Ambition Meets Practicality

My planned menu:

Roasted Butternut and Apple Soup

Roasted Turkey with Gravy and Pear and Cranberry Chutney
Stuffing (Cooked Inside and Outside)
Savory Bread Pudding
Sweet Potato Pie
Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Garlic and Figs
Grilled Asparagus in Lemon Butter Sauce
Roasted Carrots and Leeks
Haricots Verts

Apple Pie with Whipped Cream
Cake TBD
Fruit Salad

Wine
Cider
Other Beverages

My executed menu:

Roasted Butternut and Apple Soup

Roasted Turkey with Gravy and Pear and Cranberry Chutney
Stuffing (Cooked Inside and Outside)
Savory Bread Pudding
Sweet Potato Pie
Asparagus dressed with Garlic Butter
Roasted Carrots and Leeks

Apple Pie
Chocolate Cake
Fruit Salad

Wine
Water

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Good Advice

Via NYT, The CEO of Thanksgiving Dinner - Kim Severson, 11/26/2008

Quoting Stuart Friedman, author of “Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life,” a little conflict resolution that a good Thanksgiving C.E.O. might want to pass on to the guests:

"First, there should be no gloating over elections won or lost, and no discussion of personal income or investment loss. Give people around you a chance to shine by asking them questions that allow them to express their accomplishments. But don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to, such as why isn’t Sanjay going to college or what happened to that nice girl your son brought home last year.

Always arrive with three topics to talk about beside the business at hand. If you are faced with someone you don’t want to talk to, try, for at least 10 minutes, to treat that person like your boss. That means you at least have to pretend you are interested in what they are saying.

Just like at work, don’t take somebody else’s behavior personally or be overly sensitive, especially if people have been drinking.

With all these tools in place, a good Thanksgiving C.E.O. should be able to sit back and enjoy a terrific day.

Just keep in mind what all successful executives know: Thank people publicly and often, and never, ever point a finger.

A good leader shares all the credit and takes all the blame.”

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Cruft

I cleaned out the keyboard for my office computer today.  I popped each key out, a row at a time, and with a q-tip and some canned air, I got rid of the cruft that has been collecting for 18 months. 

I cannot believe how filthy it was, considering that I rarely eat at my desk.  Anyway, it wasn't food that was collecting in between the keys, it was bits of me!  The dirt inside seems to be comprised of only skin flakes and small hairs - about a teaspoon's worth of bodily decay.  Word to police forensics - don't bother trying to collect DNA samples from hair found on a brush, just swab the spaces between the keys, and you'll get all the DNA you need.

FWIW - I never thought I'd use the "gross" tag again.

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David Brooks, Today's NYT Column

I really believed that the members of the conservative "intelligensia" who endorsed BHO would start disavowing their selection during the transition period. So far, not only am I wrong, one of the few conservatives I regularly read, David Brooks, has actually come out with strong praise for the President-Elect's cabinet in the making in his column today, David Brooks, The Insider’s Crusade - NYTimes.com

"Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. "

Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

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A Good Day

Oh, it is so deliciously cold out. Bright blue sky with big, puffy sheep-like clouds wisking by. The long-needled fir trees outside of my office window have lost the bright verdant hues of summer and have settled into a dark greenish gold. The parking lot is pleasantly littered with drifts of shed needles and sticky cones. A few birch trees up the block stubbornly refuse to doff the last of their golden-red splendor.

The dry cold makes my hands ache a bit, and the wind makes me glad I'm not fifteen years old, waiting in the dark for the morning school bus.

Today is a good day, and when I go home, I think I'll curl up under the down blanket and velvet comforter and while away the hours until Top Chef with a cup of Russian Caravan and some episodes of The West Wing, Season One.

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I Really Want ... This

And now, for something a little different:

I really, really, really want the complete, printed Oxford English Dictionary. I look at the pictures on Amazon, and I drool (please excuse me while I wipe the corner of my lips). I was the geeky kid who read the dictionary and the encyclopedia while in the bathroom.

I DON'T want the CD ROM version. It's for Windows PCs only, which means that it's got an awful interface (Clarendon Press claims a Mac OS X version will be available in 2009). Windows or OS X aside, something this wonderful can't ever properly translate into mere bits and bytes. It is slow and the mere electronic format makes it antithetical to the browsing one should do with this type of reference. I've had CD-ROM versions of dictionaries and encyclopedias, and they always disappointing. Features that should be a natural for computerization are overlooked, and ease of use is never a consideration. Worst of all is the DRM. In the case of the OED CD-ROM version, if it's transferred to a hard drive, the actual CD has to be inserted every month for verification. That is ridiculous.

The On-Line version isn't much better, simply because of the cost: $295 PER YEAR! That just doesn't seem right, considering the actual cost of the physical books ($800 from Amazon), which means that after three years of subscribing, I'd have more than paid for the set. Plus the Mac OS uses the OED as its internal dictionary, so I really don't need to spend $300 a year just to look up a word.

What about the Compact version, you ask? Well, I have that - and while it's useful, it's not easy to use. The magnifying glass is not just a gimmick - the serif font is probably less than 1 point, and my ageing eyes are having difficulty reading the newspaper these days.

I want to actually read the OED - to be able to pick up a volume late at night, and skim through it. To browse through a volume at random and learn about words and meanings and origins. I want to be able to do this. Okay, well not in one year, but maybe in my own lifetime. A dear friend - a published author and former college professor - paid me one of the finest complements I've ever received - he said I had one of the biggest vocubularies of anyone he ever met.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll treat myself to a Channukah present this year.

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Is This Not the Worst Picture of Bill Clinton?

What's wrong with this?

Photo: AP

From this article on Politico. There is something really, really wrong here - it looks very Photoshopped to me - the shadows around the eyes, darkened teeth, and the whole head elongated.

Seems like someone wants to demonize the former president. Wonder how handy Maureen Dowd is with Adobe?

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More Post-Election Wittery

One of the best quotes from the post-election blogosphere:

"While I like McCain the person, much as I do Obama, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was making it up as he went along, from his advocacy of nationalizing bad mortgages to picking Sarah Palin as a running mate. If I thought the qualities that recommended a vice-presidential candidate were lack of experience, an addiction to relentlessly cloying populist rhetoric, and a slim girlish figure, I'd have just voted for Kerry-Edwards in 2004. "

Matt Labash, Apathetics Anonymous
The Weekly Standard, November 10, 2008

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Who Writes His Material?

Via Gawker.com, from the 2005 event hosted by Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, a roast of Rahm Emanuel, chief-of-staff to President-Elect Barack Obama (I don't think I'll get tired of saying that anytime soon).

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Free Sheperd Fairey Stickers from MoveOn.Org

MoveOn.org is giving away stickers with the deservedly famous Shep Fairey Obama portrait, with additional artwork.  One sticker's free, $3 gets you 5, and $20 or more gets you $50.

For the record, MoveOn raised over $58 MILLION for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, from individual donations.  They raised an additional $3.8 MILLION for various House and Senate races.  Remember, the fight's not over - the far-right contingent of the Republican party has met, and Steve Bozell has declared that the moderate wing of the GOP is dead.  The only way forward for the Republicans is going to be by the ultra-conservatives, who espouse a scorched earth policy.  2010 is going to be a fight, and while the majority of the nation viewed Caribou Barbie as an idiot and a wackjob, the Republican leadership seems to think she's the saviour of the Grand Old Party. 

So go, donate to MoveOn.org - and get some nice stickers while you're at it.

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Tears of Joy

From Judith Warner, who's New York Times blog is a highlight of my week:

At the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008,

Latrice Barnes, right, is comforted by her daughter Jasmine Redd, 5. (David Goldman for The New York Times)

"This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about."

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Change is in the air

And on the Internet.  Change.gov is gone on line - it is a website from the incoming Obama-Biden administration.  The site is an ambitious work, covering the transition, the new administration's agenda, a news, blogs, information about the team and a repository for ideas from all Americans. 

"It’s Your America: Share Your Ideas

The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country."

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That Dress! And So It Begins...

The first thought that entered my mind when Michelle Obama walked onto the stage at Grant Park on Tuesday night was "Mrs. President-Elect, what were you thinking?  That has got to be the ugliest dress I've ever seen."  And then I wanted to slap myself.  Hard.  What does it matter?  I felt like I was getting sucked into a time warp.  Was it really 16 years ago that the newspapers were all agog at Hillary's poor taste in clothes and spinning mad stories about who and what she'd wear at the Inauguration? 

Are we really that shallow, particularly in the midst of an economic crises and two terrible wars, that we have to spend even a moment criticizing an apparel choice?

In a word, YES - we are that shallow.  The dress WAS ugly, and while it did project a young and hip attitude, the red flameswere very jarring, and it just didn't seem to fit Mrs. Obama's personality (as well as her body).  It was also RED.  While I get really annoyed with the whole Red State/Blue State color thing, I'd think that on that night, for that appearance, she'd wear her party's colors, or at the very least, not the colors of the other party.  Michelle Obama will be the most soignée First Lady that America will have since the Kennedy Administration, but Tuesday night she looked a bit more Hillary circa 1992  than Jackie 1962.

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Dead-Tree Editions Sell Out

Somewhere in my basement is a box containing a bunch of newspapers my grandmother saved, marking momentous world events - the Kennedy Assassination, the Moon Landing, Nixon's Resignation. I've also got, in my personal cache, the Newsday edition for the Mets 1986 World Series Victory.

Before I finally turned off the lights and the TV last night, I gave myself a mental reminder to stop at the card store and get copies of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal before going into work. I'm glad that I did it then, rather than waiting for lunchtime or even this evening. The NY Times reports that all of the major "dead-tree" (read, printed editions) newspapers, have sold out because people are buying them for souvenirs.

It's not as though I'm going to have grandkids who will read these years in the future, but I've got to save them anyway.

Picture courtesy of The New York Times

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Yes We Can, and Yes We Did!

I was initially a Hillary Clinton supporter, but while I would have voted for her had she secured the Democratic Party's nomination, I wouldn’t have respected her. Although her political positions were squarely in line with my own liberal Democratic ideals, her campaign became Republican sleeze. Thus, I lost all respect for her.

It took me a while to warm up to Barack Obama - not because he’s black, but because I worried that a black man could never be elected President. The thought of four more years of Republican chicanery was the stuff of nightmare, so it was only after the Democratic National Convention, when I watch Senator Obama give his acceptance speech did I begin to believe in his candidacy and hope that a better, brighter future was at hand.

Watching the election returns last night was exhilarating and humbling. The pride I felt in myself and my country when listening to President Elect Obama’s speech was immeasurable. This Jewish woman has every confidence in our newly elected president. I am certain that there will be times I don’t agree with his policies, but I now have this unshakable belief that Barack Obama - President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama - will be the best President this country has had since FDR. The dark clouds of greed, fear and hate that have shadowed our nation are breaking up, and the clear blue sky of liberty, justice and freedom are shining through at last.

America, you voted with the angels of your better nature on your shoulder. You've lifted us up from the depths of despair. Today, America, I am proud of you.

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Today, I am Proud To Be An American

Remember when you were a kid, and waking upon the morning of big day that finally arrived? It could have been your birthday, Christmas morning, the first day of summer vacation, or a long-anticipated family trip. I can almost guarantee that it was never Election Day.

Today, waking up, I had that feeling. Hope, fear, anticipation and resignation all rolled into one big knot in my stomach, and that was before I even got out of bed. I didn't know what to expect at my polling site - I was kind of eager to find long lines, but hoping they wouldn't be too long. At 6:38, the site was pretty busy, but not crowded. There were eight voting precincts, and each machine had a line of 3-10 people.

What was cool (at least for me) was that the mechanical voting machines were still being used. The election volunteer commented that these machines were listed as the most accurate in New York State. I don't know if she was referring to the model or the specific voting booths. For me, the sound of democracy is encapsulated in the voting booth - the clank of the lever, the swish of the curtains opening and closing, the plink of the switches and the thunk-clank of the vote being recorded when the lever is pulled again.

Walking out of the polling site, I felt ten feet tall and lighter than air. Can the unthinkable happen and John McCain stage the greatest upset in modern political history? Certainly. But at least I know I did the right thing.

Today, I voted. Today, I am proud to be an American Citizen

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