Friday, 25 November 2011

Real life surrealism in Antarctica

We've been watching a remarkable series on the BBC, called Frozen Planet. A couple of nights ago we saw this incredible footage. The landscape under the ice in Antarctica can only be described as surreal. As I watched, I kept thinking that it would be great to share it with you. Thanks to youtube, my wish was granted:



The BBC website explains the phenomenon and how it was filmed:

With timelapse cameras, specialists recorded salt water being excluded from the sea ice and sinking.

The temperature of this sinking brine, which was well below 0C, caused the water to freeze in an icy sheath around it.

Where the so-called "brinicle" met the sea bed, a web of ice formed that froze everything it touched, including sea urchins and starfish.

The unusual phenomenon was filmed for the first time by cameramen Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson for the BBC One series Frozen Planet.

The icy phenomenon is caused by cold, sinking brine, which is more dense than the rest of the sea water. It forms a brinicle as it contacts warmer water below the surface.

Mr Miller set up the rig of timelapse equipment to capture the growing brinicle under the ice at Little Razorback Island, near Antarctica's Ross Archipelago.

"It was a bit of a race against time because no-one really knew how fast they formed," said Mr Miller.

"The one we'd seen a week before was getting longer in front of our eyes... the whole thing only took five, six hours."

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

A very happy Thanksgiving to all What Time friends. Peter joins me in wishing you a great time with your loved ones. It's not a good time to be a turkey...






Tuesday, 22 November 2011

Oh my gosh



The woman explains:

Mommy was not feeling well and had to stay in the bathroom longer than usual during which my two boys, ages 1 and 3 took my new bag of flour out of the cupboard and destroyed my house. This is from ONE 5lb bag. Don't believe me? Hand a full bag to a 3 year old and see what happens.

Pepper Spraying Cop

Moseyon pointed to some Daily Kos diaries featuring the pepper spray cop photoshopped into various pictures and Sleuth sent me some links. Here are the original photos and a small selection of the creative work of several people on the internet:












There are loads of other pictures on Daily Kos and Tmblr.

Thank you, Moseyon and Sleuth.

Monday, 21 November 2011

Mushroom and goat's cheese strudel

It's time to bring over another recipe from the food blog. This one was sent in by Texasgal2009. It looks scrumptious!


[This recipe came from a well-known chef in Dallas who made it on a morning TV show. I't very easy to make.]

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup olive oil
3 peeled shallots, minced
1 bay leaf
2 pounds of shiitakes or mixed mushrooms, chopped
1/2 cup sherry
2 tbls unsalted butter
2 to 3 cloves peeled garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbls fresh thyme, chopped
1 bunch of chives, sliced thin
1 cup chevre or other goat cheese, crumbled
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
1 beaten egg with small amount of water

PREPARATION

Preheat oil in a medium sauté pan over medium heat.
Add shallots and bay leaf.
Cook until shallots are translucent but not browned.
Add mushrooms and brown evenly. Stir.
Allow moisture of mushroom to be released and juices to reduce.
To deglaze the pan, add sherry and scrape up any browned bits.
Add butter and garlic. cook until garlic aroma is strong.
Add salt and pepper to taste along with the fresh thyme and chives.
Remove bay leaf.
Place mixture on a sheet pan and refrigerate to cool.
Once completely cool, remove from refrigerator and mix together with cheese.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Place puff pastry sheet on work surface. Place mushroom mixture off-center lengthwise down the pastry. Brush egg wash around perimeter of the dough.
Fold long edges, overlapping, over the filling. Flip or roll strudel so the seam is on the bottom. Seal short ends by folding under or pinching.
Place on lightly oiled baking sheet.
Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Rotate pan halfway through the baking process. Cool before slicing.

Not to be missed


Whatever internet travels you have planned for today, please schedule a stop at Sleuth's blog and listen to an excellent video that should be compulsory listening for all GOP candidates and for "you know who" also, too.

Sunday, 20 November 2011

Men and their imaginative ideas

Mrsgunka sent me a load of photos that show men at their most creative. The last picture prompted mrsgunka to ask: "Is that Austin on the cooler-scooter?" It must be the cowboy hat...





















Thank you, Mrsgunka.

Saturday, 19 November 2011

Grandma...

Linda1961 sent me this hilarious e-mail:

Grandma is ninety-eight years old and still drives her own car. She writes:

Dear Granddaughter,

The other day I went up to our local Christian book store and saw a 'Honk if you love Jesus' bumper sticker.

I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting.

So, I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper.

Boy, am I glad I did; what an uplifting experience that followed.

I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good he is, and I didn't notice that the light had changed.

It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed.

I found that lots of people love Jesus!

While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, '

For the love of God!' 'Go! Go! Go! Jesus Christ, GO!'

What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus!

Everyone started honking!

I just leaned out my window and started waving and smiling at all those loving people.


I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love! 

There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a sunny beach.

I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air.

I asked my teenage great-grandson in the back seat what that meant.

He said it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something.

Well, I have never met anyone from Hawaii , so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign right back.

My great-grandson burst out laughing.

Why even he was enjoying this religious experience!!

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me.

I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed.

So, grinning, I waved at all my brothers and sisters, and drove on through the intersection.

I noticed that I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared.

So I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away. Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!!

Will write again soon,

Love,

Grandma

Thank you for the laugh, Linda.

Friday, 18 November 2011

Good bye to a dear friend

Peter and I would like to pay tribute to a good friend who died suddenly a few days ago. Sara was married to Ross MacManus, Elvis Costello's father (from a previous marriage). The family is very musical. Ross sang and played the trumpet with the Joe Loss Orchestra. Sara and Ross's four sons formed a band and tried to follow in Costello's footsteps. They performed traditional Irish songs and other types of music in pubs around Twickenham, but as they grew older and got married, the band fizzled out. One of the brothers, Ronan, still performs as a solo artist and the following song is very poignant.



Sara was a warm, larger than life, very funny woman.

Good bye, Sara. We'll miss you. Thank you for filling our lives with love and laughter since we met you fifteen years ago.

Thursday, 17 November 2011

Special photos of a special bird

Spike sent me these stunning photographs of an albino hummingbird, snapped by fifteen-year-old Marlin Shank in Staunton, VA. Spike wrote:

How lucky was the guy that grabbed these shots? I'd love to be able to just SEE one feeding in my flower beds. We get several that come thru every spring & fall. But I've never seen an albino. The pic with the red rose is outstanding. Enjoy, Spike.






[Click HERE to see more photos.]

Thank you Spike, what a beautiful creature!

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Grasshopper's treasures - Part II

A guest post by Grasshopper

Hi everybody, here is the next installment in the Native American auction I recently won. Some of you may recognize this photo Regina posted on that old blog called Palingates (Remember her?). Anyway, I've had these for about 40 years, they were given to me by a family friend who knew I loved all things Indian (except for the scalping). They are 9" from wrist to forearm. I asked a few knowledgeable people about the cuffs and they said they were local, meaning the Wisconsin/Illinois area, but nobody knew which tribe.


I knew the cuffs were included in the auction lot from their photo, but when I got to see them close up at the preview, I was amazed at the similarities to the ones hanging on my wall all these years. Same colors, same type of beads, similar flora and same white background. So similar yet completely different. They are smaller, at 6" from wrist to forearm, perhaps made for a woman or a child. With a little research and some help from Cowans auction house, I'm now quite certain they are from the Ojibwe tribe in the Western Great Lakes region.

I cleaned the one on the left to show the condition at the time of the auction.



Sometimes I try to figure out what flowers or plants or critters they were trying to apply to their beadwork. Perhaps after smoking a Peace Pipe they began embellishing and creating new variations of the nature around them with their imaginations?


The fringe on this pair is much longer and are very dried out and stiff. I'll have to figure out a way to oil them without damaging the beadwork. By all accounts they were probably made between 1840 and 1860. Pretty good condition for that age. For all I know, they may have been sitting in an old chest for the last hundred years. I'm sure there's more history to these beauties but this is all I have to share with you for now. Thanks, Dances with Grasshoppers.

Here are some links about the Ojibwe:

Ojibwe People
Ojibwa Indians
Clothing and beadwork
Photos of Ojibwe beadwork

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Children...

Many years ago our boys were invited to pose for a Dorling Kindersley catalogue and earned the princely amount of £30 each. Their school days bring back many memories...


When Paul (on the right) was about eight years old, he made his teacher laugh with something he wrote. They were learning words ending in "ight" and had to make sentences using them. Paul wrote:

"My mom and dad never fight."
"My mom is always right."

Isn't that just adorable?

Billy, on the other hand, used to alarm his teachers (and us). I was called to the school many times because Billy had banged his head doing something daring and had to be taken to hospital for a check. Concussion was a regular ocurrence.


He managed to get into some kind of trouble very often. In Brazil, when he was eleven, he managed to go through the roof of a milking shed. He wasn't injured, but very shaken. Then he made a ramp for bike stunts and tried it with a bike that had slightly flat tyres. Following an almighty tumble, we had to rush him to hospital with an enormous gash on his thigh. While he was being stitched, with all of us in the room, the nurses had to abandon Billy to see to Paul, who had passed out.

When they were teenagers, back in England, they came across a baseball bat and decided to go to a local park for a practice. Baseball is not an English game, so they didn't have much of a clue. The practice didn't last very long. While swinging the bat, Paul cracked Billy's forehead open. More stitches...

The pub where Paul worked

A few years later, Paul was working at a nearby pub and used to ride his bike to work. I received a phone call from his cellphone, but from a stranger. Paul had a close encounter with a tree and this kind stranger had stopped to help. My car was in for some repairs, so I grabbed my first aid kit and rushed to the spot on foot. When I arrived, completely breathless, there was an ambulance. Paul had injured his elbow and a devastatingly handsome paramedic greeted me with a laugh: "Good job you brought your first aid kit, we didn't have one!" I didn't know the stranger had called an ambulance, but the humour was very reassuring. Paul had a fractured elbow, but was otherwise OK.

There are many other stories, not all of them about disasters. They will have to wait for another post...