Sixteen Where To Blocks

 

Macaroni Salad

 

1 cup elbow macaroni, uncooked

2 large boiled eggs, chopped

1/2 small onion, chopped

1 rib of celery, chopped

1/2 bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 medium carrot, shredded

1 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon sweet relish

3 tablespoons yellow mustard

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

 

Cook pasta to al dente; drain and rinse. Combine chopped eggs and vegetables in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Add to macaroni, eggs and vegetables and gently stir until combined. Cover and chill completely. Makes 4 to 6 servings as a side dish.

Sugar Candy

 

The other day I read Gal Gadot – the actress famous for portraying Wonder Woman – had recently lost the tip of her finger. "You know in the early days of pandemic when you start drinking mimosa or sangria or whatever at 11 a.m.?” she said. “I did that, and then decided I'm going to make a cabbage salad because that's what one wants to do.” She still has no feeling in that fingertip. I can definitely relate. I hadn’t been drinking when it happened to me, but my knife wasn’t very sharp. (Dull knives are even more dangerous than sharp ones.) It slipped on a crusty baguette and sliced my index fingertip instead. The E.R. stopped the bleeding, bandaged me up and sent me home. For a while I played the organ without my left hand. Fast forward a decade or two. My fingerprint is a little odd, but the finger is functional. I suspect Wonder Woman will be just fine, too.

Twelve Snowball Flowers

 

The International Space Station is as big on the inside as a five-bedroom house. It has two bathrooms, a gym, and a picture window with a stunning view. It’s big enough on the outside to cover a football field, end zones included. It was built in space, bit by bit, beginning in 1998. There have been astronauts living and working there for nearly 21 years now. It typically carries a crew of six, but for the past few days there have been eleven people on board. As you might expect, this has meant they’ve had to get creative with sleeping arrangements and bathroom privileges. It’s probably been a bit uncomfortable, but sometime today, four of those astronauts will head home. I might catch a glimpse of the station one of these mornings, if not for the cloud cover. But I’m not complaining. I'm grateful for the rain. I'm especially glad I don’t have to share two toilets with ten other people.

Heartstrings

 

I’ve made several New York-style cheesecakes over the years. Their taste and texture are amazing, but they’re a lot of work. They require a spring-form pan, not to mention lots of cream cheese, sour cream and heavy cream. Last week I wanted to make a couple of cheesecakes, but I didn’t want a lot of fuss and bother (plus, I only own one springform pan) so this recipe came in handy:

 

Easy Cheesecake

 

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

Store-bought graham cracker crust

 

Heat oven to 325F. Beat together cream cheese, sugar and vanilla (stop periodically and scrape sides). Beat in eggs until just combined. Pour into crust. Bake 40 minutes, until ALMOST set. Cool completely, then refrigerate 3 hours. Makes 6 generous servings.

 

Heather says this isn’t cheesecake; it’s cheese pie. I guess she has a point. But she did have a slice, and she didn’t leave a single crumb.

Counterpane

 

“We cannot wait for conversion to simply happen to our children. Accidental conversion is not a principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Becoming like our Savior will not happen randomly. Being intentional in loving, teaching, and testifying can help children begin at a young age to feel the influence of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is essential to our children’s testimony of and conversion to Jesus Christ; we desire them to always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Consider the value of family conversations about the gospel of Jesus Christ, essential conversations, that can invite the Spirit. When we have such conversations with our children, we help them create a foundation, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if they build, they cannot fall. When we strengthen a child, we strengthen the family.” – Joy D. Jones

Twelve Diamond Stars

 

April 16 was Eggs Benedict Day, which I celebrated by learning to make hollandaise. The recipe calls for 3 yolks, a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, and half a cup of butter, chopped into at least 8 pieces. You whisk together the yolks and juice in a small saucepan over very low heat, then gradually whisk in the butter pieces. You can add a pinch of salt or cayenne at this point, but they’re not necessary. You’ll end up with about 3/4 cup sauce, which is much more than we needed. So, I cut it down to a third that size. If I hadn’t, I might have stored the covered leftover sauce in the fridge, and then rewarmed it by whisking in a tablespoon or so of boiling water over very low heat. It was lovely with poached eggs, Canadian bacon and toasted English muffins. But I understand hollandaise is also excellent over steamed fish or vegetables.

Nine Where To Blocks

 

Here’s another Titanic survivor: Richard Norris Williams III was born in 1891 in Switzerland to well-to-do Philadelphian parents. He received a private education at a Swiss boarding school and was fluent in English, French and German. Dick won the Swiss tennis championship in 1911. The following spring, he and his father booked first class passage on the Titanic. Shortly after the collision, Dick freed a trapped passenger by breaking down a cabin door. He was scolded by a steward who threatened to charge him for the damage. His father was killed by a falling funnel, but Dick was able to swim to a partially submerged lifeboat. He spent several hours knee-deep in freezing water before being picked up by the Carpathia. Surgeons wanted to amputate his frostbitten legs, but he refused. Instead, he orchestrated his own recovery by getting up and walking every two hours around the clock. Later that same year, he won the U.S. tennis championship.

One Dozen Spool Blocks

 

We found My Fair Lady on Netflix last week, as if we’d stumbled upon a diamond. I love Doolittle’s monologue: “I'm one of the undeserving poor, that's what I am. Now think what that means to a man. It means that he's up against middle-class morality for all of time. If there's anything going, and I puts in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving, so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widows that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same 'usband. I don't need less than a deserving man, I need more! I don't eat less 'earty than 'e does, and I drink, oh, a lot more. I'm playin' straight with you. I ain't pretendin' to be deserving. No, I'm undeserving. And I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it and that's the truth.” 

Nine Snowball Flowers

 

Doctor Barry J. Marshall is a retired gastroenterologist from Kalgoorli, Western Australia. He was convinced that a bacterium – specifically, Helicobacter pylori – was at least in part responsible for peptic ulcers. Absolutely no one took him seriously. He was ridiculed by established scientists and doctors, who refused to believe that any bacteria could live in the acidic environment of the stomach. In 1988, Dr. Marshall said, "Everyone was against me, but I knew I was right." So, he set out to change all their minds. It was against the law to test his theory on human subjects, so Dr. Marshall DRANK the bacteria himself. Within days he had developed the ulcers he’d predicted. He then treated his own infection with antibiotics and went on to win a Nobel prize. According to the Royal Society of Medicine, “The work of Marshall has produced one of the most radical and important changes in medical perception in the last fifty years.”

Nine Diamond Stars

 

When Charles Lightoller boarded the RMS Titanic in Belfast, he acted as first officer for sea trials. Then he was moved to second officer. David Blair, the original second officer, was removed from the crew. Blair left with the key to the ship’s binocular case, which meant no one in the crow’s nest had binoculars two weeks later, when binoculars might have come in handy. Charles was in his bunk when the Titanic hit an iceberg and he was summoned to the bridge. He quickly threw clothes on over his pajamas. Charles was responsible for filling and lowering lifeboats on the port side. As the ship sank, he was trapped underwater until a boiler explosion blew him free. He took charge of thirty survivors on an overturned lifeboat. Charles Lightoller was the last survivor taken aboard the Carpathia. After Charles retired, he bought a small boat which he later used to evacuate more than 120 men from Dunkirk in 1940.

Butterfly Block

 

“Several years ago, my son Jack and I had the opportunity to play the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, where the game of golf began. It was simply amazing! Upon my return I tried to convey to others the magnitude of the experience. But I couldn’t. Photos, videos, and my best descriptions were totally inadequate. I finally realized the only way for someone to know the grandeur of St. Andrews is to experience it. So it is with the word of God. We can teach it, we can preach it, we can explain it. We can talk about it, we can describe it, we can even testify of it. But until a person feels the sacred word of God distill upon his or her soul like the dews from heaven through the power of the Spirit, it will be like looking at a postcard or someone else’s vacation photos. You have to go there yourself.” – Jan E. Newman 

Nine Spool Blocks

 

Heather’s been screening The Wizard of Oz on my car’s DVD player as we run errands. I can’t watch it (it’s kind of important to keep your eyes on the road while driving) but I’ve been LISTENING. I’m really enjoying the incidental music. Schuman’s “The Happy Farmer” plays as Dorothy discovers the Scarecrow. When the two of them arrive at the apple orchard, you hear “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” As Toto escapes the witch’s clutches (say that ten times fast), Mendelssohn’s “Scherzo in E Minor” plays. (Scherzo means a clever joke or trick.) While our heroes run from the castle guards, you hear a bit of “Night on Bald Mountain,” possibly the scariest and most threatening music Mussorgsky ever wrote. And when Dorothy is safely back in her own bed in Kansas, there are strains of “Home Sweet Home.” If I were to teach music appreciation again, I’d start with The Wizard of Oz.

Four Where To Blocks

 

January 7, 2020, I started six tomato plants from seed in my kitchen window. Those six plants are still right there, in a hydroponic garden whose lights turn on at 6:00 a.m. and off at ten. I feed them every two weeks and add a little water now and then. I prune them back from time to time, so they don’t take over the kitchen. I harvest at least a dozen sweet cherry tomatoes every week, all year long. In a few weeks I’ll set more tomato plants out in pots on my deck. When those start to produce, I’ll probably clean out my indoor garden and make a fresh start, because there are signs that my 465-day-old tomato plants have nearly had it. I might try an herb garden this time, or Romaine lettuce or chili peppers. I could fill my window with pink and purple petunias. Or I may just plant more tomatoes. I do love tomatoes.

Four Diamond Stars

 

Almost exactly four years ago I wrote about a homesick teenager who decided to mail himself from Australia to Wales back in the 60’s. Nineteen-year-old Brian Robson had committed to work two years for Victorian Railways, and he had no cash to settle his contract or pay his way home. Two work buddies helped Brian with a hairbrained scheme to ship him back. They packed him into a 3x3x2’ wooden crate with a bottle of water, a flashlight, a pillow and an empty bottle for what they assumed would be a 3-day journey to London. Instead, Brian ended up in Los Angeles five days later, dehydrated, stiff and numb with cold. He ended up flying the rest of the way courtesy of Pan Am. Brian never divulged the names of his accomplices, until now. Brian only remembers their first names: Paul and John, and that they were from Ireland. But he’s hoping to reconnect, and maybe share a pint.

Reach for the Stars

 

I love to spend time every week among people who are twenty, thirty and even forty years older than I am. I’m a volunteer music therapist in a care center, but honestly, it feels like I’m the one there for therapy. I always go home feeling tired, but in a good way. I love the perspective those few extra decades seem to have granted. Last June, when we held our sing-alongs outdoors, social distanced and masked, I told them I’d just had my sixty-first birthday. They laughed and said I was just a baby. Now we’re all fully immunized against COVID, and we’re indoors again. We’re still six feet apart and (mostly) masked, but we’re not in the sun and wind. I admire how well the residents have handled this past year – as if the pandemic is just another series of punches they’ve learned to roll with. When I grow up, I wanna be just like them. 

Four Spool Blocks

 

"Sometimes I just want it to stop. Talk of COVID, protests, looting, brutality. I lose my way. I become convinced that this new ‘normal’ is real life. Then I meet an 87-year-old who talks of living through polio, diphtheria, Vietnam protests and yet is still enchanted with life. He seemed surprised when I said that 2020 must be especially challenging for him. ‘No,’ he said slowly, looking me straight in the eyes. ‘I learned a long time ago to not see the world through printed headlines, I see the world through people that surround me. I see the world with the realization that we love big. Therefore, I just choose to write my own headlines. Husband Loves Wife Today. Old Man Makes New Friend.’ His words collide with my worries, freeing them from the tether I'd been holding tight. I'm left with a renewed spirit. My headline now reads ‘Woman Overwhelmed by Spirit of Kindness.’” – Several people claim authorship. I only know it isn’t mine.

Checkerboard

 

“President M. Russell Ballard has taught that Latter-day Saints must be kind not only to each other but also to everyone around us. He observed: ‘Occasionally I hear of members offending those of other faiths by overlooking them and leaving them out. This can occur especially in communities where our members are the majority. I’ve heard about narrow-minded parents who tell children they cannot play with a child simply because his or her family does not belong to our Church. This kind of behavior is not in keeping with the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. I cannot comprehend why any member of our Church would allow these kinds of things to happen. I have never heard the members of this Church urged to be anything but loving, kind, tolerant, and benevolent to our friends and neighbors of other faiths.’ The Lord expects us to teach that inclusion is a positive means toward unity and that exclusion leads to division.” – Elder Gary E. Stevenson

Diamond Star

 

The staff at Bullitt Central High School in Shepherdsville, Kentucky recently received a call from a woman looking for a former student – one who’d attended the school four decades ago. The woman said her father had been a metal detector hobbyist before passing in 1996. Over the years he’d found several lost treasures. Some he’d converted to ready cash, and others he’d kept. One of these was a class ring from Bullitt Central High. The woman mailed the ring to the school, hoping they could reunite it with its owner. The initials, “CDM” were barely legible inside the band. They were matched to Curtis Mullins, a member of the school’s first graduating class in 1971. Curtis doesn’t know exactly how he and his class ring parted ways. “I felt like I lost it or it got shuffled in a move. You know, moving around from house to house.” But he’s pleased to have it back after forty years.

Four Inch Where To?

 

I finished my state fair challenge quilt in plenty of time for the competition last year. Then, of course, the competition never happened. I could always save the quilt for this year’s state fair, assuming there IS one. There’s a chance the quilt I made would be disqualified. I’d designed it to be exactly 30” square; the largest size admissible for the challenge. Somehow it ended up measuring 30 1/5”. That’s surprising, especially when you consider quilting usually makes a top pucker a bit. Anyway, I’m making another quilt using the challenge fabric. This one will reflect on the events (or lack thereof) of the past year or so; things we wanted to do but couldn’t, and things we did instead. If there is indeed a state fair this fall, I might submit this second quilt instead. Or I may wash the first one a few times until it shrinks down to an acceptable size. So many choices!

Spool Block

 

Today’s block is part of a new Kim Diehl quilt called “Heartstrings,” one of eight tiny quilts in the tenth Simple Whatnots collection. The fun prints are also hers, “Gratitude and Grace” for Henry Glass Fabrics. In her pattern, Kim doesn’t give the block a name, but I found it in my favorite reference book, “5,500 Quilt Block Designs” by Maggie Malone. If each of the ten collections contains eight quilts (I believe they do) then I’ve made more than half of them. Some I’ve done a few times: once in Kim Diehl prints, and then again with scraps from my own stash. I love these little quilts, but I know they’re not for everyone. I once donated one of my favorites to a charity auction, and it ended up selling for less than I’d spent to make it. If no one wants these teeny quilts when I’m gone, fine. Stuff them in my casket. I’ll take them with me.

Community

 

In December 1984 a hunter spotted a herd of roughly 3000 beluga whales trapped in ice not far from Chukchee Peninsula. Beluga are mammals: they must breathe air to survive. Passing under the extended ice – up to four meters thick – in one breath was impossible, so the whales were stranded in breathing pools that were closing in on them. When locals heard about their plight, they brought frozen fish for the weakened, starving whales. Russia sent the icebreaker Moskva to clear a path to the open ocean. At first, the massive ship and its propellers frightened the whales. They refused to follow the Moskva to safety. Then someone on board remembered that marine mammals respond to music. With classical music pouring from the top deck, the massive icebreaker slowly lured the whales to freedom. “Operation Beluga” took weeks, but by the end of February 1985 an estimated 2000 beluga whales were saved.

Lemoyne Star

 

Joseph "Gabe" Sonnier was a full-time janitor at Port Barre Elementary in Louisiana. One day in 1985, the principal pulled him aside and said, “I'd rather see you grading papers than picking them up.” Gabe took those words to heart. At 39, he started hitting the books. He’d arrive at work at 5:00 a.m., work until 7:00, take classes all day, then go back to the elementary school to finish his eight hours. Then he’d go home and do homework. Every. Single. Day. After he got his bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate, he became a teacher in one of the rooms he used to clean. Then Gabe earned his master’s degree. In November 2013, Gabe became principal of the same school where he used to work as janitor. The moral of the story: if you have a dream, go for it, no matter what obstacles there are. And if you see potential in someone else, don’t keep it to yourself.

Six Snowball Flowers

 

“Testimonies are best cultivated in the home.” – President Russel M. Nelson

“Because of Jesus Christ, our failures do not have to define us. They can refine us.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Eternity is the wrong thing to be wrong about.” – Joy D. Jones

“The Lord expects us to teach that inclusion is a positive means towards unity, and that exclusion leads to division.” – Elder Gary E. Stevenson

“Let us practice peace in a personal way, applying the grace and healing balm of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ to ourselves and our families and all those we can reach around us.” – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

“We should be led by the power of inspiration.” – Elder Jorge T. Becerra

“Through the redeeming atonement and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, broken hearts can be healed, anguish can become peace, and distress can become hope.” – Reyna I. Aburto

“My humble invitation to all of us is to never give up!” – Elder Edward Dube

Buggy Barn Bunny

 

Everything I need to know I learned from the Easter Bunny:

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.

There’s no such thing as too much candy.

All work and no play can make you a basket case.

A cute tail attracts a lot of attention.

Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.

Let happy thoughts multiply like rabbits.

Some body parts should be floppy.

Keep your paws off of other people’s jelly beans.

Good things come in small, sugar coated packages.

The grass is always greener is someone else’s basket.

To show your true colors, you have to come out of your shell.

The best things in life are still sweet and gooey.

- Source Obscure 

Manor House

 

The librarians in the East Los Angeles Library system have noticed an unsettling trend. Library patrons age 21 and younger would run up a few late fees, and then they’d simply stop coming in or checking anything out. "Ten dollars, absolutely, for some people that's a huge barrier," says LA County Library Director Skye Patrick. “This program is really to invite them back into the library, to make libraries accessible to them and their families." Because these are precisely the sort of patrons they wanted to encourage, the library instituted a program called “The Great Read-Away.” Young readers can “pay” off their debt by reading. Children's librarian Xuemin Zhong says she sees kids reading away fees daily. "I've seen as low as a couple of cents to as high as a couple hundred dollars," Zhong said. "And I've seen kids read that away because they have the commitment to do so."

Four Snowball Flowers

 

Bob Fletcher graduated with an agricultural degree in 1933, from the college that would later become the University of California at Davis. He worked as county and state agricultural inspector, and in that capacity became friends with several farm owners who were Japanese Americans. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with the eviction and incarceration of Japanese Americans eminent, the Tsukamoto family approached Bob with an idea. Bob could run the flame tokay grape farms belonging to two of the family’s friends. He could pay their mortgages and taxes, and keep any profits. Bob had no experience with grapes, but he wanted to help. He quit his job and managed the two farms for three years. As agreed, Bob paid the mortgages and taxes, but only pocketed half the proceeds. When the families were released, their farms and homes were intact, and half the profits were waiting for them in the bank.