How to proceed?

This has been a year of extreme weather and natural disasters. The massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan is still fresh in our memories but now we have other, more recent, storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tornadoes that just continue to defy our ability to to comprehend the level of destruction and loss. These pictures are from CBS News of the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, of May 22, 2011.

I've been to Joplin many times over the last six years or so and I don't recognize anything in these pictures. There are no landmarks left. One street looks just like another....all is devastation. People who survived the tornado can't recognize their own neighborhood. Their homes are gone. All of their stuff is gone. Dozens of families have lost someone...there are about 120 fatalities identified so far. Some churches are gone. The major regional hospital took a direct hit and is gone. Two firehouses are gone. Some schools are gone. Grocery stores, Walmart, Home Depot....gone.

 I can't even begin to imagine how a family would cope with this. It is too much for our human brains to comprehend. Sixty percent of the school enrollment for the city is displaced and families are scattered and separated. About 1,500 people are still missing and authorities don't know if they are under the rubble or fled town or are wandering the streets. Cell phones don't work because the towers are gone.

I can only barely guess at the horrendous task the city and county government has to try to piece this town back together again. There are about 50,000 people living in Joplin and the infrastructure and municipal and county services are nearly wiped out. There is  probably no one in city government that has experience with this. There is no large source of local money to help. FEMA is the only real hope for directing some sort of recovery...setting priorities...setting up shelters.  Just from the look of the pictures, insurance companies are going to be hard pressed to manage the claim process...they can't find the cars or the houses or, in some cases, the people are missing.  

A few years ago the town of Greenburg Kansas was hit by a category 5 tornado. This town had about 1,500 residents at that time and they lost 11 people in the storm. The entire town was destroyed. I went through Greenburg this last March on my way home from Albuquerque and was curious as to how they were recovering. The population is now around 700 people. The city is trying to come back as a LEED certified "green" city and they have built a new city hall and a few other public buildings. There are a  few homes built that look like subsidized senior housing. There is a small new strip mall and only a few other buildings. It looks like they are trying hard to conform to their vision but I think the jury is still out on whether they will come back to be what they were before. One thing that is a potential problem is that there is another town just a few miles away that is larger and has a Walmart and some other businesses -- and jobs.

Joplin is in a similar position. It was a viable community but was struggling with the economy and the changes that have taken place in the local industry and mining operations. Carthage is a smaller city nearby and there are other cities in Oklahoma and Kansas that might siphon off some residents or jobs. The town is resilient and will come back. Like Greenburg, this might be an opportunity to reinvent the place. The people are there but do they have the energy, resources or leadership to bring it back?  The sign scrawled on the front of the house says "We are OK here" and we can only hope and pray that they are after such a devastating event.

Grossini Torinesi

I may have mentioned somewhere that I like to cook.  I also like to eat, which is my problem...and the reason why I'm overweight and have to be on meds for various lifestyle afflictions. Once the weight gets on it doesn't want to come off.    I like to cook but I'm the only one eating and cooking for one person is not easy. I'm not a big fan of eating leftovers so I either eat more than I should or I end up throwing stuff out because I know I won't eat it if I stick it in the refrigerator.

This year I started making bread and had some good stuff coming out of the oven....Focaccia, Naan, Persian Sesame Bread, Tunisian flat bread. Most were pretty good and I can always freeze a loaf of bread or share some with others if I go for a visit.

In Piedmont, in northern Italy, they make some really good bread sticks called Grossini Torinesi after the city or region around Torino. We had some of these while we were in Bra for the wedding last June, They are usually part of an appetizer or antipasto leading up to the meal, which runs for multiple courses or until you pass out. These bread sticks don't fill you up but give you something crunchy as the meal gets underway.

I found a recipe and decided to make a batch of these crunchy thin bread sticks. You can sometimes find them in the grocery store but when you make them yourself you can add any sort of special flavoring or topping you want. One "batch" ended up being over 40 bread sticks. I used sesame seeds and poppy seeds on half of them and then used a variety of other toppings -- corn meal, onion powder, sea salt, tarragon, Greek herbs, and Jamaican curry powder.  So far I've had several and they are very good and very crisp and crunchy.

The recipe called for malt extract as sort of an additive for the yeast to give it some extra sugar. Finding malt extract is impossible in my local stores and I don't have any in my home brewing supplies.  I ended up using a little honey and it worked great. The recipe was pretty simple and didn't take a long time to make.

The End of Osama

After a ten-year manhunt, Osama Bin Laden is dead, killed by a joint CIA and Navy Seal attack on his fortress mansion outside of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

That sentence includes a lot of stuff that raises questions that won't be answered right away. Most of the world is pleased to know that he is gone. Some are not happy and some are threatening revenge. But the attack was quick, well executed and over in 40 minutes.

The individual Navy Seals were trained and ready and eager to take out Osama. The operation came off with only a few minor glitches. President Obama didn't personally pull the trigger but he put the operation in place and decided to take the risk of sending US soldiers into Pakistan without that country's knowledge to attack Bin Laden's compound. He and his advisors were tied into the operation by video as it took place and the pictures of that group clearly shows the gravity of the situation...especially since one of the helicopters was disabled and had to be destroyed on the ground. 

The operation not only killed Bin Laden and removed his body but also resulted in the capture of a tremendous amount of intelligence information from computers and other items in the compound. This information is probably more important than the actual elimination of Bin Laden.

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President Obama deserves a lion's share of the credit and most Americans are recognizing his role in this. Fox News, always a group of idiots, managed to get the news headline wrong and didn't recognize their error -- "Obama Bin Laden Dead".  That's giving them the benefit of the doubt because they can't pass up a chance to smear the President.

The Bush team has been busy trying to paint themselves as heros and it has been very self-serving. They are using this as a rationale to support their practices of torture and water-boarding. Time will tell whether any of that actually provided useful information...most experts say it doesn't help and we know that some information obtained this way is false.

I, of course, missed the news as it was happening but there were spontaneous celebrations in New York and at the White House that went long into the night. I found out about it in the morning and everyone looked exhausted.

It was a good day for the USA but I don't think this really changes much.Terrorists are still out there.  It is the end of a chapter and it may bring "closure" for some people who lost friends and relatives in the 9-11 attacks. The psychological impact is important. Napoleon said "Victory comes to those who persevere" and I would have to agree.

Actual picture of deceased Osama Bin Laden:

(Top secret)

Learning in Retirement

I decided that I was becoming too reclusive in my 'old age' and needed to do something about it. I always seem to hibernate a little in winter...usually from Christmas until spring but this seemed a little more than that. I pretty much stopped doing some of my usual stuff. I haven't been to my SAR meetings since September or October and haven't been to church since Christmas. So I decided to look into "Learning in Retirement", a program that is based at Lincoln University that offers classes and various activities for retired people.

Joie and I looked into this back in 2004 but she broke her hip in February and we didn't get to follow through. I was struck by how regulated and paper-bound the program was back then and it hasn't gotten any better. You have to fill out forms for everything and the different classes and activities can't seem to share information so you are always filling out more paperwork and paying fees. If you take a class then you need a parking permit for Lincoln University or else you will get a ticket.  The fees are cheap. There is a basic membership fee of about $40 but then classes are only $12 each and the various clubs are free once you pay the membership fee.

I signed up for a class "The Czars of Russia" and for a trip by bus out to local Cole County and Miller County towns just to see what they are like. The trip was full so I went on a waiting list until they had enough for a second trip...it goes next week. I also joined the Hiking/Walking Club and the Bocce Club.

The Czars of Russia was taught by a former school teacher who essentially taught the class from various copies of family trees of the Czars with emphasis on the Romanovs. The teacher was just another retiree who was interested in the topic and decided to share her interests with the class. Her interests tended to focus on the sordid and gossipy side of the Romanovs...plenty of material to work from. Dr. Phil would have had his hands full.  The family trees were confusing because there isn't any real standard way of spelling some of the Russian names and they, of course, used names over and over again. Must of the Russian Czars were really Germans for the most part with only a drop or two of Russian and Romanov blood. The class was four weeks - one day a week - so we got into some detail. It was interesting, especially since I had just read  the "Young Stalin" biography of Josef Stalin from his early life up to the 1920s. Much of that book provided details on the underground and the workings of the Czar's secret police and the deteriorating social conditions.

The Hiking/Walking Club is basically a walking club -- the word "hiking" hasn't come up yet. Each Thursday about a dozen people show up at a designated spot and we walk for about an hour, usually in groups of three or four waling at the same speed. This is a walking and talking group so we aren't setting any land speed records. We did laps around the county park lake last week and will be walking on the green way this Thursday,

Today was the first Bocce Club meeting at Prison Brews. We had about 15 people for the morning group. There is also an afternoon group but not many showed up because the weather was deteriorating. It is refreshingly informal and casual. There are no permanent teams and we just number off by fours to get the teams together each week. We have a set of rules but they are pretty lax on some of them in favor of just playing the game and enjoying the day. My team lost but we had a good time. The temperature was barely 50 degrees and there was a steady wind so no one was interested in playing a second game  Most of us stayed for lunch and we expected to meet the afternoon group but only one guy showed up.

So next week is the bus trip to St. Thomas and Meta and Tuscumbia or Iberia. This will be interesting. I'll post an update if I survive.  

(I survived....details on Ken Across America blog)