Netflix has been making a steady number of content announcements, with several shows being revealed as in the pipeline over past months — some of them being acquired series, such as Longmire, and others being original works like soon-to-debut Marco Polo. This is just the start, however, with the video streaming service’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos revealing recently that … Continue reading
It makes sense to 3-D print some things. Parts for a space station, for example, or children’s toys. You wouldn’t really think that clothing would make that list. But that’s where you’d be oh so wrong.
Have you ever heard about Johnny Madrid or Lauren Brown? Perhaps not – unless you are a huge fan of Tom Hanks and Natalie Portman, as those were their respective aliases which were discovered after such information was stolen – and subsequently leaked over in the rather recent Sony Pictures fiasco. It must still be a rather terrible firefighting experience, so to speak, for everyone over at Sony Pictures, no thanks to the “efforts” of a hacking group known as Guardians of Peace.
Additional internal company documents have leaked out, and these would include both the aliases as well as contact information of a number of celebrities, where among them comprise of Jessica Alba, Daniel Craig and Jude Law, not to mention having a bunch of social security numbers exposed to boot.
Just to recap, the entire leaked data saga as well as public threats began not too long ago – a couple of weeks back in fact, when Guardians of Peace managed to breach Sony’s defenses, before picking up the company’s internal secrets. Ever since then, we have seen our fair share of leaked movies, company data, and sensitive information such as employees’ salaries and heck, their home addresses even. Pretty scary in this day and age of the digital world, no?
Secret Aliases Of Celebrities Spotted In Sony Hack
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I am practicing my patience, some days with gritted teeth and total white knuckles, but I am actively practicing it trying to relax in the hammock (I explain below I promise). The patience I need as Ever Upward gets into the hands of those who need it, is seen by the eyes that need to read it and is felt by the hearts that need the connection of it. This sometimes painstaking patience is lit up by the messages and reviews Ever Upward is slowly receiving.
Ever Upward is a book of my story. My story through the losses of infertility. My story into the acceptance and ownership of a childfree life. These words had to be on the cover because I trust the infertility community to help me get the full story out to the rest of the world. But they were also words we thought about leaving off the cover because Ever Upward is so much more than an infertility story that ends in owning a childfree life.
It is our story.
It is a book about life. A crazy epic story about overcoming the hard stuff and finding and fighting our way to being okay; to being better than OK.
I want this book to be the permission we need to talk about our stories,the permission to embrace them, the permission to fight for our recovery and our version of the happy ending, and most definitely, the permission to own it all.
I hope people fighting their way through the darkness of infertility treatments find comfort in my words.
I hope people trying to figure out what happens next when it didn’t turn out how they hoped find their way in my words.
And, I hope anyone struggling with the darkness of life finds the light they need in my words.
What I was not prepared for was the messages and reviews from mothers, mothers of all kinds; mothers to living children, mothers to angel children, mothers to living and angel children.
Mothers.
Me, the woman who cannot be a mother, the woman who wrote a book with the term childfree in the subtitle, is being lovingly embraced by the very club she will never be a member of.
And, yet it feels like home.
A home we all belong to.
Because, somewhere along the journey of surviving and thriving this life and especially in the making of our family, we have all lost and suffered somehow, somewhere.
Because it is not a club of just mothers. It is a club of anyone who has struggled, lost and survived.
So, a club we are all members of.
Because, when does life ever really turn out how we had planned or hoped?
And, yet we can do this work.
We can choose to be OK.
We can choose to be better than okay.
We can find our ever upward.
This surprising acceptance, this warm motherly embrace, has left me finding even more ever upward in this journey. This wholehearted embrace by the very group of women that I may forever long to fit into has allowed me to let this all be just little bit more this week.
*Or as my therapist helped me with my metaphor in letting this be…I think I am actually sitting in the hammock.
Let me explain.
The endless work of the last year or so are the fishing poles I have cast out into the crystal clear turquoise water. I must stick those poles into the warm white sand of the beach and walk away. They are cast to the big fish that could easily change my life and show the world Ever Upward with one tiny chance they give me. They are cast to every single person who needs to give themselves permission to find their own ever upward. They are cast out to you. And, I must stop putting my toes and hands in that beautiful water and allow it to become that crystal clear calm glass so you can be drawn to the amazing light that is this work. So, I am actively working on walking away, grabbing my sangria (served in a carved out pineapple of course) and sitting in that comfy hammock to soak up the embracing magic of the sun and of my own light.
This is how the perfectly imperfect person I am is going to muster up the strength to let this be, trust the work I have done, trust the universe and get the hell out of the way.
Sitting in the hammock, soaking up the sun, breathing in the salty air, sipping my sangria and truly allowing myself to really receive that warm embrace from the club I’ll never belong to.
The holiday season comes with a myriad of parties, traveling, shopping, deadlines and more. These extra commitments bring extra clutter, to even the most meticulously kept homes. Use these tips to keep each room of your home organized during the hectic holiday season.
Mudroom
With everyone coming and going and unpredictable weather, its easy for your mudroom to become cluttered easily. Install a shoe, coat and bag storage system to bring a sense of order to a space that can unravel quickly. A vertical storage solution, like the elfa Freestanding Mudroom from The Container Store, will create an organized space for backpacks, umbrellas, boots, shoes and sports equipment.
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Kitchen
The kitchen often becomes a home’s go-to catch-all spot. An increase in holiday mail means an increase in piles of paper – usually on the counter or kitchen table. As soon as you receive the mail, make a decision to immediately recycle, file or display it. Store papers you need to access in the near future (i.e. earmarked catalogs, bills, etc.) in a central location, and designate a spot to hang incoming greeting cards or upcoming holiday invites. A set of stackable desktop drawers from The Container Store is a great way to temporarily store papers, and you can move it to storage or another room after the influx of holiday mail slows down.
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Garage
Keep your garage well stocked with the items necessary to cope with the winter ahead. Keep items like salt, firewood, windshield de-icer, construction gloves and shovels in an easy to access location. A pegboard like the elfa Platinum Utility Board Mudroom Solution from The Container Store is a hanging system that lets you store all your winter survival tools in one central space.
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Living Room
As you unpack your holiday decorations, identify the items that you didn’t display last year and won’t display this year. Those items should be donated. When it’s time to repack, make a note on the items that you didn’t display. If you don’t display them next year, mark that they should be donated next year. Store your decorations in a clear plastic container to easily identify its contents.
To keep your gift wrap materials under control, use a gift wrap storage system. The Container Store has two options: the Gift Wrap Workstation, which you can hang in a closet when not in use, or the elfa Gift Wrap Cart if you are an avid year-long gifter.
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Bedroom
Don’t let the holiday grind take its toll on your bedroom. Maintain your bedroom as your home’s sanctuary and instill a sense of order in a space that can become messy quickly. Elfa’s Reach-in Closet from The Container Store provides a space to store shoes, folded clothes and accessories.
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Use these tips to create order in your house during the busy holiday season!
Stay up to date on home buying, remodeling and decorating advice on the HomeFinder.com blog.
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During the next few weeks, I will be cooking from and reviewing some of the year’s best books for gift-giving. They mostly are personal selections from chefs whose work I know well plus a few I don’t know at all. I always am enamored of cookbooks from Phaidon, Artisan, Chronicle and Ten Speed Press, but am impressed this year with the quality and variety of cookbooks published by smaller presses; Monkfish and Interlink among them.
In addition to their more obvious purpose, cookbooks are great sources of inspiration and bedtime reading. They are often the gifts we don’t give ourselves but, like a good box of chocolates, we’re thrilled to be the recipient. Happy Holidays!
Fresh Cooking by Shelley Boris
Monkfish Book Publishing, New York , 2014, ISBN: 978-1-939681-15-7
The subtitle of this compelling book – a year of recipes from the Garrison Institute Kitchen — tells the tale of a talented chef cooking for hundreds of guests in a beautiful monastery on the Hudson. Garrison Institute, created by inspired thinkers, Jonathan and Diana Rose, has served as a beacon for the world’s great spiritual and educational leaders, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama who has dined there on several occasions. Shelley Boris, the chef at Garrison for more than ten years, has wowed me with her intelligent, countrified sensibility since my first visit a decade ago. There have been many visits since and I was honored when asked to write the foreword to her book. Shelley’s compassionate approach to cooking, deeply rooted in the seasons, is always mindful of the communal table – which is literally how one eats in the Institute’s massive sun-lit dining room. From her large gracious kitchen, Shelley delights in the daily planning of her menus, each a short story revealing something immediate in nature. January brings her comforting Onion Soup with Sprout Creek Cheese and Sour Rye Toast, baked white beans, and crimson quince blanketed in phyllo. May is more spontaneous and carefree – braised lamb and rhubarb chutney, rice with sorrel, garlic chives and mustard greens, and strawberry shortcakes. The book’s recipes range from simple creations – pan-quiche with cauliflower and cheddar, savory chickpea cakes with tahini sauce; winter root vegetable salad with sherry-hazelnut dressing – to dishes that require slow seduction to coalesce their flavors — Thai-style eggplant curry with coconut milk, lemongrass and shiitakes, and braised spicy lamb with apples. Other standouts are Shelley’s breakfast scones – the best I’ve ever had — and her dizzying array of addictive vinaigrettes — carrot-lime, ginger-grapefruit, pear-beet, creamy shallot.
Personal and idealistic, she calls her repertoire friendly-to-meat eaters: rich in vegetables, yet not strictly vegetarian. “We flip the typical equation,” she purports. “Rather than cutting back on meat, these recipes help you think about where you want to add meat and fish to your diet.” Nice. Family-style and deeply practical, she rids her recipes of extra steps and superfluous ingredients in order to focus on the essence of each dish. Working within a limited budget became a driving force of creativity and resulted in recipes that are inexpensive to produce. This is exactly what a home cook desires and why she decided to write the book in the first place. Perhaps it will sit nestled next to like-minded tomes such as the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, Perla Meyers’ The Seasonal Kitchen, and Moosewood cookbooks – older iconic examples serving as game-changers in the way that people think about, and connect to food and cooking in a larger context – where taste and ethics need not be at odds.
Mexico, The Cookbook by Margarita Carrillo Arronte
Phaidon Press, New York, 2014, ISBN: 978-07148-6752-6
When authors such as Arronte compile cookbooks about a national cuisine as vast as Mexico’s, the goal is to produce a well-rounded exploration that evokes and authenticates, the inherent spirit of a nation’s cultural foodways. Margarita Carrillo Arronte, Mexico’s global ambassador for all things culinary, has certainly accomplished this along with the remarkable design team at Phaidon Press, headquartered in London with offices in New York City. This massive tome, feeling like a work of art or runway fashion statement, is undoubtedly among the most beautiful books this year. Replete with 650 recipes and 200 photos, the book draws inspiration from various sources, some from which have been altered to the author’s own taste by adjusting ingredients, measurements or methods. Ms. Arronte wants the dishes of her homeland, and its many regions, to be cooked and experienced by audiences who have not yet plunged into the depths of mole (mole-lay) making – including an intriguing beet mole – to the more familiar tamales, enchiladas, and fresh fish Veracruz-style, to the less familiar rabbit with prunes and chili, ox tongue in pecan sauce, and birria, a fragrant lamb soup from Jalisco. Much admired in Mexico for the last 35 years, Ms. Arronte has owned restaurants and food companies, hosted television food shows, researched and taught all over the world. She is a formally trained teacher, turned chef and activist, involved in the decade-long effort to have traditional Mexican cuisine recognized with a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity designation.
Although I wish that head notes were included with each recipe, I understand how daunting a task this would be. The recipes, both classic and traditional, with a swath of contemporary recipes from restaurant chefs, feel mostly accessible – but some ingredients – specific chilies, epazote, avocado leaves — may be hard to find. This does not diminish the book’s pleasures. Part of Ms. Arronte’s research is to delve into other references and oral traditions for inspiration and to re-create recipes that are considered seminal in the development of the cuisine. This is the true nature of recipe transmission and the way that dishes evolve and national cuisines are created. There is an extensive bibliography that includes the important work of Mexican culinary guru, Diana Kennedy. It is a great gift to go hand in hand with a cup of Mexican hot chocolate, in bed if not in your kitchen.
Rozanne Gold is a four-time James Beard award-winning chef and author of Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs, Healthy 1-2-3, and Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease.
Rozanne can be found on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/rozannegold.
First, there is much talk about the impact that the release of this report will have on our allies, interests, and agents here and overseas. Secretary of State John Kerry, Republicans, and various intelligence officials have all registered their concern: this will inflame, incite, and encourage attacks against Americans and our allies.
Does anyone really think ISIS, al Qaeda, etc. are actually paying such close attention?
If so, then we have a question for Secretary of State Kerry and all the others: Why haven’t you considered the potential impact of a completely different kind of message — the kind of message that would be sent by actually holding accountable all those named in this Torture Report?
Wouldn’t prosecuting all those named and identified in this report including Bush, Cheney, Addington, Tenet, Mueller, Pavitt, McLaughlin, Rizzo, and Rodriguez have the very real and substantial effect of actually quelling hostilities against us?
Wouldn’t hauling these men into a court of law for all the world to see go a very long way in restoring our name and reputation as being a nation of laws?
Because merely denouncing these heinous acts (a la President Obama) is meaningless; what truly matters is illustrating and carrying out genuine accountability.
President Obama should show true leadership and genuine courage by demanding that these individuals be brought to account for their actions and directives. Doing so would prove to the world that no American citizen is above the law; and that no American President will stand for such evil, sadistic behavior being carried out in the name of U.S. national security.
Second, there seems to be a lot of concern about potential retribution against the individuals named or made potentially identifiable in this report.
Frankly, we’re more concerned about knowing where these individuals are today because when someone carries out these kinds of brutal, sociopathic acts in civilian life, they are removed from society — not rewarded with a get out of jail free card and/or accolades. We certainly hope none of them remain in positions of power and that all of them have been given psychological counseling and/or debriefing. It is difficult to imagine individuals carrying out such heinous acts for years against human beings so easily and peacefully assimilating back into a normal life.
Third, one need only a cursory understanding of the 9/11 Commission Report to know that a large portion of the report regarding the planning and carrying out of the 9/11 attacks was collected and based upon Khalid Sheikh Mohammed interrogations. If we now know that these interrogations produced bogus, erroneous information, dare we ask how much of the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report is based on total bullshit? Yet something tells us that asking former staff director Philip Zelikow or former Commission Chair Lee Hamilton for a new 9/11 Commission Report, won’t get us very far.
If we as a nation do not demand accountability for the truth revealed in this report, then how can we ever make sure that such immoral, illegal, evil acts (or worse) will not be repeated in the future? Accountability sets a strong and undeniable deterrence factor. You commit torture, you go to jail. You go rogue, you go to jail. Simple as that. No gray area. No legalese. No exoneration. No pardon. J A I L.
Thirteen long years later, it’s time we find our moral compass and our conscience again. Because the United States of America–is and should always be a nation of laws.
(Monica Gabrielle, 9/11 widow, co-wrote this with me)
Today is my birthday and I received this email from a dentist I went to once:
There are so many things wrong with this greeting. Granted, yes, it is my special day. But, as a dentist office why are they shoving cake down my throat with this stock photo of celebrating Asians? Is it so I may rot away the enamel with sugar and sprint to them for help? Is there a group of attractive people in an office in Taipei joyously celebrating my aforementioned “special day”? So confusing! What’s with the weird non-joke about living longer? That’s like saying people who donate a kidney statistically have 50% fewer kidneys. And, finally, this greeting isn’t a tweet. Give me the gift of the Oxford Comma!
I guess I’m just bitter from my experience at this dentist office. Excuse me, “Spa“.
I went for a simple cleaning at this place ages ago. I’m compulsive about my teeth and floss more than is necessary. There is no fighting chance for plaque and tarter to set up camp by my gums before they are violently scraped away with the green minty string of death. And yet, people of the dental industry have this persistent need to remind you that you’re an absolute piece of crap no matter what level of vigilance to set toward cleaning your chompers.
“Looks like you missed a spot back there,” said the hygienist cutely whose job was practically made obsolete by my near-perfectly clean teeth.
Noting I don’t have eyes behind my molars, I opened wide so she could pick at the iota of schmutz with her metal picky thing.
Soon the dentist appeared. He was about 15 years old, introduced himself as Doctor Skippy and began poking around, “did you know your front teeth have a gap between them?”
A gap!? You’re making my mind explode Skip! But, seriously, did I not notice a bird could fly through these babies? No, please tell me more!!
“Yes, and they’re very small teeth.”
For the record, my two front teeth are smaller than say Julia Roberts’, but nothing freakish. These are American teeth after all.
He went on, “yes, the ratio of size is not as attractive or aesthetically pleasing as it could be.” Was he trying to upsell me from a scrape ‘n polish to Chiclets? Look at my chart, man, I don’t have dental insurance. This is America after all.
“Have you considered…” he began.
“Let me stop you there, is this a medical concern?”
“No, but you could be more attractive if…”
A litany of colorful words crossed my mind in that moment. Only I can pass judgment on how I look and meet that negative quota daily. But instead generated this list, “I like being in the same company as Michael Strahan, Uzo Aduba, Anna Paquin, and my Uncle Billy.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to stir up some birthday brownie mix.
WASHINGTON — Great empires rise and fall, rise again. Byzantium survives in splendor as Rome collapses before the barbarian hordes.
So it has been with ACORN. So it shall be.
Fear not, America. House Republicans have resumed their war on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, an anti-poverty nonprofit staffed by low-income people, a scant 4 1/2 years after the organization officially folded.
Truth be told, there are no signs of a resurgent ACORN. There have been no attempted coups at other nonprofits, no banners bearing the seal of the mighty oak’s seed raised above the ramparts of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. By all accounts, the organization that shattered in the spring of 2010 remains in pieces.
And yet.
On Tuesday, House negotiators unveiled a bill to fend off a looming government shutdown that included the following ominous provision:
“None of the funds made available under this or any other Act, or any prior Appropriations Act, may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, allied organizations, or successors.”
A mere four months ago, it appeared that the long Republican holy war on ACORN was at an end. None of the piecemeal House appropriations bills funding various parts of the government had included anti-ACORN language. The GOP, it seemed, was finally laying down arms against the phantom menace.
But the so-called cromnibus proves Republicans have not lost their resolve.
At this point in history, educated persons of all backgrounds are familiar with the saga of ACORN and Republicans. But it is a good story, one that bears repeating.
Congress cut off federal funding for ACORN in late 2009, after a selectively edited video from conservative provocateur James O’Keefe appeared to show its employees aiding tax-dodging schemes for prostitution. Subsequent government investigations cleared ACORN of wrongdoing, but the PR blow proved fatal, and the organization closed in the spring of 2010.
The mere demise of ACORN, of course, didn’t end the Republican assault. The House GOP over and over blocked federal funding to ACORN in appropriations bills, ultimately voting more than a dozen times to prevent the non-existent entity from receiving taxpayer money.
The most recent attack came in January, when House Republicans included four riders to prevent federal funds from flowing to ACORN in their omnibus appropriations bill. Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee explained to HuffPost in 2013 that the anti-ACORN language was essentially legislative boilerplate, routinely inserted into every appropriations bill that came out of a few subcommittees. Hing stopped responding to requests for comment on HuffPost’s ACORN funding stories after four or five iterations, and declined to comment for this article as well.
There are plenty of controversial provisions in the cromnibus. Progressive Democrats are fuming over a provision that Wall Street lobbyists secured language in the initial draft that would provide taxpayer backing for risky derivatives trades. Conservative Republicans believe the bill does not sufficiently punish President Barack Obama for his recent executive action shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The legislation may survive, and it may falter. All things must pass.
The war on ACORN shall endure.
“Sexual assault, suicide, alcohol abuse, racism” are real issues, and they happen on the University of Oregon’s campus. That’s something a group of student leaders is making clear in a recent video promoting bystander intervention and a culture of respect among Oregon Ducks.
The video was published this semester as part of the university’s effort to join the White House’s “It’s On Us” campaign to stop sexual violence.
“We tell that guy she’s clearly not interested,” one fraternity brother says, referring to bystander intervention, the practice of intervening in potentially dangerous situations including a potential sexual assault.
However, UO’s version extends beyond sexual assault. It’s an effort to stop racist and homophobic jokes, to stop students from binging on alcohol, or to get them to offer help for a friend who “seems suddenly distant and withdrawn.”
“We say something, we do something,” the students declare.
To be a Duck, the students say, is to treat women, yourself and everyone with respect. And considering the viral video about how to treat intoxicated women with respect from UO students in 2013, that statement should be no surprise.
Watch the entire video above.
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