In lieu of a thousand words

I found these amazing pictures online today on Google Earth, and I thought I'd share them with you. The link is not behaving for me at this moment, but if you would like to see more of this artist's incredible work, it is available at: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30014276

A free ride

Today I come before you, citizens of the world, but especially of Fort Collins, with a plea: save our bike library! Let me explain - for the past few years - I'm not sure how many, because I've been away for quite a few of them, and when I last lived here, the place in question was an ice cream shop - for the past few years, Fort Collins, Colorado, has been blessed with something particularly awesome, and completely unique, as far as I'm aware - a bicycle lending library. If you stop by our bike library, you are allowed, no matter your age, income, or place of residence, to check out a bicycle in Old Town, Fort Collins, and ride it all over town for as long as five days, for, get this, absolutely nothing. No cost. No catch. That's it. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Unfortunately, the grant that makes this possible is coming to an end, as all good things do, in all too little time. The city is now asking interested parties to submit a survey, so that they will have some idea how widely the library is used and appreciated. They are asking scary questions like, "Should a fee structure be put into place, how should fees be calculated - hourly, weekly, etc.?" In short, I am afraid that they are about to ruin everything that is good about it. Please don't let this happen! I think the bike library is invaluable. It is good for the environment. It is good for tourism. It gives a not inconsequential bit of very needed help to the city's homeless population. And, not to be overlooked, it is fun! I hate to see it go!

I realize most of you probably don't live in Fort Collins, but if you do, or plan to visit, or just enjoy filling out surveys, please let the city know how important this program is!

Cool book alert

I picked up this book at the library this week, and it is so cool that I have to tell you all about it. It is basically an ambitious attempt to pair every possible flavor in the world with every other flavor in the world. It is written by a Brit, and many of the suggestions make that obvious, as well as a kind of innate sense of taste (not tastefulness, but regional preference that seems English) - for example, milk chocolate and mint, one of my own favorite combinations, is scorned like the devil, but a few tasty dark chocolate and mint combos are substituted instead. Puddings also outnumber cakes, and main courses tend to favor the traditional two categories of English cooking - meat-and-veg-of-questionable-health-content (e.g. fish and chips; things that would be found in breakfast fry-ups) and curry (or things that make you think of curry).

That being said, I like curry and puddings, and there really are a lot of creative suggestions in the book. While it is true that the things I just mentioned feature prominently, they are by no means everything that is included - that's just the starting point of reference. And almost as much fun as the author's suggestions is the opportunity to come up with your own as you page through the book, and are reminded of all the possible combinations through recipes, restaurant dish suggestions, or quintessential grocery items (I was gratified to see that she did mention the Reese's cup when she got to chocolate and peanut, as I have it on good authority from a close English friend that chocolate and peanut butter are not a typical British combination - chocolate and peanuts, perhaps - but this friend, at least, claims to find chocolate and peanut butter disgusting, not the source of lots of creamy, pleasantly contrasting, goodness I know it to be.).

Anyway, if you have the opportunity to peruse this book, you should. It's very creative, and highly entertaining. Makes you think about cooking more as a craft. That's the secret of cooking as an art, I think - we should do whatever encourages us to play with our food more often.

On that note - two more random items that I've seen lately and I would love to have. Yay, toys! Kitchen toys, that is:



Ok, this one may be all packaging. Look! You can make your own Harry Potter food! But what you really need to make your own Harry Potter food is this:


You, too, can make your own chocolate frogs. Did I mention that at Amazon, it's only $2.45? I did now!

And if you are not in a buying frame of mind, at least check out this flavor wheel, courtesy of The Taste Thesaurus:

Kids these days

Another thing that I do online is review books (you may have noticed some of these reviews on the sidebar, in the LibraryThing box). I've just finished reviewing this month's selection, and as I did so, I realized that I really had more to say, not necessarily about the book, but about parenting books in general, and a blog being the perfect place to air your unsolicited opinions, I thought that I'd post it here instead.

The book in question was called Working Parents, Thriving Families. As a working parent, I picked it up, expecting a few time management tips, maybe. As it turned out, it was more of a dissertation on How You Should Parent. I found the author's style of parenting to be a little intense in places, though I'm not sure whether the fault lies with him or me. For example, in a section on how "to monitor our children well", he mentions an'unhealthy' thing that a friend's boys (aged 11 and 12) had wanted to do. What was this unhealthy action? Was it sneaking off to an R-rated movie? Was it forgoing supper in favor of cake and soda? Nope. It was jumping on a trampoline with no protective fencing around it. Egad! How will the boy survive to turn 13? I found myself thinking, "Seriously? In my day, no one had ever heard of protective fencing, and yet, somehow, we survived."

The thing I find unpalatable about parenting books is that eventually, so many of them come down to this 'us vs. them' mentality, where kids exist merely to 'push the boundaries' and parents exist merely to draw the lines. Shouldn't you see your child as a person? Don't you remember what it was like to be 11? Would it kill that 12 year old to see the PG-13 film? You know that your child is going to grow up and realize that the entire world has unfortunately not been created by Pixar, right? Do you always make healthy choices? Why is it somehow perfectly ok, in our culture, to insist on allowing your children only to eat fruit leather for a snack, cut their juice with water because, "you know, juice is so sugary"...and then chow down on Oreos yourself after they go to bed?

Don't you think that the key to good parenting ought to be communication? Don't you think that we should be less focused on creating an environment where our child can never come to harm, even if we are not paying attention, and more focused on teaching our child about the world around them, on being a part of our child's life so that they feel they can talk to us in a collaborative way - so that they are neither totally sheltered nor without guidance? To protect too much is to create a Sleeping Beauty situation. If Sleeping Beauty's parents had told her about the spinning wheel, she would have known how not to prick her finger. In the same way, if you never jump without a net, how do you know to avoid falling?

If you treat parenting like a general going to war you'll have very well-behaved, clean, appropriate kids. But if so many things are forbidden, either the lure of the forbidden becomes so much stronger, or their natural curiosity is quenched. I'm not sure which is worse. What seems the biggest shame, if you view parenting as a tactical, practical task, is that you miss out, to a certain extent, on knowing your children as people.

That's not to say that you shouldn't have rules. Many rules are important - 10 hours of sleep per night, don't hit your brother, etc. But I suppose I am afraid if I do as Mr. Palmiter suggests and "assess visits to another child's home", for instance, discouraging interactions with kids whose parents are late to pick them up or 'seem disorganized', or who fail to call while your child is visiting them...well, who would that leave, exactly, in the good camp? If all parents evaluated by that standard, I know I wouldn't ever have visited anybody as a child. On time was not my parents' strong suit. Nevertheless, they were very good parents.

What do you think, o blog reader? Am I being too hippified here, for lack of a better word? Of course I realize that there's a distinction between the parent and the child, and I do have the last word. At the same time, while I want my child to grow up to be safe, I find it distasteful that 'safe' appears to be the number one American virtue at the moment. Sure, I want my daughter to be safe. But I want her to be able to think for herself, stand up for herself and for others, if they need it. I want her to question, and to explore. I want her not to be afraid to be friends with the late kid, or the kid whose mom packed the Twinkies, or even the kid who has terrible parents - because terrible parents are not terrible children, and nobody deserves to be written off for the sins of others. I want her not to take things at face value. Someday I'm not going to be there. But she will still be around. I don't want her to lose her way then, because I did all her thinking for her. What do you think?

Weekend at the Movies

I saw The Woman in Black yesterday at the theatre. It was a very fun movie. It also has Harry Potter in it (Daniel Radcliffe). Though if you go to see movies because Harry Potter is in them and will admit it, you are likely younger than I. This one, based on a Susan Hill novel that became a play (in fact, the second longest-running play in the history of West End theatre - you can still see it today), is edge-of-your seat scary. It's an Edwardian ghost story with all the trappings. Harry, sorry, I mean Daniel, plays a handsome young British lawyer who is sent to a remote country estate to 'put some papers in order' - a task that has been shorthand for 'be tormented by supernatural baddies and suspicious townspeople', since Bram Stoker's day.

This movie just happens to also be a Hammer Film, so be prepared to jump. They didn't miss a trick - scary old house with things lurking in the shadows around every corner, faces that disappear, the scariest dolls I've maybe ever seen, and dead children in abundance. Ok, you probably aren't thinking "Yes! Dead kids!" And if you are, please send me your full name, description and address, and I promise I won't forward it immediately to the police station nearest your house. But all of the best scary movies have dead kids in them. The Shining. The Ring. The Others. Probably a plethora of other movies starting with "The". But this plays on very primal fears - our inability to protect the defenseless. The idea that kids (and maybe animals) see things that adults cannot, so really we are the defenseless ones. The idea that despite our best efforts to protect them, some people (even our children!) maybe won't ultimately want to be saved (just look at Whitney Houston for a recent example of this). And of course, no matter how cute they were before, if they've just come out of the graveyard and are blue, dripping wet, and rattling your doorknob, you really won't want to let them in. (But what to do about the wet footprints that you see already inside, once the door has been secured?)

There is nary a moment of downtime, so drinks at the theatre are not recommended. If you go to the bathroom during the movie, you will miss a crucial plot point or a big scare. And this is probably schlock horror, to be sure, so the scares are sometimes cheap, but isn't that why we go to a film like this? If that's your cup of tea, it's well worth the price of admission.

A friendly debate

What do you think, dear readers, about debate? Should you debate your friends? Can you debate your friends, and still remain friendly, or does it lead to hard feelings?

Personally, I've always liked a good, spirited debate, and I never expect others to agree with me since I am in fact, the polar opposite of the person who can sell ice to an Eskimo, no pun intended. If I went in for an umbrella because it was raining, the rest of the world would take their raincoats off. So, I don't mind a good debate. I enjoy talking, and I enjoy hearing what others have to say. But I'm always afraid that someday I will go too far.

It seems like in our present culture - or maybe in any culture, at any time - but it seems like we are especially polarized these days, with the 99% and the 1%, or the right wing and the left wing, people petitioning for gay marriage and people petitioning against it, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, etc. - it seems like now more than ever, you are the sum total of your opinions, and it is not ok to sympathize with a position you yourself do not hold, or to play devil's advocate. So I am always afraid, when I find myself jumping in feet first to a spirited debate (as I did on Facebook earlier today) both because I like to argue and because I hate it when it seems that one side or another is underrepresented, that I will take it too far, that my friends will come to see me as voicing my inflexible opinion, not as another side of the question we haven't considered, but as a vote against them. Or that my next argument will be taken less seriously because as we often hear on the internet, people like to surround themselves with an 'echo chamber' when they are online, to a certain extent. Of course, I have very intelligent, reasonable friends - maybe even more reasonable than me, most of the time, and I'm sure that I'm overthinking this. But what do you think? Is debate fun? Can it go too far?

Sugar free candy that packs a big punch

I'm just here with the family watching the Super Bowl (go Giants!) and helping Bella get rid of some extra candy - parenting is hard work, right? And I was reflecting just how awesome this candy is - you can't even tell it's sugar free! Usually that saccharine taste kind of overwhelms a sugar free candy, but despite being calorie and carb free, Ice Breaker Sours are still full of flavor. And I swear they didn't even pay me to say it. But I think it's a good thing, when your child has diabetes, to seek out things that will allow them to eat relatively healthy while still feeling like a normal kid. And this fills the bill.