Now Norma Knits

The New King Arthur Flour Store/Cafe/Baking School -- Yeah, WOW, Man!

I'm long overdue for a Pee Place Post; am I right?  

So how fortunate for you! An early release from my work in Central Vermont today gave me all the excuse I needed to go and visit the new (still under construction, really) King Arthur Flour store.

I took some photos of the gorgeous place, of course starting in the most important room:  The pee place!

And, my friends, it is stunning!

Anyone who knows me well knows that this was the first and last place I went on my visit there. 

Next, I went to the cafe to get a sticky bun and cafe au lait, which I enjoyed at one of their lovely tables. You can see I wasn't kidding when I said it's still under construction. That yellow tape is not to indicate that it's a crime scene, but a construction site. 

Highly decadent, and worth every calorie, even if I gained a pound.

And then I went to the store. Baker's mecca! Even though I really held myself back on account of the fact that I just can't and don't bake that much anymore, I still managed to fill these two bags and spent enough to qualify for a free bag of self-rising flour.

I took the bags' photo there because I wanted to show you the beautiful stone wall along the outdoor table space.

The post-and-beam buildings are stately and strong, and reminiscent of Vermont maple sugar houses.

Lots of fabulous (local, I'm presuming) stone and wood throughout.

And look here: 

Copper downspouts.

Definitely worth a visit, even if you aren't a baker.

 

MwahaHAHAHA, OMG, *cough* *heave* HAHAHAHAHA!

To quote my nephew:  "So apparently they forgot to include 'did you plug it in' on the troubleshooting checklist."

Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Result Reportedly A Mistake Caused By Loose Cable

Cookie Monster Explains OWS

Yes, there always going to be rich and poor. But we used to live in country where rich owned factory and make 30 times what factory worker make. Now we live in country where rich make money by lying about value of derivative bonds and make 3000 times what factory worker would make if factories hadn't all moved to China.

Capitalism great system. We won Cold War because people behind Iron Curtain look over wall, and see how much more plentiful and delicious cookies are in West, and how we have choice of different bakeries, not just state-owned one. It great system. It got us out of Depression, won WWII, built middle class, built country's infrastructure from highways to Hoover Dam to Oreo factory to electrifying rural South. It system that reward hard work and fair play, and everyone do fair share and everyone benefit. Rich get richer, poor get richer, everyone happy. It great system.

Then after Reagan, Republicans decide to make number one priority destroying that system. Now we have system where richest Americans ones who find ways to game system -- your friends on Wall Street -- and poorest Americans ones who thought working hard would get them American dream, when in fact it get them pink slip when job outsourced to 10-year-old in Mumbai slum. And corporations have more influence over government than people (or monsters).

It not about rich people having more money. It about how they got money. It about how they take opportunity away from rest of us, for sake of having more money. It how they willing to take risks that destroy economy -- knowing full well that what could and would happen -- putting millions out of work, while creating nothing of value, and all the while crowing that they John Galt, creating wealth for everyone.

That what the soul-searching about. When Liberals run country for 30 years following New Deal, American economy double in size, and wages double along with it. That fair. When Conservatives run country for 30 years following Reagan, American economy double again, and wages stay flat. What happen to our share of money? All of it go to richest 1%. That not "there always going to be rich people". That unfair system. That why we upset. That what Occupy Sesame Street about.

See the original comment here.

(There's also a great Cookie Monster follow up, in which he says "In theory, this country a democracy, where everyone who share resources also have say in how resources used. In practice, ordinary monster have very little say, and super-rich basically do whatever they want and make government do whatever they want.")

 

Shared from:  http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/10/guy_called_cookie_monster_offe.php

 

Vermont Rocks

The tiny island of my birth* is known for a few things -- you know, besides being the island of my birth. Ahem.

I've mentioned this before, but in case you are just catching up, or if you want some review, you can read some interesting little factoids here.

Of relevance to this post, Isle La Motte is home to some quarries that are no longer in operation. 

Anyway, some time ago I was given a handful of rocks by someone who used to work in one of the quarries.

They weren't very impressive-looking things. They might easily have been crushed up and used for road fill.

But you know how I love my local rocks, and specifically how I love pendants made with local rocks and earthy artisan pieces, and I really wanted a piece of that black marble. ("Black marble" is how it was marketed for many years. That is now known to be geologically inaccurate -- it is really limestone.)

So I've been holding onto these rocks with the idea that someday I'd maybe have some jewelry made, but I never got around to it. I was driving around with them in the back seat of my car for ages.

Not long ago, I ran into the wife of the man who gave them to me. Her husband had passed away in the last few months, and she wondered if I'd done anything with the rocks yet. Well, this was the impetus I needed to stop procrastinating. 

I took my pieces of road fill in to a local jeweler who I knew was interested in, and sensitive to, local materials, Global Pathways Jewelers (which, by the way, has an Etsy shop). I knew they were interested and sensitive to local stones, because one of my other favorite pieces is a stunning pendant in Vermont red jasper that was made by them:

So we worked on getting a few of the stones cut and polished...

...and then we designed the metalwork together.

Since I have brown eyes, and wear a lot of brown clothing, I wanted to bring some brown into the pieces. I suggested to them that I'd either like to add a touch of brown stone of some sort, or, we both stated this simultaneously, "maybe we could add some copper to the pieces." So copper it was. 

This is what we ended up with.

I picked them up last week and I've hardly had them off, except to sleep and shower, ever since. In fact, if you look closely, you will see that I am wearing the earrings in the photo in my last post.

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(The large oval cabochon in the box above remains unset for the moment.) 

Another Vermont Rocks story:

On Veterans Day, a friend sent me this link to a piece about Vermont marble. 

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*OK, I wasn't actually born there. I was born in a hospital in St. Albans, Vermont, which is more truthful, but much less romantic-sounding. But my parents lived there when I was born, and I lived there for the first seven years of my life. In any event, I feel very attached to the place.

Old School

The little schoolhouse where my formal education began, in Isle La Motte, Vermont, is now a bike hostel. 

There was an open house yesterday, and I gleefully seized the opportunity to visit.

I was very pleased to see that the restorations have been carefully and thoughtfully done. The blackboards are still on the walls, the woodwork is all the same, the windows are the same, the bookcases are the same. 

It's just that there are now several beds, laid out dorm-style, in the Grades 1-4 classroom.

That's right: There were two classrooms in this school. One room held Grades 1 through 4 -- one row of about five seats for each grade -- and one teacher. The other classroom was for the "big grades" -- 5 through 8 -- with its own teacher. 

I never made it to the big-grade room. I spent Grades 1 and 2 in this school, and then my family moved. 

I remember the precise location of my Grade 1 desk, and I stood in that spot yesterday. David noticed that that was the exact spot that the sun was hitting the floor through the window.

Very Biblical, whot?

Several people visited the hostel/school yesterday, but only three of them were former students at the school. And all three of those former students (plus another cousin with the same last name) share the surname Jarvis! My cousin Julie had been there about an hour before I had, and a man named Gregory Jarvis (I'm not sure of his relationship to me, but I'm sure we are related -- he went to school there from 1933 to 1941, I think) was there earlier than that. He played the guitar and sang a song or two on their videotape. 

We three members of the Jarvis tribe signed the blackboard.

The owner's friend took a recorded oral history from me and Gerald ... and maybe Julie, but I'm not sure about Julie. She may have declined to be interviewed on tape. 

What do I remember about this school? Well, as I mentioned, I remember the location of my 1st grade (but not 2nd grade) desk, with pinpoint precision. 

I remember this corner, which was right behind my desk:

I was a good reader, and every now and again the county superintendant of schools would come to my school and sit and listen to me read to him in that corner. Heh. That right there was the extent of our Gifted and Talented Program. 

The other things I remember... Well, as I was speaking, I realized there was a strong theme emerging. The only things I remember are things that were fear-induced. Damn, that adrenaline is a potent memory enhancer. 

I remember the first time I walked to school. I believe it was the first time I had ever walked anywhere on my own, and it seemed so far away and SO BIG. And I remember not being sure where the school was or where I was supposed to stop. SERIOUSLY! My mother was probably SURE that I knew where I was supposed to be going and WHY, and we had driven past this spot, which is no more than a city block from my home and smack dab in the middle between my family home and my grandparents' home, no less than 34 million times, but I really honestly didn't know what or WHERE I was supposed to be going! I remember feeling so sick and frightened inside. School? What is school? WHERE is school? 

And yet, I was the kind of child who never asked "why?" or "what?" or "how?" I just did what I was told, even if I didn't know what the what was that I was supposed to be whatting.

We didn't have kindergarten. And orientation? These were the days before orientation was conceived. If we had it, I was absent that day. Or something. Terrified doesn't even BEGIN to describe what I was feeling.

And I was completely unsocialized. I knew my siblings, who were all babies, and I knew my parents, and I knew my grandparents, and I somewhat knew my cousins, but OTHER KIDS? Other PEOPLE? SCAAAAAAAAARY. Loud! Boisterous! Unpredictable! They bump into me and hurt me. I was a little whiff of a thing, and unsteady on my feet, it seemed.

And they knew how to use the swings and play ball games and bump and jump, and I didn't. Yeah. That was me as a six-year-old.

A teacher? I had no idea what that was!

So I walked, very similar to the little kindergarten girl (but much less sophisticated than she, by 1,000 miles) who was interviewed by the New York Times last week. When asked how she manages to walk through the woods to get to school, she answered, "I just walk straight ahead."

When I got to the school grounds and saw and heard lots of kids ("lots" = 30, maximum), something inside me said, "This must be the place. But is it? I don't know. I'm not sure," and I crossed the road and entered The School Yard. I wandered into the yard and slowed down to the point that I might fall over from lack of momentum and adrenaline intoxication. A grownup (must have been the teacher, I suppose) came up to me and must have asked me my name and told me where to go. 

That is 100% of what I remember of my first day of school. 

Would you ever guess that was me? 

No, me either.

And here is another memory: For the Christmas ... I don't know what it was called ... show/pageant/presentation/play ... we were supposed to memorize Christmas poems. Mine was Twas The Night Before Christmas, or at least some part of it. Except that nobody had told me or my mother (apparently) that I was supposed to memorize it. Mind you, things might have got away from my mother. My father had just died that spring, and I was the oldest of four kids. Perhaps the task of memorizing Christmas poems was just a little bit too much for all of us to take on. Who knows. But there I was, up in front of all the parents and all the kids, FROZEN and red and purple and sweating and dying and freezing and shaking, and not having a clue what I was supposed to do. I specifically remember my cousin Tony getting up and spitting out HIS lines just before me -- PERFECTLY memorized, and at 400 words a minute. And me, dying 13,330 deaths. And the teacher really liked me and was so kind and smiling and sweet. She was trying to give me cues and feed me lines. I remember one cue in particular: She kept on pointing to the windows, making sweeping, dancing gestures towards the windows and nodding to me encouragingly.

I was wondering, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU POINTING TO THE WINDOWS FOR? 

"... tore open the shutters and threw up the sash."

WHY ARE YOU POINTING TO WINDOWS AND TALKING ABOUT SASHES? Sashes are like satin ribbons that the Miss America girls wear across their tops!

I was a little girl well before her time, and notwithstanding this was only 1965, I am quite sure that I said to myself:

WHAT.

THE.

PLUCK?!

How I made it out of that experience alive, I will never know. In fact, I might have actually fainted for all I remember. I was somewhat prone to fainting as a child. And now I think I know why.

So yeah. The school evoked some memories yesterday. 

All of them good.

 

 

 

I'm Not Saying These Are Related. But I Think A Venn Diagram Could Definitely Be Drawn Here.

 Bachmannology:

 Jesus, Moses and St. Peter Walk Into A Republican Debate.....

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And The Truth About Scientology:

Prepare To Have Your Mind Blown

Today, in The New Yorker, I read about this and saw this video.

I am still recovering. I may, in fact, need to be hospitalized, because my brain has exploded. 

Chemical Party

I couldn't stand looking at that Tea Party corndog orgy any longer, so here is something much more fun, interesting, and entertaining, especially for my chemistry professor friends.

A Facebook Conversation Gone Wild

...with apologies for the bad formatting. I was definitely having challenges with the print screen function and cutting and pasting and pulling it into the blog....

             

(Before I made good on my threat to post this, I got the permission of [most of] those involved.)