Barilla will donate $1 to America's Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network, with a total donation up to $100,000.According to Kristin Davis, who was on Conan last night plugging it, Mario Batali "advised" on the recipes, so they're likely to be relatively simple and tasty.
Plus, it's a good cause, so do it!
Reminds me of a site I've visited for several years now where one click (supposedly) provides 0.6 bowls of food to animals in shelters.
Sean Salisbury: If you discount the print-media buffoons (Jay Mariotti, Skip Bayless, et al.) who go on TV with the express intent of destroying whatever credibility the newspaper industry once had, Salisbury is the least cogent, most wrongheaded voice in the sports media. He's an atrocity. Yet this broadcast lunacy has saved his gridiron legacy. Salisbury's career-passer rating was a dismal 55.1 and he never had one decent season, but in retrospect that production looks amazing. It seems impossible, but it's true: Sean Salisbury was better as a player. Which is just about the craziest sentence I've ever written.
Modern relevance of classic literature
Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece, "Please, I want some more Dickens," really struck a chord with me. Last fall, my husband and I attended our first open house at my daughter's high school. The English teacher reflected on the choice of novel for the semester. "We either do 'Twelve Angry Men' or 'Great Expectations,' " she said. "But we're considering dropping Dickens because he's just too hard for the students."
One mother agreed with the teacher. But I begged her to keep Dickens – and my daughter indeed read "Great Expectations." We had great discussions about this story, even though my husband and I struggled to remember the intricacies of the plot.
But I do remember the first time I read a classic, thinking that I would find it so boring. The book was "Jane Eyre," and to this day I am haunted by Jane, Mr. Rochester, and the mad woman in the attic. That novel encouraged me to read other classics and to understand the allusions that can be found throughout literature.
Hooray for Ms. Wood's suggestion that we encourage reading of the classics. I think the best way to start is in the home, so I'll be pushing one of my best-loved books ("Little Women") my daughter's way again.
Maeve Reilly
Champaign, Ill.Regarding Janine Wood's Jan. 16 Opinion piece on reading classic literature: Works by Charles Dickens are often found in the children's section. Why? Because adults do not want to read them. Keep in mind that Dickens was a serial writer. His material was meant to be read in sections over extended periods of time. What is more, his works were not written to satisfy any great literary calling; Dickens was a hack paid by the word.
Can children, or even most teens, appreciate the political satire of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"? Will Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" have the same influence now as it did in its day, since slavery has long ended? How many could grasp the nautical dialect that peppers Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick"? It is time to accept the fact that so-called classics are irrelevant to most modern readers. Defenders of the classics need to accept this and discover that there are many fine modern books as well.
David Cohen
Alturas, Calif.
Pronunciation: pan-'glä-sE-&n, pa[ng]-, -'glo-From Wikipedia:
Function: adjective
Etymology: Pangloss, optimistic tutor in Voltaire's Candide (1759)
: marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic
The term "panglossianism" describes baseless optimism of the sort exemplified by Pangloss's beliefs, which are the opposite of his fellow traveller Martin's pessimism and emphasis on free will. The phrase "panglossian pessimism" has been used to describe the pessimistic position that, since this is the best of all possible worlds, it is impossible for anything to get any better.As used in a paragraph:The panglossian paradigm is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin to refer to the notion that everything has specifically adapted to suit specific purposes. Instead, they argue, accidents and exaptation (the use of old features for new purposes) play an important role in the process of evolution.
Solar still has one big economic problem: It costs roughly twice as much per kilowatt-hour as power from the grid. But an unusual confluence of events is changing that calculus and making even jaded investors wonder if there isn't something more to solar than hype. First, of course, are rising petroleum prices. True, they're off their highs, but you'd have to be a Panglossian optimist to look at the Middle East and believe oil and natural gas will really become cheap again. ("Let the Sun Shine," Fast Company, February 2007)
Do you know any seventh graders reading "Great Expectations"? If not, maybe you should. In his book, "The Educated Child," former Education Secretary William Bennett suggests the Charles Dickens novel be part of a seventh- and eighth-grade reading list. I referred to Mr. Bennett's list recently while helping my 12-year-old son choose a book.
"Great Expectations!?" Now that's expecting a lot, I thought. I remembered picking it up on my own in eighth grade. But would adolescents today read Dickens in their leisure time? Maybe Mr. Bennett's book, written seven years ago, had made an impression. I called a local librarian. No, she said, "Great Expectations" is not a hit.
Next I polled my neighbors' children. Seventh graders on my block weren't reading "Great Expectations." They weren't reading "A Tale of Two Cities," "David Copperfield," or the "Pickwick Papers" [sic] either.
"Classics are stupid," said one 13-year-old girl, whose desperate mother had tried paying her to read Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." "I'd have to buy my son 17 North Face jackets before he'd look at a classic," said another mother.
Why did Bennett's recommendation seem so far-fetched? Yes, television, iPods, and computer games interfere with reading, but was that the only explanation? Maybe the Dickens novel was simply too hard to find. I wanted an answer.
First, I visited the children's section of the library. The books displayed most prominently in the center of the room addressed contemporary social issues such as anorexia, homelessness, divorce, and poverty. I finally found some by Dickens tucked away toward the back of the room.
I left the library and wandered over to the local bookstore. While I relaxed with a book by the 19th-century essayist Thomas De Quincey, a middle-aged woman entered and asked a saleswoman for a book recommendation.
"Do you want chick lit, a page-turner, or a romance?" the saleswoman asked. Oh, how I wish she had asked, "Do you want Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, or the latest translation of 'The Iliad'?" I felt as though I were at Wal-Mart instead of the bookstore, and that prompted me to wonder what other adults were reading. I asked around at the bookstore's cafe. Nobody had read Dickens since college and even then it was a chore. "I hated all that detail," one woman complained.
Then I scoped out the bookstore's teen section. Risqué images graced the covers of books with titles such as "Skinny Dipping" (second in the "Au Pairs" series) and "Gossip Girl." For boys, there were paperbacks that looked more like computer games than books – glossy covers depicting space ships and intergalactic battles.
"It's all teen trash," said the mom who had tried bribing her daughter to read "Little Women." "I might as well buy her a 'Harlequin Romance.' " How could the little black and white sketches of chubby men smoking pipes that appear in the older editions of Dickens compete with sexy girls romping on beaches?
"The answer is obvious," said a local father of two high school girls. "Teachers don't read Dickens, so they don't assign him." And sure enough, I looked at my son's past summer reading list and Dickens wasn't there. Neither were Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Stephen Crane. It seemed clear: For students in junior high, Dickens doesn't exist – not in book groups, not in schools, not at the library, and not at home. "Bah, humbug," I growled, and went off on a search for Mark Twain.
Parents, start a revolution! Unplug all electronic gadgets and get your children reading great books again. Here are a few tips:
• If "Great Expectations" seems too difficult, read the first few chapters aloud. Ask your child to read the rest.
Together, we can save Dickens – and others like him – from extinction!
Since 1952, there's been only one presidential election year in which the name Nixon, Dole, or Bush was not on the GOP ticket. (The exception is 1964, when Barry Goldwater and William Miller were trounced.) In fact, no Republican has been elected to the White House without either the name Nixon or Bush on the ticket since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928! And should Senator Clinton win in 2008 and serve two terms, either a Bush or a Clinton will have been president for 28 consecutive years.I'm no fan of Hillary or Obama (or Bill Richardson [whose PAC doesn't seem to have a website], for that matter), but I'm all for mixing it up quite a bit in terms of who is representing the American people at a national and international level, and if that means electing a qualified woman or minority candidate, so be it.
In what is, apparently, his "33rd annual office pool," legendary NYT columnist William Safire (who now chairs the Dana Foundation) offers a set of multiple-choice questions regarding possible outcomes for the year-to-be. What do you think?1. The “O’Connorless Supreme Court” will decide
(a) without reversing Roe v. Wade to uphold laws restricting late-term abortion because they do not impose an “undue burden” on women
(b) that public schools in Seattle and Louisville, in their zeal to prevent re-segregation, have gone too far in using race in selection of students
(c) to reject Massachusetts’ case to force the Environmental Protection Agency to raise auto emissions standards, holding that “global warming” gives the state no standing to sue without new law
2. Dow Jones industrials will
(a) reflect 4 percent economic growth to rise in 2007 to close above 14,000
(b) fall out of bed to 10,000 in what the Republicans will claim is the Democratic recession
(c) soar to 15,000 before ending the year around 14,000
(d) change from a boring numerical index to lively prose opinions in the with-it Wall Street Journal
3. Bipartisan achievement of 110th Congress and Bush White House will be
(a) blue-ribbon Social Security panel providing cover to raise retirement age to 70 for those now under 50
(b) passage of Leahy-Pence shield law permitting whistleblowers to expose corruption to reporters without fear of being ratted out by runaway prosecutors
(c) immigration reform allowing earned citizenship of current illegals and installing 1,700-mile fence named after the nativist Millard Fillmore
(d) substantial minimum-wage increase with reduction but not elimination of “death tax”
4. Congress will override Bush veto of
(a) federal support of stem-cell research
(b) federal negotiation of drug prices
5. The word most often heard in 110th Congress will be
(a) sellout
(b) compromise
(c) subpoena
(d) civility
(e) payback
6. The Oscar for best picture in a year of great pictures will go to
(a) Martin Scorsese’s “Departed”
(b) Paul Greengrass’s “United 93”
(c) Clint Eastwood’s “Letters From Iwo Jima”
(d) Stephen Frears’s “Queen”
(e) Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s “Little Miss Sunshine”
7. The level of American troops in Iraq at year’s end will be
(a) over 100,000, down from surged 160,000
(b) under 100,000, down from today’s unsurged 140,000
(c) under 80,000 with announced timetable for downsizing in 2008 to 40,000 in secure Iraqi Kurdistan
8. Iraq will be
(a) in full-scale civil war
(b) on the road to shaky democracy with insurgency weakening
(c) split three ways with Kirkuk as capital of Kurdistan
9. Iran at year’s end will be
(a) more intransigent than ever and on the way to matching North Korea’s nuclear weapon
(b) more reasonable after plunge in oil income, anti-terrorism boycott, labor-student unrest and global sanctions
(c) red-faced at double cross from Arab Iraqi Shiites
10. Publishing sleeper-seller will be
(a) “Sacred Games” by Vikram Chandra, a gangster novel like an Indian “Godfather”
(b) Jim Lehrer’s novel “The Phony Marine”
and in non-fiction
(c) “Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games,” by a retired spook, Tennent Bagley, which refutes C.I.A. groupthink about the molehunter James Angleton being paranoid
(d) “Father’s Day,” by Buzz Bissinger, about his twin sons, one exceptional and the other damaged
11. Internal party struggle will be
(a) John Edwards’s labor-appealing protectionism versus Hillary Clinton’s championing of Nafta-style free trade
(b) John McCain as pro-life versus Rudy Giuliani as pro-choice
(c) cognitive dissonance of anti-bias liberals at bias toward a conservative Mormon candidate
12. Scientific news will be in
(a) neuro-circuitry
(b) deep brain stimulation in treating depression
(c) sequencing the genome of higher apes in studying evolution
(d) vaccine approaches to treatment of Alzheimer’s as well as eradication of malaria
(e) gene duplication to detect mental illness
(f) commercial hype about cranial calisthenics
13. Year-end polls of likely primary voters will have in the lead among Democrats
(a) Clinton
(b) Obama
(c) Edwards
(d) Gore
(e) Richardson-Biden-Dodd-Dean
and among Republicans
(a) McCain
(b) Romney
(c) Giuliani
(d) Gingrich-Rice-Brownback-Hagel
14. Time and chance will happeneth to all predictions if
(a) McCain scampily blows his stack
(b) Clinton freezes over
(c) Romney is brainwashed
(d) Obama loses his cool over press interest in “Rezkogate”
15. Key factor in swing-voter choice of next president will be
(a) experience
(b) freshness
(c) character
(d) name recognition
(e) seizure of health-care issue
(f) Internet organization
Last night on my Northwest flight from the Twin Cities to Reagan, I finished a very funny book purchased while home for the holidays. John Blumenthal's Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour is the tale of a neurotic SoCal 30-something who tries desperately to make sense of life and love -- all the while, trying to finish his comprehensive 10-volume biography of the largely-forgotten (and forgettable) 13th POTUS. In some sense, I suppose I could say that it's Monk meets me.
While surfing just now, I saw that Gerald Ford has passed away at 93 at his home in southern California. He was president when I was born, so I have a special place in my heart for old Jerry despite the fact that he was the butt of many a joke (most notably, of course, by: [1] Chevy Chase during his [i.e., Chase] brief stint on SNL [couldn't find a video thereof on YouTube or Google Video] [somewhat little-known fact: CC played drums in a "bad jazz band" called The Leather Canary in the late '60s and that group was headed by Fagen and Becker, the creative forces behind the world's greatest band ever]; and [2] The Simpsons). I had forgotten that Ford was a member of the Warren Commission and, as it turns out, he was the last surviving member of that presumably-august-but-oft-questioned panel. Also, he was the target of not one, but two assassination attempts within three weeks in September 1975, thus fulfilling another criterion for inclusion in history's memory (at least, according to me). |
