Inappropriate?

Inappropriate is wearing white after Labor Day.

Inappropriate is using your salad fork to spear chunks of beef.

Inappropriate is shaving your legs on the subway.

Inappropriate is bringing along an uninvited guest to a dinner party.

Inappropriate is wearing a wedding dress to a wedding when you’re not the bride.

Inappropriate happens a lot. It’s a misstep, a faux pas, a stumbling blunder. It’s the kind of thing that pops up from being wide-eyed, inexperienced or oblivious. The typical inappropriate human is by no means a rebel with a cause and is usually morose to discover his/her gaffe.

Suggesting that the former Navy Seal and current Missouri Governor Greitens has been inappropriate needs to stop.

prohibition sign

The MeToo movement has shown that more women than ever imagined have experienced bullying, coercion, physical and sexual assault. Calling violence against women inappropriate behavior is a serious misnomer.

Let’s try shameful, shocking, disgraceful, slanderous, base, egregious, unprincipled, or dishonorable. After-all, Greitens — you’re no Gomer Pyle, US Marine.

 

 

You’re welcome.

Every once in a while, some one comes up with some thing that compels users to immediately tell every person they know about it. This is one of those times.

And every time forever and ever when you slice effortlessly through hard-as-a-rock (ideal temp is 5° to 10°Vanilla ice cream (top flavor in US, says International Dairy Foods), you’ll thank me.

National Ice Cream Day is Sunday, July 15 this year. Plenty of time for you to click to the store. The Twister Scoop is at Amazon as well as other stores and E-bay.

twister scoop

 

Vanilla not your jam? The rest of the top five: Chocolate, Cookies N’ Cream, Mint Chocolate Chip, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

 

Martin Luther King.

Today’s 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death is a good time to remind yourself just why he’s an America’s Super Hero.

Watch King in the Wilderness, (HBO). After civil rights victories, King begins to champion against poverty, militarism and racism.  His growing resolve unleashes enormous wrath from under every rock. That he survives — to be assassinated is head-shaking.

Catch the Martin Luther King episode tonight (or later online) on the I AM series on Paramount Network . The documentary series is an inside look at the lives of extraordinary individuals, told by the people who knew them best.

king-nobel-peace-prize-P

Leave a tribute to him on the Nobel Prize web site. While you’re there, read his bio and listen to the acceptance speech he  gave in Oslo. Factoid: He is the youngest male to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. (Photo from History Channel; King smiles to learn he has won the Nobel Prize.)

Do not miss today’s Google Doodle; it’s an audio and visual performance of Angelou’s poem, I Shall Rise.  The 50th anniversary of Dr King’s death also happens to be what would have been Maya Angelou’s 90th birthday and her poem serves them both.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like life, I’ll rise.

A Better Mousetrap

Sam

Here is Sam Houston, a former resident of the Pet Shelter in Brownsville, Texas where he learned to be a warrior and ardent quilter. He prefers kibbles to bits, likes sage green and the song, Three Blind Mice.

Seriously, Döstäda?

What do Martha Stewart, Marie Kondo and Margareta Magnusson have in common?

Collectively they are killing me.  Let’s start with Martha.

She’s posting blog photos taken at her beautiful home prepping for Easter. She confides that decorating started a week ago. There isn’t a blank surface anywhere. There are chickens and rabbits, moss and bare tree branches and a vat of decorated eggs from Easters past. Martha ends her tour to go dye more eggs, she figures she needs 270 for the 2018 hunt.

And then there is Marie, the super-organizer and author, whose best-seller (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up)  instructs the organizationally challenged to clutch an object tightly and get rid of it, if it fails to spark joy.  Over 2 million copies sold.

Margareta, an artist and author from Sweden, is a new kid on the Self-Help block, with her book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (döstädning)Swedes have somewhat of a reputation for not wanting to be a bother. If you declutter while you can, your death isn’t such a burden on those you leave behind.

Listen M, M, & M, I love your entrepreneurial spunk and your business acumen. I wish you much present and future prosperity and happiness.

However, in the middle of catching up with Netflix movies, I am deeply gloomy, thinking of eggs and getting electrocuted and who really wants my front porch glider. On the other hand, I learned how to put dots over a vowel and found a word that rhymes with tostada.

 

 

A-List

Some mags feature interesting-looking folk announcing things she or he cannot live without. Among the cherished items are Stillhouse Whiskey, a Le Creuset Dutch oven and Gucci velvet evening slippers with snakes.

Although I wouldn’t go so far to say, I cannot live without a certain pan, a slipper or sheets, there are some things that would make my Awfully Sorry to Give You Up List.

Leave it to the Beavers  from Nature, a PBS tv series (36 seasons) produced by THIRTEEN and WNET NY Public Media.  Stream this one and other full episodes on Nature Online.  Be forewarned, little Timber Beaver will steal your heart.

Room temperature ruby red grapefruit from the Rio Grande Valley in SW Texas. It makes most fruits hang their heads. grapefruit

The Dictionary app. Load this FREE app and never be at a loss for words. It comes with a dictionary, thesaurus and Everything Pass Z, a department whose staff dish on all things wordy.

The Canadian ice cream store, Sweet Jesus! Not for the product but for their pluck in not flinching when beset by critics for choosing its name. Get a grip, if Rocky Road isn’t proof of the divine, what in heaven’s sake is?

Bellavitano Balsamic Cheese is:  (here goes)  rich, nutty, fruity and bathed sparingly in a wash of Modena vinegar leaving a slightly sweet/tangy  burnished coating that clings to the inside of the mouth and dances on the tongue. Best part is you can buy it at Costco and be the star of your next potluck.

Full disclosure. I did rush right out and buy Stillhouse Whiskey, infused with the flavor of apple crisp. It’s making itself at home on the cocktail cart.

 

Dear Donald

t-shirtGot your New Year’s greeting tweet today. Thoughtful of you. One thing I can count on with you, Donald, you know how to address a nation. The shout-out to your many enemies shows refreshing candor. But, how come you think your opponents lost so badly? And, oh — another thing you have wrong. No one I know is going gently into that good night. Love backatcha!

Kooser is a rock star poet.

kooser11

He’s also an American Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, essayist, and teacher; he lives in Garland, a small town near Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s published nearly a dozen books of poetry since 1969. 

Not only does he see details hidden right in front of you, he arranges them in the most wondrous way. His poems are quiet moments full of grace and understanding of life way outside of the fast lane. Kooser introduces you to people you want to know and places you want to visit and hang out for a while.

Above all, he shows you how to slow down and open your eyes. Here is a favorite, a one line poem, called Splitting an Order, from his 2014 collection with the same name.

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife and her fork in their proper places,
then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him