurst family. That is the Hurst family of William Randolph Hurst, who was a wealthy newspaper owner. The classic film Citizen Kane was supposed to be based in part on his life. And the castle I am talking about is Hurst Castle in San Simeon. Highway 101 from Ventura and up the state to Salinas allows a view of soft rolling hills dotted with oak trees and nowadays acres and acres of vineyards have popped up along the highway. The Salinas area is called “the Salad Bowl of the World.” This is where so much produce is grown. Near Santa Cruz you will find fields of artichokes. The original wine country in Northern California is another favorite, with Sonoma and Napa counties. Sonoma has The Valley of the Moon. Jack London lived there. Who wouldn’t love a place called The Valley of the Moon. I had a chance to visit the city of Healdsburg in Sonoma county not too long ago. Wine is a major product in California all up and down the state. I did not think Sonoma could hold any more vineyards and then I saw the vineyards around Healdsburg, as far as the eye can see. San Francisco is where I was born. It holds a special place in my heart , a jewel of a city. There are some pretty nice views there as well looking down from Nob Hill to the bay. A well known San Francisco Newspaper columnist from the past said of San Francisco:
“One day if I do go to heaven…. I’ll look around and say, It ain’t bad but it ain’t San Francisco.” —Herb Caen
I’ve only scratched a very small surface with my descriptions, I have left out many places like Yosemite ,(a famous national park), Sequoia National Park, Mendocino, Santa Barbara, San Diego, La Jolla, and oh well you get the idea. There is just too much to cover in my stream of consciousness and in one small post. I hope you will get a chance to visit my beautiful state of California someday.
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Here’s a drones eye view of San Francisco by danesdrone that I have posted previously:
There is another beautiful city that we are all thinking about and hoping they soon heal from the terrible recent events. I have not had the privilege of seeing beautiful Paris but hope I will someday.
We don’t always have to be perky bunnies, do we? We can have low times. I am not talking about Depression. Because full blown Depression is not a mood to luxuriate in. I read an essay The Case for Melancholy by Loren Stover, which had some good points. That there is this big push to be Happy :))))) all the time and if you are not then you can read an article in Huffington Post, and just follow these 3 easy steps, and find your bliss.
There is something to be said for quiet, down days, when you can take it slow and think deep thoughts, or take naps, or watch old romantic movies, or read old romantic books, and recharge your batteries.
Stover says Happiness is overrated and bit much for us to aspire to continually, “Happiness, like the sun, is ridiculously bright, a hope you can never live up to, or even look at straight on.” At least not all the time. I am grateful I have experienced joyful times and some happiness but not continually. That would probably be a little weird, like Stepford Wives.
Her advice: “Should melancholy descend, you may as well welcome it, wear your finest lounging outfit; give it your finest fainting couch or chaise to lounge in, or that hammock stretched between two elm trees. Let it settle in….and no running shoes under any circumstances.”
Yes, no running shoes. No braggy, happy face of you on Facebook completing your 5 K or whatever.
I read about this in an article by Constant Dullaart in Hyperallergic, Why I’m Amassing an Army of Fake Facebook Followers, where he states he bought fake followers with “Profiles made to look like actual people, made to follow any profile I wanted for $0.002 each, so $5,000 bought me 2.5 million followers.” He says that there are people already doing this to make their product, candidate, and art look much more popular than they really are.
Isn’t it satisfying, a bit scary, ( and humbling I hope), to see more Followers for your blog? I mean real followers, not ones you bought and paid for.
image by Kate Ter Haar
Dullaart goes on to say how some artists were basing the market value of their work on You Tube views and being influenced on the types of work they produced according to the social media responses. He calls this trend in marketing ” the attention economy.” It turns my stomach a little.
A friend of mine just wrote that he received an email offering lots of fake views for a cheap cost. It sounds similar to what Dullaart was saying.
I like to think that I will go on writing whatever I write according to my inner inspiration, feelings, and things I feel strongly about, and not get too overly upset or influenced by Likes and Followers.
The best reason I have for liking real Likes, Comments, and Follows is that people show me they are reading what I am writing, which is encouraging. How do you feel about Social Media responses influencing what you write and are you shocked by the article and my blogger friend reporting the ability to buy followers, likes, and views?
Has anyone else been following this story? A star has been spotted between the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra during a joint survey of 150,000 stars by the Kepler Space Telescope and amateur astronomers. They have been looking for signs of planets circling these stars. What is unusual about this star according to an article in the Atlantic, The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy, is that there was a strange light blocking pattern seen that may indicate not a planet but a very large alien madestructure or structures that are blocking the light of the star as it orbits around it. The SETI Research Center at UC Berkeley is planning on pointing a very large radio dish toward the star in January to see if they can pick up any electronic transmissions. This is scary to me because what if it is an alien structure and they get wind of us pointing our listening devices toward them. And then decide to see who is listening. Dr. Michio Kaku says that ifthis is an alien structure, itmay be as big as our planet Jupiter, and they are far advanced to our civilization. I think I am going to start wearing an aluminum foil hat.
I was still hoping to see another form of intelligent life here on earth close up last weekend, whales. I was a bit disappointed in my whale watching expedition. I went out on a whale watching boat this past Sunday with my daughter. It was a beautiful sunny day off Monterey for the most part. We did hit some fog out at sea on the way back to Monterey Bay harbor. I had high expectations and I think that was the problem. I expected to see huge whales breaching right near the boat. I wanted to get fantastically exciting photos. I realize now that you do not get to see breaching whales close up every day and that taking a photo, from a boat that is moving up and down, of whales and other sea life who are also moving up and down and various other directions requires luck and probably the talent of a professional photographer and at least a camera with a telescopic lens. Our whale watching was originally planned for Saturday but was canceled by the tour company due to rough weather at sea. So on Saturday I attempted to find the Monarch butterflies and found some at the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary. There were not many near ground level and I had to look through a telescope, assisted by a sanctuary worker, at the top of a eucalyptus tree. She helped me get a nice photo through the telescope as well.
One of the things I learned on the whale watching boat is when the guide sights a whale or other interesting sea life and calls it out, all the people go to that side of the boat and, unless you are fast, it is hard to get a good view. Like when he sighted a pod of orcas and a dolphin stampede. That’s right, I said a dolphin stampede. The dolphins were in the hundreds and were stampeding because they knew the orcas were around. The stampede caused a large patch of turbulence and some of the dolphins were leaping out of the water. Unfortunately some of them swam straight to the orca pod. Next the orca pod is chasing a dolphin and it did not end well for the dolphin. I am glad I did not see it all close up. Then we went out quite a distance in the ocean to off of Moss Landing. We saw some Humpback Whales, dolphins and sea lions there. We saw a whale in the distance do a partial breach, saw others spouting and some flukes. A dolphin popped up doing a partial breach, called spy-hopping, as well. Later we went to a different location and saw the orca pod again. The guide called the large male orca “Fat Fin.” This orca had already been identified by scientists. The whole trip was about 4 hours. This is a video from the Monterey Bay Whale Watch website. We did not have the owner or her dogs on our tour. Their research vessel was near us at the different viewing locations.
And here are a few of my photos:
Monarch Sanctuary
A few monarchs here
View through telescope at Pacific Grove Butterfly Sanctuary
Do you believe in miracles? This was from my generation. But I think many of us lost some of our beliefs along the way somewhere. “If only you believed in miracles baby we’d get by….”
Jefferson Airplane via Vevo on You Tube:
Reblogging this post because I love the song and the founder of the group Jefferson Airplane and lead singer for this song, Marty Balin, just died 9/27/2018. This music still holds up today.
Notes Tied On The Sagebrush 