Yesterday, I Googled How to Recycle Your Bank Deposit Stamp, because our office had to change account numbers after evil wormed its way into our bank account. It pulled up: “wikiHow To Do Anything”. There is so much information. How to Tell When an Egg is Boiled. How to Take Your Nose Stud in and out of your Nose (very helpful information). How to Become Taller Naturally. How to Iron. How to Find Things You Lost. (Bet that one gets a workout.) How to Remove Paint from Skin. How to Bleach a White Shirt. OK. You understand what I’m saying… I just know that we can all be a wealth of information from this point on. wikiHow To Do Anything. How did we manage before internet?
Order Free seeds at SaveOurMonarchs.org ($5 donation and a self-addressed envelope) or go to Facebook.com/SaveOurMonarchs. The pollinators will thank you. Many couples are handing out seeds as wedding day guest favors. Just a $55 donation for 100 seed packages. What a great idea. There is only one way to save the Monarchs and that is to plant milkweed. It’s the only thing they eat, and the freeze killed most of the milkweed in our area. Monarch butterflies have officially been listed as an ENDANGERED SPECIES by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and are now on the brink of extinction. Earth Day is April 22, just in case you need an excuse to do good. We need them for our food.
Every once in a while, I have a few moments to clean off my desk. If you could see my desk, you would quickly realize that there are VERY few moments, but this evening I ‘again’ came upon a piece of paper that I hadn’t seen in a while… a quote from someone you may remember. Mike Lowrey died in 2014, but said this in life, “We are what/who we are. We are all gifted for something… and we must identify and pursue this gift… so… start where you are… use what you can… do what you can… Now!!” Every time I see this on my desk, it makes me a little more thoughtful and a bit stronger. Hope it does something good for you today.
In 1996, Prince (the musician, not William) threw a party at Paisley Park to celebrate the release of his 19th studio album, Emancipation. He didn’t serve cocktails, instead he served little Captain Crunch cereal boxes. There is a song on his album called Joint 2 Joint where he sings about his favorite breakfast food. “Oh great, now you think you’re my soulmate,” the song goes. “You don’t even know what kind of cereal I like. Wrong! Cap’n Crunch with soy milk.”
Speaking of cereal, perhaps I should start out with this little bit of information. Cinnamon Toast Crunch has some of the highest sugar content of cereals in the grocery store. That’s what makes it so yummy. When my mom lived here, she never really wanted to leave her house and spend the night anywhere, so one Easter we left early in the morning to go to my sisters in Elgin, planning to go back to LJ late afternoon. We had all eaten a wonderful meal and were sitting outside by their big party barn talking, when my brother-in-law put a drink in front of me. I pushed it back and told him that I couldn’t because I was driving. No can do. He pushed the drink back to me and said to just try a sip, so I did. There are no words to describe how delicious it was, so right then I informed everyone that we would be staying for a while, while I finished that drink. The Cinnamon Toast Crunch cocktail is made with:
3 oz. RumChata (rum liqueur with cream, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar)
1 oz. Vanilla vodka or just plain vodka
½ oz. Fireball Whiskey
Mix together in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake and strain into glass. If you want to be fancy, wet the rim of a glass then roll it in cinnamon sugar mixture before you pour in the drink, and stick in a cinnamon stick. Personally, I drink mine over ice with no cinnamon sugar.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actor Katharine Ross is 83. The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Stepford Wives. Actor Tom Selleck is 78. Singer Actor Ann Jillian is 73. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey is 69. Country singer Irlene Mandrell is 67. Actor Judy Norton of The Waltons is 65. Actor Sara Gilbert is 48. Country singer Clint Black is 61. Actor Gene Hackman is 93. The French Connection and Unforgiven, both of which he won an Academy Award for. Actor Vanessa Redgrave is 86. Laurence Olivier announced her birth to the audience at a performance of Hamlet saying, “A great actress has been born this night.” Country singer Jeanne Pruett is 86. Satin Sheets. Horn player William King of The Commodores is 74. Musician Phil Collins is 72. Genesis. Soul blues singer Bettye LaVette is 77. You should hear her version of Blackbird. Singer John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols is 67. Musician Alice Cooper is 75.
Model Christie Brinkley is 69. Actor-comedian Garrett Morris is 86. SNL. Comedian Tom Smothers is 86. Graham Nash is 81. The Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Howard Bellamy of the Bellamy Brothers is 77. TV chef Ina Garten is 75. Actor Blythe Danner is 80. Guitarist Dave Davies of The Kinks is 76. Singer Melanie is 76. Best known for the 1971 global hit Brand New Key, Ruby Tuesday, What Have They Done to My Song Ma, and the 1970 hit Lay Down. Actor Morgan Fairchild is 73. Actor Pamela Franklin of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is 73. Actor Nathan Lane is 67. Drummer John Steel of The Animals is 82. Singer Florence LaRue of the Fifth Dimension is 81.
Jeff Beck, English rock guitarist and member of the Yardbirds, the Jeff Beck Group, and Beck, Bogert, & Appice, died at 78 of bacterial meningitis. A very talented blind piano player once lent his name to a band that became very famous, but he never once played in that band. In fact, he wasn’t even a professional performer. Marshall Tucker Band’s namesake, Marshall Tucker, died at 99. Anita Pointer of The Pointer Sisters, died at 74. (If you listen to The Pointer Sisters while cleaning house, you can be finished in half the normal cleaning time, I promise.) Earth, Wind & Fire drummer Fred White died at 67. Robbie Bachman, Canadian drummer for Bachman-Turner Overdrive, died at 69. Actor Kevin O’Neal (No Time for Sergeants, Love Story, What’s Up Doc?) and brother of Ryan O’Neal, died at 77. Tim Considine, brother Mike on My Three Sons, The Hardy Boys, official photographer for Pelé, and producer of books on soccer, died at 81. Yoshio Yoda, Japanese-born American actor, and businessman who played Takeo Fujiwara in the American television series McHale’s Navy, died at 88.
While sitting at a red light on Monday morning leaving my subdivision, I realized there was a Jaguar E-Type sitting right next to me. I’m not much of a car person, so I can’t tell you what year it was… I’m not even sure I have the model right… but it was red… and so, so fine looking. Reminded me of the 1971 cult-classic movie, Harold and Maude (with Bud Cort & Ruth Gordon), where the death-obsessed rich kid gets a brand-new Jaguar E-type Series 2+2 coupe from his mother in exchange for the Cadillac hearse he was driving, which his mother then junks. The kid immediately takes a blowtorch and turns the new Jaguar into a compact hearse in just a couple of hours. In real life, it took the movie company 6 months. Then they drove it off a cliff at the end of the movie which made everyone cringe. What a waste. In the past few years, a car collector did some extensive research, then took four years and about a million dollars to build a new Harold and Maude Jaguar Hearse which now lives in California.
Yes, February 14th is Valentine’s Day, but it is also National Organ Donor Day, so don’t forget to select YES when you apply for your driver’s license, or sign a donor card, or go to organdonor.gov. More than 28,000 lives are saved each year by organ donors, but more than 105,000 Americans are just waiting.
Air Company was founded in 2019 and uses a patented and proprietary technology that mimics the process of photosynthesis by capturing carbon dioxide or CO2 (greenhouse gas) before it’s emitted into the atmosphere, and then transforming it into pure alcohol that only leaves oxygen and water behind. (As CO2 builds up in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, it has a warming effect that messes up the Earth’s climate, but that is for another column.) These alcohols are then used by the company to make eau de parfum (for perfumed liquids), hand sanitizer, and vodka. Yep. Air Vodka. The process is not cheap, therefore the Air Vodka retails for about $65 to $74.99 a bottle, depending on availability and the merchant. It is also considered a premium spirit. An average bottle of vodka emits about 13 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions during production (I wonder if that includes transportation), but a bottle of Air Vodka actually helps remove about a pound of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
We are living on this planet as if we have another one to go to. – Terri Swearingen
Kevin Costner may leave Yellowstone because his wife wants him home more. Matthew McConaughey is in talks for a spinoff because obviously his wife doesn’t care if he’s home or not. 😊 Hmmm. He would definitely make a good cowboy. My son says the movie, 80 For Brady, is silly and fun, and that I need to drop everything and go see it. Just repeating what Gage said. The truth is, Tom Brady and I have never had a really close relationship. No one should ever be allowed to age in the opposite direction.
An Alzheimer’s special care center in Des Moines has been fined $10,000 after a funeral home discovered that they received a woman from them in a body bag, which was still alive and breathing. The woman later died but had been on hospice. In 2022, the same facility was fined $500 for failing to perform the required background checks on employees, finding five workers had not received the required training to work in a memory-care facility. OOPS.
We all love Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Their dairy farms are now feeding cows a special diet involving seaweed to reduce emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Readers: Thank you for the nice messages about the story I wrote last week. My son and his girlfriend came to Texas from Boston, and I was happy. Just wanted you to know that I like it when you like it. Thank you, Debby for the cute coffee cup covered with dogs and the quote, “There is nothing as happy as a dog’s tail wagging! So true. Sometimes I think Teller will break his tail, he’s just so happy to see people. Thank you, Debra, for the homemade pralines. Delicious. Thank you, Michelle, for the fancy bottle opener for my misbehaving, getting-older hands. Well, it’s not just a multi-functional bottle/lid opener, it’s an adjustable 5-in-1 Strain-Free Gripper Opener for all sizes of jars and lids along with a fluted eye for much smaller bottles. A classic church key for my beer, and a beak to pop open the cat and dog food cans. It does everything but clean the toilets. She must really like me!
When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we
realize that one cannot eat money. – Native American Saying
Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about the new Ecovado avocado made from a combination of low-impact ingredients local to an area, then covered in a wax that looks JUST LIKE a real avocado, but it’s not? Today we are going to talk about Pearlita Foods in NC. They are a cell-cultured seafood company making a vegan prototype for oysters from ingredients like mushrooms and seaweed. The plant-based oysters will come in a no-shucking-necessary shell that is biodegradable. I love avocados and I LOVE oysters, but I sure wish we could ALL figure out a way to protect our beloved Earth, so we could continue eating real food (and vodka and ice cream). Happy Valentine’s. Spread love, not cooties.
Lisa
Send comments to Lisa Baker at lisa@thesourceweekly.com
