Note: These photos are dated with the year 1936 on the archive pages, but some of them are used in the article “A Great Newspaper Builds a Great Art Museum” published in 1939. I have no way to tell when they were taken.
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San Francisco is the city where the War on Drugs was lost. Many times throughout the day, in different parts of town, one walks through a cloud of the familiar yet unusual in the streets of Kansas City smell and immediately takes another whiff just to make sure it’s not a mistake. In the middle of the day in the touristiest of the tourist areas, next to expensive stores and restaurants, a nicely dressed woman produced a mini-bong out of her pricey purse and turning her face ,to the wall, proceeded to treat her glaucoma (if you know what I mean). When my kid came out of the store, I started to recount that mind-blowing event, but then realized that she may not know the meaning of the word bong. She knew. Thank you, O-e School District for taking care of that awkward conversation!
San Francisco is beautiful city, with many different faces, amazing food of a mind-blowing variety, endless number of things to do, enough weather changes to keep an army of meteorologists busy, and more homeless people than an average resident of Midwest will encounter in a lifetime. My only advice is that if you are not in the greatest of shapes, visiting the Crookedest Street in the World is better done on a bus. It’s not that exciting and you almost need a Sherpa to get up on the damn hill. If you have time, check out SF Playhouse, we really enjoyed My Fair Lady, much better choice than a magician we originally set out to see.
Say you foolishly participated in a weight challenge and now look like a sad sack of skin and bones, or maybe you just feeling a few pounds short of your ideal weight or, perhaps, you just love ice cream. Well, you are in the right place, I’ll have your weight problems corrected and your ice cream cravings satisfied without much effort, expense or experience ( this is what we call “alliteration” in the business).
This recipe comes to us via Russian bloggers in Israel, who saw it in some Israeli magazine, which, in turn, took it from Jamie Oliver, who based it on an Indian dessert called kulfi. After various translations not only from three or four different languages but from left-to-right to right-to-left I don’t think it can be called “kulfi” any longer, so we’ll just call it ice cream. This recipe does not require any special ice cream-making machinery or weird tools, no ice-salt mixtures or whatever else you remember from your long-gone childhood on the farm (everyone knows you made it up anyway); you’ll need a blender and a mixer or something that will do blending, mixing and whipping.
The ingredients: one can of sweetened condensed (not evaporated) milk, 2 cups of cream, fruit of fruit pulp of your choice.
No, this this not a pigeon egg, it’s actually an extra-large egg that I used to demonstrate the size of this Chernobyl-bred strawberry.
I also used pineapple.
Load both into a blender and turn into pulp. You may need a splash of liquid to get the process started, I used some mango juice because it’s good for you.
Add the whole can of evaporated milk (it does your body good, so don’t be skimpy, it’s your body we are talking about here):
It should look like this:
Place into a freezer for 30 minutes to 1 hour until it starts to freeze up on top. Fight the desire to drink it all right away. In the meantime whip about 2 cups of cream (not half-and-half or who knows what) until it looks like whipped cream.
Mix in with the fruit-milk concoction from the freezer:
Back to the freezer it goes for another 6 hours or overnight. You can be creative and make popsicles out of it or make layers or draw Sponge Bob on it, I’ll be eating mine while you playing with your food.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about eating it at all: it has multiple servings of fruit, milk (for strong healthy bones), no fillers, paint, preservatives and it’s probably low-fat, just take my word for it, and every word I say must be true because I have a European accent.
Happy ice cream-making.
Hit it! [audio:https://www.kcmeesha.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Tony_Babino_-_LInternationale_from_Capitalism_A_Love_Story_by_Michael_Moore.mp3|titles=Tony Babino -L’Internationale (from Capitalism A Love Story by Michael Moore)]Since I wrote about the healthcare reform last year the situation didn’t get any better. Whatever will be voted in or “shoved down the throats of the American people” – depending on which TV channel you are watching, it will not produce a meaningful reform in this country. If President Obama was even half as good as some people believed him to be, he would have used his position and Congressional majorities to institute a single-payer system paid for by an increase in taxes. That would have been the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing needs to be done, even if it’s unpopular. Previous administration had no problem doing the unpopular and wrong things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on the wrong information and misguided convictions. Obama seemed to have the right information and plenty of conviction but not enough courage, persistence, or desire to do what he promised or implied in his campaign appearances.
What will be passed soon is in no way a reform – more band-aids; few things that sound good but will be easily loopholed by the healthcare industry; few accounting gimmicks that will make spending increases look like savings; few giveaways and favors in exchange for votes with most of the changes delayed for years. Nothing here says “vision”, “courage”, “hope” and definitely not “change”. More like “lame”, “sellout”, “weak”, “dishonest”, “gimmicky” and “disappointment”. Any talk about this legislation opening doors for more reform or debate is just that. For years no one will dare to touch this subject, and there won’t be another chance of 2 branches of Government being in sync to produce anything meaningful.
The sad part is that most of the clowns protesting the healthcare reforms and spitting on congressmen are poor schmucks who are one or two paychecks away from begging for the government healthcare and other various forms of assistance, or are already using it based on income, age or previous military service. There may be problems with Medicare of VA but they are free or cheap and, most importantly, available. That’s the most important thing about the government services in general, they may not be the best but they beat not having any. Too bad that many protesters don’t understand that this is the direction we are headed in – not having enough/any coverage. Most of the workplace benefits disappeared or deteriorated and will continue to do so in the future, many people (including myself) now have to dig deeper in their pockets before the insurance payments even kick in. In this situation the failure of the President to pass the real reform is unacceptable; his attempt to mislead the people with the neutered bill they are about to pass is just disgusting.
After the election, when everyone was crying with the fake tears of joy even I let my cynicism down a bit to see if something really can happen. Looks like my streak of not voting will continue unbroken.
In conclusion, a few old photos of a socialized healthcare at work. As you can tell it looks worn out and poor. This is a small country hospital where my Father worked, you can see him making rounds with a group of colleagues (he is on the left in the top photo). The system wasn’t perfect and many times was just broken and inefficient but it was there. People were getting treatment, doctors cared, no one lost their possessions due to a medical treatment or a hospital stay. People who remember that time will tell you plenty of horror stories, but at the same time having this system available took away at least one thing to worry about.
The best chance to have a healthcare reform in this country was wasted months ago. Even when it gets passed there will be nothing to celebrate; it’s a failure at best, but is probably worse because it will allow the President to hang a “mission accomplished” banner of his own and act like the right thing was done. Too bad.
