The Fireworks Capital of America
I was listening to a story yesterday on KUHF, Houston Public Radio, about the city’s upcoming Fourth of July fireworks display. The reporter mentioned that the fireworks display would be presented by Pyrotechnico, a company from Pittsburgh. Sure enough, when the reporter interviewed the company’s spokesperson, there was a hint of that Western PA accent. I was curious about the company because I don’t recall hearing about it, and anyone who knows Pittsburgh knows that the Burgh takes its fireworks very seriously. (Zambelli’s fireworks are infamous.) So yea, turns out that Lawrence County, just outside of Pittsburgh, is The Fireworks Capital of America – who knew? Both Pyrotechnico and Zambelli’s are based in New Castle, and both companies have origins in Naples, Italy. If you’ve ever spent New Year’s Eve in Napoli, you will totally get the connection.
Penny – a Very Adoptable Dog!
I saw Penny’s picture posted on Facebook a few weeks ago. She was running out of time, set to be put down at the Alvin Animal Shelter in Texas.
Penny had a sad history. As a puppy, she was picked up by BARC in Houston, Texas. BARC is notorious for being an extremely high kill “shelter,” where animals are placed in small cages and sit or lie in their own waste, and where over 1200 healthy, adoptable animals are killed every month. As you can imagine, BARC doesn’t make much of an effort to screen adopters. Penny was adopted by a family with a young son who wanted a dog. When the boy lost interest (yea, can you imagine?), a neighbor took Penny. Then Penny developed flea dermititis and started losing hair and scabbing all over, so the neighbor dumped her at Alvin Animal Shelter, where she was placed on the fast track for euthanasia.
Penny at the Alvin Animal Shelter
Penny, dumped at a kill shelter because her allergies caused her to lose clumps of hair.
Julia Marquez is a volunteer who works tirelessly to save the animals at the Alvin Shelter (with the blessing of the head of the shelter). She posted Penny’s picture and asked for an adopter or foster. As soon as I agreed to foster Penny, Julia connected me with S.A.V.E. Rescue. I applied with them to foster Penny, and they worked with Julia to pull Penny and have her vetted and treated for fleas.
Penny, the first night at my house.
What a sweet face!
The next day, I took Penny to have her hair shaved down and get a soothing bath for her irritated skin. I’ve been rubbing olive oil on her skin every day and she’s healing nicely. She’s also eating high quality, grain free food, and getting lots and lost of play time and exercise.
Penny, shaved down until her skin heals.
Safe, loved, and sleepy 🙂
Penny’s skin is healing nicely!
Penny is a wonderful dog! She’s playful and lovable, and gets along well with other dogs. She loves, loves, loves children and she’s very gentle and patient with them. She loves mornings, and when you tell her “good morning” she wags her whole body and talks to you. She’s house trained and plays fetch! She’s also an excellent watch dog – she barks at strangers but stops when you tell her to stop (though she barks, she’s completely friendly with everyone).
Penny is going to make a great addition to any family – loves children, loves other dogs, and is just sweet, playful, and lovable all around. She’s a perfect dog, in spite of all that she’s been through! If you’re interested in meeting Penny, please contact http://www.saverescue.org/http://www.saverescue.org/http://www.saverescue.org/, leave a comment, or send me a message!
RIP Humane Officer Jerry McCarthy
In 2011, I met Detective/Humane Officer Jerry McCarthy when he responded to my family’s complaints about animal abuse occurring at a house next to one of my father’s rental properties. He was truly compassionate and worked for several weeks to secure the safety of four adult dogs and two puppies who were tied up outside by the neck, neglected, and starving. I’ve kept pictures of one of the dogs in particular because my father adopted her and named her Ruby Red.
Without Officer McCarthy’s efforts, this girl surely would have died (in the “starving” photos, she was still nursing puppies!).
I kept in touch with Officer McCarthy after the rescue. He had his hands full working on cases involving everything from starved, abused horses to dog fighting rings. Like many other municipalities, Lawrence County is working on a tight budget, but the County is fortunate enough to have leadership that takes animal abuse and rescue seriously. And the County has been extremely fortunate to have had Jerry, if only for a short time.
Last week, Officer McCarthy was a passenger in a patrol car being driven by another police officer. A car driven by an unlicensed driver struck the patrol car on the passenger side, killing Officer McCarthy. We lost one of the best, and I’ll think about him every time I look at our Ruby Red.
Funeral of Fallen Shenango Twp. Police Office William J. Jerry McCarthy IV from WCN 24/7 on VIMEO on Vimeo.
I can only imagine the greeting that Jerry received at the end of the rainbow bridge.
Officer McCarthy ‘s family is asking that memorial contributions be made to the Lawrence County Humane Society.
Beautiful Batik from Indonesia!
Through the magic of Twitter, I was very fortunate to meet a lovely friend from Indonesia. She’s very private and wouldn’t want me to use her name, but I can say that she is one of the kindest people that I’ve ever encountered. We met because we both use Twitter for animal rescue and welfare. She’s very devoted and manages to spread the word about animal abuse and mistreatment without the benefit of a computer. She only recently got a decent smart phone but she never let that stop her. On top of being an animal welfare advocate, she’s a loving mom and wife, and a business woman. I couldn’t admire her any more than I already do.
She recently sent me the most beautiful gift from Indonesia. Here’s a picture of the box – even the box is pretty! And she has lovely handwriting. The paper was really nice too (yes, I saved it).
My friend has beautiful handwriting, and I love the paper.
The first thing that I saw when I unwrapped the paper (apart from the pretty pink box) was the postcard from Indonesia! Love postcards!
A postcard from Indonesia inside the box.
Postcard of Borobudur Temple in Java, Indonesia.
The postcard is a picture of Borobudur Temple in Java, Indonesia. This temple is incredibly beautiful and was built during the 8th and 9th centuries. It is a UN World Heritage site. There’s a fantastic video on the UN Heritage website here – just be sure to choose your language before you launch the video player. I didn’t know about this temple before I received my friend’s gift and I loved learning about it.
Finally, I opened the tissue paper and found the most beautiful batik scarf!
Beautiful and intricate Indonesian batik.
Batik is an art, and you can read more about it here. This scarf is just stunning. It’s silky and the pattern is amazingly intricate. I don’t know how my friend managed to choose the perfect color for my skin tone without ever seeing me in person, but she did! I will love and treasure this beautiful gift, and our friendship, forever.
A new postcard!!
I love, love, love getting post cards in the mail. I don’t keep many things, but I do keep every single post card that I’ve ever received. Unfortunately, I don’t get too many any more! I guess that makes it even more special when I do get them. This new one is from Adam at The Happiness Plunge. I frequently feel pangs of jealousy that Adam is seeing the world and I’m not, but then I think about the fact that he’s doing so much good along the way. It also makes me happy that my friend is happy.
This postcard is from Bagan, Myanmar and it’s extra special because he send it from Kerala, India. So I’ve got a picture of Myanmar with stamps from India.
Postcard from Adam at The Happiness Plunge.
Check out Adam’s gorgeous picture of Bagan here.
Stamps from India, on a postcard from Adam at The Happiness Plunge.
Take a look at Adam’s picture from Vaikom, Kerala, India here.
Thanks for the postcard Adam!
You Don’t Have To Kill The Poinsettia
Dear Mom:
Every year it’s the same with you and the poinsettias. Why do they have to die? Why? Growing up, I thought that poinsettias just died naturally after Christmas.
Of course, I thought that the same was true of all of the plants on the porch in the summer, that something just happened at the end of September and the plants all died naturally. I realized, oh, sometime in college, that no, the plants don’t just die at the end of summer. No, you can actually keep watering them and bring them into the house and voila! They live!
The same holds true for the summer vegetable garden. Tomato plants do produce tomatoes after August 1st, but for some reason, come August, you insist on terrorizing the vegetable plants and ripping them out of the garden, bagging them, and putting them on the curb for trash pick up. It doesn’t matter if there are cucumbers on the vine, baby eggplants still growing, or hundreds of green cherry tomatoes that just need a few days to turn red. It’s over. On August 1st, the garden is over.
Though I’ve watched you kill thousands of houseplants, vegetable plants, rose bushes, etc., nothing has bothered me as much as the poinsettias. It always seemed like such a waste that these beautiful plants were tossed along with the discarded gift wrap and ribbons on December 26, when you would inevitably take down all of the Christmas decorations.
It took me longer to catch on to the bullshit that you were doing with the poinsettias than it did with the other plants. Maybe I was caught up in the “magic” of Christmas and all that, who knows? I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t figure the poinsettia thing until a few years ago. But now I know this: poinsettias are not just a Christmas plant. And not only that, they are super easy to rebloom yearly. If you actually water them, they last a while (vs. never watering them, then tossing them on December 26th). In the spring, you slowly decrease the watering and put them in a cool place until June. In June, you cut the stems back, water and fertilize the plant, put it in sunlight and watch it grow throughout the summer, pinching the stems every so often. In October, limit the plant to 10 hours of daylight and by November you will have flower buds.
Soon to be dead.
A few years ago, I bought you beautiful, beautiful poinsettias that were as big as trees. I get teary when I think about how you killed them and put them to the curb for trash pick up. I now refuse to buy you poinsettias, but your grandson doesn’t know any better and picked out a lovely little poinsettia for you for Christmas this year. I know that it’s only still alive because Amir gave it to you. But I don’t doubt that it’s days are numbered. Look at it. You don’t have to kill it! Let it live, Mom! Let the little poinsettia live!!!
Love,
Nick
Texas Puppy Mill Law Upheld
Every once in a while, Texas surprises me in a pleasant way. In 2011, the legislature passed, and Rick Perry signed, the Dog and Cat Breeders Act. The law requires state licensing and inspections of pet breeders who keep 11 or more breeding females or sell 20 or more puppies or kittens a year. It also establishes minimum standards for the humane handling, care, housing and transportation of dogs and cats by commercial breeders.
The “Responsible Pet Owners Alliance” challenged the law, arguing that it violated the constitutional rights of breeders. The Federal Court disagreed and upheld the law. Article by the Texas Tribune here. Amusingly-titled article in the Dallas Morning News blog here. (Obviously, it’s all about those liberals in Austin, so we headline it as an “Austin Court,” not a federal court.)
While the law’s protections are minimal, it’s something, especially in Texas where animals are property and profit. Texas is notoriously one of the top ten puppy mill states, and that’s based just on the “known” puppy mills. I’d bet that the number of backyard breeders (or highway sellers) probably put it in the top five.
Not surprisingly, the Responsible Pet Owners Alliance is an American Kennel Club State Federation for Texas. Also not surprisingly (come on, this is Texas), the plaintiffs are chirping that the supporters of the law are vegans and PETA types. Ha!
Now that the law has been upheld, I wonder if some members of the Responsible Pet Owners Alliance will be dumping dogs this week? (Dallas Morning News blog post on just two of dog dumps that happened when the law took effect, here.)
All Will Be Well. Can you spare some change?
My sister Dawn (“Beaker”) is a nurse and has a PhD in something involving cancer research. I did help her by proofreading her dissertation, but I truly didn’t understand a word of it. If you can figure this out, then you’ll know what she does.
All I got from reading the beast was that she uses stuff like this:
to come up with data like this:
And she figured out that cancer researchers were doing something terribly wrong in their experiments.
While Beaker enjoys the test tubes and whatever, she also really enjoys working with patients. So while she worked on her PhD, she moonlighted at the 2 Bles Hematology/Blood and Marrow Transplant Unit at Georgetown Hospital. She’s met some incredibly brave patients during her time there, and Dan is one of them.
Back in June of 2009, Danny Lyons was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), a blood cancer. Dan and his wife Hanna blog at All Will Be Well. So yea, the title is a great play on the acronym for the disease, and also the name of a song. You can tell what Dan and Hanna are like by just listening to the song.
Dan and Hanna are actually in Seattle right now, where Dan got a transplant at a hospital where Dawn used to work. Hopefully, Dawn’s old pals took good care of Dan. But the fact of the matter is that health care costs serious money, and the body can’t heal while the mind is worried about finances.
Dan’s cousin started a fundraising campaign for him. It would be so great if you could contribute a few dollars to help out, and truly, anything would help. Click here and tell ’em the Betters sisters sent ya. And listen to the song.
The Gabe Dixon Band | All Will Be Well from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.
I F’ing Love Pasta
I love pasta, and yes, I love reading about pasta. (Don’t roll your eyes at me!) And now I love looking at pasta, or at least at beautiful illustrations of pasta. I just bought The Geometry of Pasta and it’s so effing amazing, I can’t even stand it.
I should say, that when it comes to cooking, I rely heavily on The Encyclopedia of Pasta. I love this book because it does more than just catalog pasta. The author researched and shares the oral history of pasta and sauces, and describes the pasta traditions of every little town in Italy. It’s a real treasure, and when I read it, it reminds me of time spent with my bisnonna, in the kitchen, listening to her stories. Plus, it’s incredibly useful.
But The Geometry of Pasta is a wow-book, created by a chef and a designer. Look at it! Eye candy!
And yes, they have a website, and a video (ha!).
Ok, they are explaining a pasta, farfalle (butterfly), that originates in Lombardy, and playing music from Naples, but they get a pass because their book is so awesome.
The text of the book very clearly explains why pasta is made in different shapes and gives examples of appropriate sauces (in a lot less detail than The Encylopedia of Pasta, and without the warm fuzzies). And don’t think that I didn’t check the gnocchi entry!
- Dimpling them by pressing with your thumb when on the work surface, to give a smooth exterior and make a hollow that catches sauce.
- Performing the same action over the back of the tines of a fork, to give a similar hollow thumbprint, with a ridged outside to trap even more sauce.
This process is well-demonstrated in a rather sexy scene between Andy Garcia and Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III. It is well worth practising at home — gnocchi are perhaps the easiest past to make, one of the quickest, and can be truly delicious, unlike the tasteless, almost bouncy balls that industrial manufacturers package under the same name.
Eh, Smitten Kitchen?
The illustrations are gorgeous. Samples: Campanelle, fusili, and pasta misto.
Seriously, it’s a coffee table book, it’s so flippin’ beautiful.
