Santa came to visit on Christmas Eve. He brought lots of circus toys for my nephew (7) and a brand new laptop for my niece (15). We had a lovely dinner at my sister-in-law's house. Her husband is a good cook.
Santa didn't bring me anything, but that's okay. We don't exchange gifts between adults in our family. We put our money and time into a nice dinner.
What did Santa bring to your house?
I'm trying not to panic about hosting the family NY's Eve and Day festivities here. Monsieur Titi and I have tried to create menus that are both special and simple. I'll be telling more about all this a little later.
I read about Marcus Brigstocke's Dr Seuss-style take on events at the Copenhagen summit on The Now Show podcast. The poem is very clever and unfortunately, quite grim, as was the Cop15. Someone must have thought the same, because they've put it on YouTube. The transcript of the poem follows.
The delegates came and the delegates sat
And they talked and they talked till their bums all went flat
Then a delegate said of the country he knew
"We must do something quick but just what should we do
So they sat again thinking and there they stayed seated
Sitting and thinking "the planet's been heated"
"I think" said a delegate there from Peru
"That we all must agree on some things we could do
Like reducing emissions at least CO2"
So they nodded and noted then vetoed and voted
And one of them stood up and suddenly quoted
"It's the science you see, that's the thing that must guide us
When the leaders all get here they're certain to chide us"
So they sat again thinking about what to think
Then decided to ponder what colour of ink
To use on the paper when they’d all agreed
To be selfless not greedy McGreedy McGreed
"But how do we choose just what colour to use"
Said a delegate there who'd been having a snooze
"We need clear binding targets definitive action
We must all agree clearly without more distraction"
So they sat again thinking of targets for ink
But the ink in their thinking had started to stink
And they started to think that the ink was a kink
In the thinking about real things they should think
"If ze climate needs mending then zis is our chance"
Said the nuclear delegate sent there by France
"We need to agree on one thing to agree on
Something we all want a fixed guarantee on"
"Yes" said another who thought this made sense
Some value for carbon in dollars or pence
But the mention of money and thoughts of expense
Had stifled the progress and things became tense
The fella from China with a smile on his face
Said "Who put the carbon there in the first place"
"Wasn't us" said the U.S then Europe did too
Then a silence descended and no words were spoken
Till a delegate stood up, voice nervous and broken
"Is there nothing upon which we all can decide
Because on Wednesday my chicken laid eggs that were fried"
"We all like a sing song" said the bloke from Down Under
But then the great hall was all shouting and thunder
Policemen had entered and were wearing protesters
Who they'd beaten and flattened like bloodied sou'westers
The police had decided to downplay this crime
With prevention detention and beatings in rhyme
The Greenies who'd shouted and asked for a decision
Were now being battered with lethal precision
All sick of inaction and fed up of waiting
All tired of the endless debated placating
They'd risen up grating berating and hating
So the police had commenced the related abating
Ban Ki-moon put his head in another man's lap
And was last heard muttering something like "crap"
But the chap next to him said "It's more like it's poo"
So the great hall debated not what they should do
But how to decide between crap cack and poo
"It is poo" "It is cack" "It is crap" "We agree"
Which was written and labelled as document three
"I think if we all find one thing we agree on
Then maybe Brazil might be left with a tree on"
So they sat again thinking of trees and Brazil
And of glaciers which had retreated uphill
And they thought of the poor folks whose homes were in flood
But less of the protesters covered in blood
They pondered the species so nearly extinct
It's as if they all thought that these things might be linked
"We need a solution we need action please"
Said a lady who'd come from the sinking Maldives
The others all nodded and said it was fact
That the time must be now not to talk but to act
Then Obama arrived and said most rhetorical
"Action is action and not metaphorical"
"Wow" they all thought "he must mean arregorical [sic]"
"I love it when Barack goes all oratorical"
"But the problem I have is that Congress won’t pass it
"Bugger" said Ban Ki then "sorry" then "arse it"
Then Brown said "I've got it now how does this strike you?
It's simpler when voters already dislike you"
He suggested the EU should lead from the front
So The Mail and The Telegraph called him something very unpleasant indeed
So the delegates stared at the text with red marks on
Ignoring the gales of laughter from Clarkson
No-one was satisfied nobody won
Except the morons convinced it was really the sun
And they blew it and wasted the greatest of chances
Instead they all frolicked in diplomat dances
And decided decisively right there and then
That the best way to solve it's to meet up again
And decide on a future that's greener and greater
Not with action right now but with something else later
The 12 days of Christmas cartoons by Mark Parisi were sent to me by a dear friend. When I saw day 3, I laughed so hard! Click on the image to enlarge it.
It started snowing here yesterday morning at about 10:00. We never get much snow here in the Loiret, usually there's a few centimeters and it's gone by the end of the afternoon. This time the snow goddess has dumped her entire bag on us. It's been snowing for 2 days straight and the flakes continue to come down this evening.
I like snow. Especially when I'm inside my house, in front of the chimney. I don't like driving in it. We have a good snow car; it's a 4x4. It's the other drivers that scare me! I did have to go out this morning to a small town a few kilometers from here. The main roads were sanded and traffic was light. Everyone was driving really slow. But no one was being foolish. By the time I got home, the snowflakes were coming faster and faster. At that point, I decided it was a good idea to stay at home for the rest of the day.
A day at home with not much to do calls for cupcake baking! Here's a little recipe for you just in case you aren't submerged in Christmas cookies. I know, we all need another dessert recipe just before the holidays!
Totally delicious, scrumptious chocolate-orange cupcakes. They are so good! This was the first time I've made this recipe but I'll definitely make it again. They texture of the cupcakes is very light and delicate, but too delicate for frosting.
Chocolate Orange Cupcakes
Makes 16 regular-sized cupcakes
2-1/2 oz. (60 grams) semi-sweet chocolate squares
1-2 tsp. orange rind
2/3 cup orange juice
3-1/2 oz. (90 grams) butter -- softened (called "pommade" in French)
1 cup light brown sugar (sucre vergeoise)
2 eggs
2/3 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup almond meal
Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F)
Line a cupcake pan with cupcake papers (called "caissettes" in French)
Place the chocolate (chopped), orange rind and orange juice in a small saucepan. Stir over low heat until melted and smooth.
Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Add eggs, one by one and beat thoroughly.
Sift the flour, chocolate powder and baking powder into the butter mix. Add the almond meal and the chocolate mix.
Mix until combined. Divide the mixture evenly between the cake cases (for me this make 16).
Bake for 16-20 minutes or until when tested, a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes until they're put onto a grill. They'll crumble if you take them out too quickly.
Michael taught me herbal medicine during the time I spent in New Mexico in the early 1980s. I'll never forget him.
from The Moutain Gazette: By Kyce Bello Michael Roland Shaw Moore. January 9, 1941– February 20, 2009 Image courtesy of Michael Roland Shaw Moore
When I was growing up in Northern New Mexico, wild medicinal plants were a part of life. Taking a walk, healing a sickness, and just knowing ones place in the world was tied up with recognizing and understanding a little about what was growing nearby. Maybe it had something to do with being self reliant, able to treat ailments without a doctor and pharmacy, or just a desire to be more connected to nature. Whatever the reason, my neighbors valued herbs. Hanging from their rafters and cupboards were bundles of scarlet globemallow or gumweed, sitting in baskets were shriveled rosehips, picked after the first frost. When I saw plants drying, or amber tincture bottles with homemade labels reading “osha,” or “Oregon grape,” I knew that I’d find one or another of Michael Moore’s herb books lying around, the pages stained with pollen and filled with pressings of dried plants.
Like any good mountain girl eager to be a woman, I had my own copy of Michael’s Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. I studied its pages carefully, trying to make sense of its detailed and often hilarious language, gleaning what I could about identifying, harvesting, and using the herbs surrounding me. Most of it went over my head, but that was okay. I was only sixteen, and this was the man that had been named the Godfather of American Herbalism. This was the man who had dusted off old herbology texts forgotten in the basements of Ohio medical schools for sixty years and revitalized them for modern practitioners. This was the man who, in the spirit of the “irregular” doctors of the 19th century, developed his own theory of treatment based on the body’s constitutional strengths and weaknesses. This was the man who discarded the assumption that the only useful plants grew east of the Mississippi, or, worse, the Atlantic Ocean, and focused his attention on the species of the Southwestern deserts, Rocky Mountains, and West coast.
This was the man.
Michael Moore was an herb trader who began his work as an herbalist first in Topanga Canyon and later in a tiny storefront on Aztec Street in Santa Fe in the early ‘70s. There, he catered not to the hippies so much as the Hispanic grandmothers who no longer had the strength to dig their own prescription-strength roots. He worked in commerce for a number of years before starting the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine, which he ran until 2006 with his wife and fellow herbalist Donna Chesner. His teachings are still available on DVD for latecomers to the party curious about his legendary sense of humor, storytelling prowess, and, of course, encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants.
To say that Michael Moore was a generalist—an old fashioned herbalist versed in skills ranging from botany, wildcrafting, medicine making, pathophysiology, folklore, and the diagnosis and herbal treatment of ailments—is like saying that Shakespeare was literate.
Michael Moore was a trumpet player, a composer of symphonies, and a technophile. He was a researcher who synthesized information from myriad sources into functional theories, and a teacher able to disseminate those theories with a mixture of uproarious hilarity and gravity. He was a theatric curmudgeon who never fully succeeded in disguising his big heartedness. He was a wildcrafter that knew the homes and seasons of hundreds of plants. His books, including Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, Medicinal Plants of Desert and Canyon West, and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West, are read far beyond the regions they represent. His students have gone on to found herb companies and schools of their own, to set up small practices, and to live quiet lives in which they know the names and uses of all those leafy things along the trail. He was, by the time I attended his school in 1998, an enormous man with a long gray beard and suspenders, smoking Nat Sherman’s on the porch before class.
The first thing I learned in his classroom was that the knowledge in his books was a drop in the bucket, a concentrated abstract of his genius. An entry in one of his books on, say, a relatively minor plant like cranesbill, became in the classroom an hour long lesson on the history of grazing in the west; the plant classification system and why cranesbill is a true geranium while what we think of as geranium is not; the fragrance of a forest wherein the conditions are perfect for collecting its leaves; the constituents found in those leaves, and why they are so very effective in treating inflamed mucosa throughout the body, not to mention the pathophysiology of said inflammation. All the while he’d be spinning the metaphorical plant fiber yarn, cracking us up with witty insights on social behavior from which nobody was safe. Especially at risk were enthusiastic vegans, which, fortunately, I was not. When I volunteered to have Michael do a constitutional intake on me in front of the class, he concluded by saying that I didn’t need herbs. I needed butter.
“But I already eat butter,” I said.
“Then eat more.”
As a renegade herbalist, Michael Moore instilled in his students and readers a philosophy that rejected not only the billion-dollar health industry, but also the increasingly commercialized world of alternative medicine. To him, overuse of herbal celebrities like Echinacea, kava, American ginseng, goldenseal and the like as a quick, “all-natural” fix was no better than the mainstream model of popping a pill to feel better. No actual self-reflection, trial and error, or time required, and the only side effect a rosy glow of alternative self-righteousness. Sadly, those blockbuster herbs were more often than not wild plants harvested to near extinction in their native habitat, whether it was the American prairie or tropical rainforest. Progress has been made in the last decade to protect and cultivate such herbs, but why even bother with them, Michael liked to say, when just up the hill or down the arroyo is a perfectly acceptable bio-regional substitute waiting for you to come and call it by name.
And herein lies Michael Moore’s subversive greatness. His brilliance was not that he thought herbs were good medicine, but that the weeds growing outside your door, or in the mountains or desert you call home, could be the source of that medicine. And that you, the intelligent reader of his books, could learn about those plants and safely use them to strengthen your constitution and heal your own quirky ailments. In a time when our culture grows increasingly specialized, with fewer and fewer of us able to meet basic needs without calling on outside expertise, he gave us the tools to walk outdoors, befriend the plants surrounding us, and use them as medicine. He gave us this gift: to be our own healers, and to let the wild plants be our medicine.
For me, this gift has translated into over a dozen years in which my sense of place has been deepened by knowing the plants around me. Just as the ability to name birds, mountains, and trees help us to relate with the places we call home, knowing a thing or two about the herbs we encounter roots us more deeply to the land. It makes the plants our friends and allies, and us theirs. That’s what it comes down to, really. He loved the plants, and taught so many of us too, also.
Michael Moore’s influence extended like ripples far beyond those he taught directly. Maybe you’ve never heard of him. Let’s say you learned everything you know about mullein or willow or uva ursi from a friend, a workshop, or a field guide. But if the thread of that plant lore could be traced back from that moment, I bet it would eventually lead to Michael Moore. At least in this part of the world it would. For forty years he propagated knowledge of Western medicinal plants, and his seeds have taken root, spreading and flowering across the region.
Perhaps more than anything else, we owe a debt of gratitude to Michael Moore for making the West a greener place for all of us.
(Note: Michael was my herbal teacher during time I spent in New Mexico in the late 1970s. I'll never forget that experience or Michael.)
There are tons of ads on TV now to encourage Christmas purchases. This one got my attention because the song stuck in my head. Brigitte Bardot sang this song in 1960, when she was the world's sex kitten. There's something about Brigitte's voice and her playfulness that makes me laugh. Although, as the French would say, "elle chante comme un casserole". (she sings like a casserole or she sings false)
The maison de couture, Dior, is using the song in this perfume ad made by Sofia Coppola. I'm not advertising the perfume, although it's probably wonderful and very expensive. I just like the music and the images. It's so PARIS!!!!
Lyrics:
Moi Je Joue
Moi Je Joue à joue contre joue (Me, I play cheek to cheek)
Je veux jouer à joue contre vous (I want to play cheek to cheek against you)
Mais vous, le voulez-vous? (But you, do you want to?)
De tout coeur (with all my heart)
Je veux gagner ce coeur à coeur (I want to win this cheek to cheek)
Vous connaissez mon jeu par coeur (You know my game by heart)
Alors défendez-vous (So defend yourself)
Sans tricher, je vous le promets (without cheating, I promise you)
J'ai gagné, tant pis c'est bien fait (I won, too bad, it was well done)
Vous êtes mon jouet (You are my plaything -- toy)
A présent, ce ne sera plus vous mais toi (From now on, it will no longer be "vous" but "toi")
Et tu feras ca t'apprendra (And you'll make do with it, and it will teach you)
N'importe quoi pour moi (to do anything for me)
Sans m'en faire, je vais t'assurer (Without you treating me well, I promise you)
Un enfer de griffes et de crocs (a Hell with claws and fangs)
Tu crieras bientot "Au secours" (You'll be screaming, HELP!)
Alors décidant de ton sort (So decide your fate)
Pour m'éviter quelques remords (to avoid any remorse)
Je t'aimerai plus fort (I'll love you even harder)
Oh oui plus fort (Oh Oui, even harder)
Oh oui oui oui, plus fort (Oh oui, oui, oui, harder, harder....)
When I was little, I remember seeing ads like this in magazines. I always wondered what on earth these people could be talking about. With the years, I understood more about personal hygiene. However, I never considered washing my privates with Lysol!
This is just the thing to be fresh and sexy during the holiday season.
