Not sure how much snow we got yesterday (never mind over night), but what we did get was very wet and heavy. The ride home wasn’t all that bad, thanks mostly to the fact that the companies around here that give a shit about their employees allowed people to leave work early, so traffic wasn’t bad. The roads were pretty shitty, though, so the going was slow.
I managed to blast my way into the driveway and get to the garage (but it wasn’t easy), and then got on my tractor and plowed. At this point the wind had really kicked up, so I was frozen stiff by the time I was done (in the case of my knees, quite literally. It was all I could do to walk back out and grab the garbage can). With the snow so deep and heavy, it took me over an hour out in the driving horizontal snow to plow, and I was caked with ice from hat to boot.
I must be getting old, ‘cuz I was literally shivering and had to sit under a couple of blankets (one of them electric) for about an hour just to get back to feeling normal.
This morning it’s about eight degrees out there, and the wind is still pretty fierce. I think the snow is close to done, though, and I’ll need to get out there and plow a path to the road so I can make my merry way to work later on.
This certainly wasn’t the biggest snow storm we’ve ever had, and if it was December or January, it would have been no big deal. Something about having to put up with this shit in March, though, that makes it really annoying.
There were a couple of warm spots yesterday, though. First, Notre Dame lost its first-ever ACC tournament game. It’s always nice to see ND lose, and the fact that this most likely officially relegates them to the NIT is just icing on the cake. Likewise, Georgetown lost to lowly DePaul. No NCAAs for you, Hoyas!
Oh well, time to get out there and plow, I guess.
Think spring!
Those were horrible road pictures. I am so sick of the snow and we’re supposed to get some this morning. It’s quite literally freezing outside and the wind is blowing. Lola went out and came back very quickly. Even her thick curly coat didn’t so the job. Poor Palemale and Octavia are going to be cold and wet as they incubate those eggs this morning.
Thx PJ, for the little banana guys. Two bananas having sex is very amusing. What it says about me I don’t know, but it isn’t good.
It snowed here this morning. Very light blowy snow. Very cold,too. I went to the bank window this morning because I didn’t want to get out of the car and freeze. But, the windows were frozen and wouldn’t open so I had to take the walk anyway.
Gail Collins
Lunch on the Barricades
MARCH 12, 2014
Let’s consider school lunches.
Always an important topic. But to be honest, it’s only coming up right now thanks to Representative Paul Ryan, who took a strong, principled stand against school lunches in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. (“What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”)
Ryan’s point was that mothers who pack their children’s lunches are showing their love, while kids who get their food from the cafeteria lady will feel that nobody cares. Have you ever heard a more terrible thing to say?
Most American mothers work, and they are already guilt-ridden over everything under the sun. They are constantly hearing stories about some other woman who has six kids and manages a major corporation yet still finds time to sew a sequin-crusted mermaid costume for the 8-year-old’s Halloween parade. Most American mothers feel remarkably successful when everybody gets off to school with matching socks. Now Paul Ryan wants to tell them they’ve committed child abuse by failure to fill a brown bag.
Fortunately, the speech ended badly: Ryan included a story about a poor schoolboy begging for a home-packed lunch, which turned out to be rather fictional. But it was still an interesting window into the right’s growing antipathy toward school meals.
School lunches have always been political, in a peculiar agricultural way. The frozen food lobby takes on the fresh produce people. The tomato growers do battle with nutritionists who don’t want to count pizza as a vegetable. The anti-starch advocates versus the potato growers. (In 2011, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Udall of Colorado led a successful bipartisan drive to protect the right of potatoes to roam free across the menus of American school cafeterias.)
But the basic idea of providing healthy subsidized meals for public school students used to be universally accepted. Like Social Security, or federally funded bridge reconstruction.
No more. These days, you can find vocal opposition to any federal program that gives something to poor people. Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, who’s running for the Republican Senate nomination, has been arguing that kids who qualify for subsidized school meals should be required to do janitorial work in order to demolish the idea “that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”
Then there’s that vision of the hand-packed meal as a symbol of Family. Every once in a while, a rumor crops up that an elementary school somewhere is prohibiting brown bags and forcing all its students to eat Obamafare. This does not actually seem to be happening. However it is true that the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the school lunch program, is wildly sensitive to any suggestions that it would ever get between a child and a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “What the parent decides is sufficient,” said Undersecretary Kevin Concannon.
(Concannon has a picture in his office that was taken when he toured a school in New Orleans. He’s chatting over lunch with a little girl who pointed to his plate and said: “Mister, if you’re not going to finish your broccoli, I’ll finish it for you.” He has seen the future, and it is eating green vegetables.)
Finally, there’s the rancor toward the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which Congress passed in 2010 with the strong backing of Michelle Obama. Its push toward healthier school menus is a popular target with the right. In theory, this is a rejection of federal interference with local decision-making. But, mainly, I suspect, it’s an attempt to remind average Americans that the first lady gets up to work out at 4:30 a.m. and probably does not approve of some of their lifestyle choices.
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Plus, it’s always easy to make fun of kale. Los Angeles schools, which were trailblazers, got no end of grief for their rather abrupt transition from chocolate milk and chicken nuggets to a menu that was heavy on things like vegetable curry and lentils. “Schoolkids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief’s healthy lunch diktats,” announced columnist Michelle Malkin triumphantly.
David Binkle of the Los Angeles Unified School District says that after a rather rocky shakedown, things are going great and student food sales are way up. “And we don’t even have pizza on the menu.” The kids are drinking more milk than ever, even without chocolate flavoring. The lentils are still there, Binkle said, but they tend to be hidden away in salads.
We’ll be hearing more complaints soon; the second phase of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act kicks in this year, and it includes bans on snacks like candy bars, Doritos, or sugary soft drinks, even in vending machines. Gone from the cafeteria forever.
Unless your mother packs them in a brown paper bag.
The streets were still a little crappy on the way in this morning, but not too terrible.
A foot of snow in Syracuse by midnight last night (more out in God’s country, of course). I dunno how much more we got overnight and this morning. Going by my driveway, I’d guess at least another 4-6″. Kinda hoping this is it for a while.
Windchill out there right now about 0°. Weather geek says it’s gonna be 50° tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll open the pool.
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My right-wing friend from Latin class finally got to me. She sent an email that listed Saul Alinsky’s rules from his book Rules for Radicals and of course said Obama and Hillary were using the rules to destroy the country. Her version of the rules included such things “Give people healthcare and that will make them captives, increase the debt, run up unemployment” and other made up crap. So, I found a copy of the actual rules, sent her a message that said your email info is false here are the actual rules. If I’m lucky she’ll cross me off her list.
She’s like having the crazy uncle I’ve been spared (mostly by speaking to very few of my actual uncles).
You should reply to that person with “Te futueo et caballum tuum!”
For those if us who never went to latin class, that and other fine latin insults and curse words are available here.
Wowus! If I had only hung in there for annus tertio.
I’m sure you would have enjoyed it as much as the first two anni.
Heh-heh. He said annus. Heh-heh-heh.
My wingnut friend wrote back this morning. She wanted to know how I knew so much about Alinsky and said even if the rules were not Alinsky’s they were certainly Obama’s. You know Obama, the man who is too weak and feckless to deal with the great shirtless Putin and yet can plot and connive to subjugate America. In as few words as possible(all polite) I told her I disagreed and that if phony “facts” were needed to make an argument that argument was obviously indefensible. I assume from now on she will confine her nonsense to her wingnut friends.
I only wish I could have added the little banana guys.