Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Kicked to the Curb

As one of the 13.3 percent of the city that actually participates in the city’s crummy blue bag recycling program (if only out of principle), it’s great news to hear that Daley is finally considering throwing in the towel and moving to curbside bins. Of course, there’s always this:

Late Tuesday, the mayor's office again sought to insert some wiggle room, saying through a spokesman that officials will review the pilot program before determining whether to roll the blue carts out citywide. But the mayor's comments just hours earlier showed he was finally giving up on a program he had so ardently defended.

This pilot program that will be under review is actually an expansion of an existing program in the Beverly ward, where participation rates were 80 percent. The city will now try curbside pickup in seven wards and continue to review, one supposes, how much better it works.

Anyway, particularly exciting is the fact that the curbside pick up is single-stream, meaning all recyclables will go into a single container. With the current blue bag program you have to separate paper from plastic and glass which, for some reason, Cathy and I continue to observe though both bags will, inevitably, be torn apart by the sweep and slide compactors found on most garbage trucks.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Just Like Mom Made

Cathy and I thought this is a great idea:

If you’re already having pumpkin-pie nightmares and sweet-potato panic attacks, hand dessert duty over to Flourish Bakery’s Family Traditions Recipe Support. Though you could order right off their menu (the carrot cake is delish), they are also happy to make your Grandma Ebbie’s chocolate pudding cake or Mom’s famous lemon bars. All you have to do is provide Flourish with thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhe recipe (or a rough approximation if you can’t read Nana’s handwriting). Their pastry chefs do the rest.

I'm still holding out for Flourish to really wow me, but this is a very cool-- I hope people actually do bring in archaic recipes for their consideration.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Old Content

I know, it's time for a new video, but bare with me as I test this new fangled Youtube/Blogger synergy.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

The Lefty Frizzell anthology I picked up a couple years ago has turned out to be one of my favorites. Besides being my introduction to Frizzell’s unimpeachable style of honky-tonk, it also serves as one of the best reasons yet for my headlong crush on country music. One of the great lateral pleasures to come out of my Lefty love was the discovery that Willie Nelson recorded a tribute to Frizzell back in 1975. Nelson cut an album of Frizzell covers just months before Frizzell’s unlucky passing (he was 47, died of a stroke) that same year. Not wanting to look like he was taking advantage of his death, Nelson held off from releasing the album until 1977. Frizzell’s own sublime barroom swing and twang is beautifully distilled into Willie’s own sweet-tempered saunter. I’ve listened to it twice tonight—its mellow mood a perfect accompaniment to my own. Even better, it’s mood has subtly altered own. Perfect mid-October music.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Language of Flowers

Ed Valauskas, the curator of rare books at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and current holder of the Follett Chair at Dominican, gave a great talk in my Digital Libraries class this morning. It lagely focused on how the Garden went about digitizing and marketing their many rare volumes, one of which was a small book that described the language of flowers. In Victorian Europe it was very popular to send a message in the form of a flower bouquet. Upon receiving your boquet you'd fetch your language of flowers book and decode it. Here's an extensive decoder.

Why not send the love of your life some Syrian Mallow and your mom a handful of moss? If you're with enemy, don't hesitate to send them a Wild Licorice and Tansy smackdown!

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

But I Don't Want To Write A Paper

Oh, the hilarity! You know you want to make one.