On the Runway: That Thing Called Good Taste
‘Unfussy Elegance’ - I get that!
It’s interesting to me that despite the Mark Cross company travails — it has had several owners, including Sara Lee — the name still means something to people.
A Reprieve from Myself: What’s Revealed in a View
Although soaking up a beautiful view can help you achieve a mindful state of consciousness, inner peace is only found through deep self-exploration and honesty. There is inherent beauty all around us - in color, shape, texture and unique personality. Taking a moment to appreciate it always helps to find balance in our very busy lives.
Solving the Cake-Making Blues
Found this to be the best baking insight!!!
Solution: Eggs were not added one at a time and beaten thoroughly after each addition; an electric mixer was set at too high a speed; and/or the eggs were too cold. Try adding 1 Tbs. flour per egg and reducing the speed of the electric mixer.
Problem: Cake didn’t rise.
Solution: Too much or not enough fat or liquid in the batter; batter was overbeaten; and/or oven temperature was too high.
Problem: Cake is tough.
Solution: Butter and sugar were under-beaten in the early stages of mixing; batter was over-beaten after the flour was added; not enough sugar; not enough baking powder; and/or not enough fat. Try brushing cake layers with sugar syrup, or filling and frosting the layers with a generous layer of moist frosting.
Problem: Cake crumb is sticky.
Solution: Too much sugar in the batter or sugar was too coarse.
Problem: Top crust is hard.
Solution: Oven temperature was too high; cake was overbaked; and/or cake was baked too close to the top of the oven. Try slicing off the top of the cake layer before frosting.
Problem: Cake sinks in the center.
Solution: Too much fat and/or sugar or leavening; batter was overbeaten; cake pan was too small; the filled cake pan was tapped too roughly on the countertop; the oven door was banged shut; or the oven temperature was too low. Try cutting out the fallen center and treating the cake like a tube cake; or fill the depression with fruit or extra frosting.
Problem: Cake peaks in the center.
Solution: Wrong type of flour was used (contained too much gluten); batter was over-beaten; too little fat and/or sugar in the batter; and/or oven temperature was too high. Try slicing the peaked center off the cake, then frost the cake.
Problem: Tunnels run through the cake.
Solution: Not enough fat in the batter; batter was over-beaten; or wrong type of flour was used (contained too much gluten).
Problem: Crust is unevenly colored.
Solution: Too much leaven-er and/or sugar in the batter; not enough fat in the batter; oven temperature was too high or too low; oven heats unevenly. Try camouflaging with frosting.
Problem: Cake rose unevenly.
Solution: Cake layers were crowded on the oven rack and heated unevenly. Bake each layer on its own rack. Trim the layers to even them out and camouflage with frosting.
(Source: williams-sonoma.com)
"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
—
Obama for America on SOPA
(via joshuanguyen)
Yes we can.
(via bijan)
(via fred-wilson)
"As political theorist Jason Brennan has written, “politics teaches enlightenment in much the same way that fraternity parties teach temperance.” As human beings, we are subject to all kinds of rational defects and biases. And researchers like psychologist Drew Westen and political scientist Diana Mutz have shown that politics makes these defects worse, not better. We’re set up to view politics as a game of us vs. them, and in a game like that, the search for truth and new ideas does not fare well."
— “a nation does not change just for partisan/political reasons. What has to happen is there has to be an intellectual revolution to energize the people and get people to understand the problems in economic and political terms.” - Ron Paul
(Source: http)
The Art of Peace: From “Conflict Resolution” to “Conflict Transformation”
You can solve a problem without resolving a conflict. It is as much the work of creativity and “moral imagination” as of dialogue and commitment. - This is an important concept to adopt especially in these politically polarizing times. In John Paul Lederach’s experience, enduring change is seeded not by large numbers of like-minded people, but by a quality of relationship between unlikely combinations of people.
"You have to show the muse that you’re serious - keep showing up even when you don’t get what you want and eventually it will happen."
Rosanne Cash, Time Traveler
A Life “Circumscribed by Music” Unlocks Stories of Our Own
by Krista Tippett, host
Rosanne Cash surprised me right from the start, by calling her father Johnny Cash “a mystic,” and revealing herself as one too. As much as any person I’ve interviewed, she leaned in close. She was ready to meet me on the adventure a real conversation can be — one full of revelation and beauty.
Language and music, in that order, were the early mediums of her spiritual sensibility. She describes herself growing up as something of a geek. She remains perpetually and intellectually restless. It took her awhile to find her own voice, indeed to imagine that a life of making and performing music could be desirable. She’d grown up experiencing the performer’s life — incarnate in her famous, beloved father — as hard on those one loves. As she found her own voice, she found her own delight in joining her energy to an audience. In that exchange, she also discovered all the elements of religion that she desired: truth, beauty, mystery, creativity, and a sense of the divine.
We’ve put the word “time travel” in the title of the show we’ve created from my magical hour with Rosanne Cash. It’s a phrase that comes up again and again — especially when we talk about the music that emerged from her grief a few years ago when she lost her father, her mother, and her stepmother June Carter Cash within a span of 18 months. From this period, the Black Cadillac album emerged with gorgeous songs and poetry about love before life and beyond life. Past, present, and future are often linked in the songs she writes, though they often begin, as she describes it, with a single phrase or image.
There are echoes of Einstein here. Our ordinary sense of past, present, and future as distinct compartments moving forward like an arrow, he said, is a “stubbornly persistent illusion.” As it turns out, Rosanne Cash has long been aware of these echoes too, signing up for physics classes when her children were young, constantly in conversation with scientists now. She talks about songs in some of the same ways scientists talk about mathematics — as discoveries, waiting to be caught, as much as inventions. For Rosanne Cash, songs are embedded in the fabric of the universe; this image alone is a gift from my time with her.
I am left with a sense of a woman who has seen a lot of life and turned that into wisdom. She is raising five children, lost her voice for several years, and underwent brain surgery four years ago. She continues to work with these raw materials of experience and wrest purpose and joy from them.
Several people have told us that watching the video of this conversation moved them to tears. One emotional moment for her — better experienced on the video than by audio alone — comes when she tells me about performing at Folsom Prison in March of last year. There, her father created one of his most famous performances and an iconic album. While touring the prison, Rosanne Cash met a prisoner who served at San Quentin Prison when her father also played there in 1969, and was now spending the rest of his life in Folsom. Her eyes fill with tears as she describes her dialogue with these men about freedom, outer and inner, and the confusing human struggle to gain the latter, whatever our lives have brought.
There were clearly other stories here to be mined. But Rosanne Cash’s openness, and her music, unlock stories of our own. We end our conversation with music, with her song titled “The World Unseen.” It somewhat magically brings together the elements of Rosanne Cash’s life and all of our lives — of poetry and mystery, of loss and love, of time travel. Here are the song’s opening verses:
I’m the sparrow on the roof
I’m the list of everyone I have to lose
I’m the rainbow in the dirt
I am who I was and how much I can hurt
So I will look for you
In stories of the kings—
Westward leading, still proceeding
To the world unseen
(Source: being.publicradio.org)
