From Janie's Kitchen -- To Yours

Home for the Holidays Edition


It's the day before Thanksgiving, which means, of course, that it's time to gather 'round the laptop for the ancient ritual of the bloggers' recipe exchange! Our blog pal Historiann is the (mile-)high priestess of this mighty virtual gathering, an estrogen-fueled celebration of the culinary wisdom of women feeding their tribes to the point where everyone in the room is incapable of movement or speech, which is, like, really how most families function best, don't you think? Historiann got her post up on Monday, with links to her previous Thanksgiving posts, so run on over there to check out what the cool kids will be putting on the table this year -- sausage and chestnut stuffing! butternut squash lasagna, for those who perversely believe that vegetarians deserve something other than green beans and mashed potatoes while everyone else gorges themselves on slaughtered birds!

Last year, we shared a recipe Moose picked up from Cooking Light (or, as she calls it, Food Porn for the Conscientious), a simple but fabulous cranberry dish that people actually eat! It's called Cranberry, Cherry, and Walnut Chutney, and we guarantee it will transform your relationship to the humble cranberry. Moose put up a double batch of the stuff last night right here in the kitchen of Roxie's World. That ranked as her culinary triumph of the day, which ended in the rather spectacular culinary disaster of a blender malfunction that resulted in hot Creamy Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup exploding all over the stove, countertop, floor, and, um, Moose. It wasn't pretty, people, and neither was the string of expletives that came out of her mouth as she stripped down to her underwear (I know -- try not to imagine it) and tore through the kitchen, assisted by Goose, trying to save as much soup as she could while wiping the hot gunk off of every surface in the kitchen. Dear Black and Decker, Moose imagined writing to the manufacturer of her new blender, When designing a small appliance, it's probably not a good idea to make the wrong way to do something easier and more intuitive than the right way, especially if doing it the wrong way means hot liquids will explode all over a freakin' kitchen after midnight two days before a major goldurned holiday!

We digress. Suffice it to say that the soup course for tomorrow has been reduced to an amuse-bouche and that Iron Chef Takoma will be removing Black and Decker from her list of recommended small-appliance manufacturers. (They wouldn't have been on the list in the first place, actually. Moose decided she needed a blender for the purpose of soup-making. She was close to a hardware store, a small, independently owned hardware store she and Goose like to matronize when they can. It was an impulse buy, and she didn't have many choices.)

We're still digressing. Okay, this year's recipe comes not from a magazine but from a box, a very special recipe box given to Moose many years ago by her beloved grandmother Jane, who died in 2006 at the ripe old age of 97. Moose can't recall exactly when Janie gave her the small, brightly colored metal box (pictured above) containing a collection of favorite family recipes, some written out in a careful, old-fashioned hand (by Janie [see below]) and some typed (also carefully, probably by grandfather Hermie). (Yes, that's what the Moosian children called their paternal grandparents, who were much cooler than their small-town, middle-class, Germanic appearances might have implied.) She seems to recall that all the girls in the family were gifted with similar boxes, Janie being a gender conventionalist on matters of cooking, despite the aforementioned coolness and her devotion to her queer granddaughter and all her queer granddaughter's girlfriends. (Oh, right, Moose -- as if there were so many!)

Anyway, of all the recipes in the box -- including Sour Kraut Salad (hey, they weren't just Germanic in appearance, you know), Horrible Chicken, and Dee-Lish Coffee Cake -- there's one that has been a staple feature of Moose and Goose's entertaining for years. It gets made for every holiday dinner, every cocktail party, and every New Year's Eve bash that culminates in either a dance party or a midnight walk to the park for one last swig of champagne. Or both. I speak, of course, of Cheesed Olives, a delectable savory appetizer that is easy to make yet adds a touch of elegance to any occasion. It's the perfect accompaniment to martinis, because there's nothing like a nice cheesy dough to absorb ridiculous amounts of gin or vodka. Moose has tweaked the recipe a bit, because olives, like everything else, are bigger than they were in Janie's day and because the lord clearly intended for olives to be stuffed with jalapenos rather than plain old pimentos. The basic recipe is still the one lovingly passed from a god-fearing, Coke-drinking, bridge-playing grandmother to a heathen queer bon vivant with revolutionary dreams and a fondness for show tunes. We pass it along to you -- with love, with gratitude, and with hope that your holiday is warm and happy.

Peace out, darlings. We give thanks for each and every one of you. May all of your revolutionary dreams come true.
Janie's Olives (modernized by Moose)

3 C. grated sharp cheddar cheese
3/4 C. soft butter
1 1/2 C. sifted all-purpose flour
1 t. salt
1 1/2 t. paprika
36-40 large stuffed olives (I prefer the Santa Barbara brand, stuffed with jalapenos)

Blend the cheese with the butter. Stir in flour, salt, paprika, and mix well. Wrap 1 T. (or more) of dough around each olive to cover completely. Arrange olives on ungreased baking sheet. Refrigerate overnight. One half hour before serving, bake in a 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

Serve warm (with cocktails).

UC Strike Highlight Reel

Three Days in California

• Regents vote to increase tuition by 32% in the University of California system
• 109 arrests in campus protests throughout the system Nov. 18-20
• Buildings occupied at UCLA, Davis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz, while students at Cal State Fresno staged a "study-in" at the library on Friday to protest cuts in hours and services there.

Quote of the Week:

Not all gains are material.

(Berkeley grad student Ianna Owen, who was arrested during the occupation of Wheeler Hall, on why she considered the occupation a success even though none of the protesters' demands was met. "I feel like we really mobilized people," she explained.)

Photos of the Week:


(Rain soaked protesters and police alike during Friday's standoff over the occupation of Berkeley's Wheeler Hall. Photo Credits: Paul Sakuma, AP, via)

(A student is tasered by a police officer during a protest Wednesday at UCLA. Photo Credit: Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, via)

(Thursday's protest at UCLA. Photo Credit: No attribution given, but picked up here.)

For strike photos from the Daily Californian, start here.

National Coverage of the Protests and the Funding Issue:

CNN: Protests of Tuition Increase Continue on California Campuses

The NewsHour: College Crunch (report by Spencer Michaels begins with 31:45 remaining in the broadcast of 11/20/09 show)

New York Times: Regents Raise College Tuition in California by 32%; A Crown Jewel of Education Struggles With Cuts

Time: Tuition Hikes: Protests in California and Elsewhere

Wa Po: UC Students Occupy Buildings to Protest Fee Hikes

Blogalicious Coverage:

UCSB's Indispensable Chris Newfield -- Check his left sidebar for zillions of fabulous links, his middle column for brilliant analysis, and his off-blog archive for a compilation of links on the fee hike protests (which we've borrowed from liberally here on account of we consider Chris a blog boyfriend).

Historian Angus Johnston's blog, Student Activism -- Another source we borrowed from here.

Follow those links, kids. Inspire yourself. And promise a decrepit old dreamer of a dog that you'll spend some time over Thanksgiving trying to figure out how to save higher ed in your neck of the woods.

(Roxie's World on the California crisis: here and here on this week's events; here, here, and here on the September walkouts.)

H/T to, like, all our Facebook friends for their diligent tracking and sharing of links. If we missed one, let us know and we'll happily update.

Solidarity, dudes. Enjoy your weekend.

CA Pushback News

Breaking news is not usually our thing, but we know our readers our passionately interested in the situation unfolding for higher ed in California, so here are some headlines, links, pics, and a vid, which on a Thursday night when the moms have a dinner date will just have to do, my darlings. Peace out. And push back. Hard.

U of California regents approve 32% increase in student fees

Student protests continue, with die-in and building occupation at UCLA. (Get the latest news on the occupation from the UCLA Resistance blog. As always, for the most complete info on the UC crisis and the funding crisis generally, go to Chris Newfield's awesome blog.)

San Francisco Chronicle caption: Protesters cast shadows on the sidewalk at the entrance to the UC Berkeley campus at Bancroft and Telegraph avenues during a demonstration against proposed 32% fee hikes in Berkeley on Wednesday. Photo Credit: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle.

Los Angeles Times caption: UC Santa Barbara student Katelyn Paris, seen with a blue shirt in her lap, takes part in a student die-in outside UCLA's Covel Commons. The Board of Regents this afternoon approved a student fee increase of $2,500, or 32%, that will come in two steps by next fall. Photo credit: Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles Times.

Video of yesterday's protest outside the building where the regents were meeting. Fourteen students were arrested and one was reportedly tasered:

Pushback

At the dawn of the new school year, this blog posed a series of questions that now seem positively prescient as a semester marked by activism and tense confrontations between administrators on the one hand and faculty, staff, and students on the other grinds toward its end. In a Labor Day post that mused on early evidence of what felt like a significant shift in higher ed, Roxie's World wondered,

Are we witnessing the beginning of a movement, the emergence of a serious challenge to the conditions of work in American higher education, or is it merely the wish for such a movement, a longing that will fade when the first set of papers comes in or, more likely, when the first set of bills comes due and faculty simply hunker down to figure out how to pay them on their reduced salaries?

Campus politics are always maddeningly local. No two institutions are alike. Each has its own quirky history and operates within a unique culture, sociopolitical climate, and economic context. Any sentence that begins, "Today's colleges and universities are . . . " will very likely end up foundering on the shoals of generalization. Nonetheless, not quite three months after we posed those questions, it seems clear that on the campuses of public institutions across the country the ground has shifted. Since the walkouts in the California system on September 24, which made brilliantly effective use of blogs, YouTube, and other tools of the Interwebs, actions have been staged elsewhere that show similar organizational fortitude and a new spirit of skepticism -- even distrust -- toward higher-level administrators.

Yesterday and today, for example, graduate employees at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign went out on strike over the administration's apparent desire to give itself some wiggle room on the matter of tuition waivers for graduate students. Such waivers are a part of the students' compensation and are, of course, essential to their ability to survive and stay in school while teaching and/or researching their a$$es off for their employing institutions. (The Graduate Employees' Organization offers its rationale for the strike here.) After a day of picket lines and canceled classes, it appears the two sides have reached an agreement that secures tuition waivers, though the agreement will have to be ratified by the bargaining unit. We'll let you know if anyone from our loyal band of Illinois lurkers coughs up any fascinating or inspiring details from the soggy ground of Shampoo-Banana. Meantime, here's a report on the strike from the incredibly hip Independent Media Center of U-C.

Closer to home -- rather painfully and awkwardly closer to home, in fact -- the campus of our own Queer the Turtle U has been roiled recently by anger over the firing of the associate provost for equity and diversity and by a proposal to merge a number of diversity-focused academic programs into one unit. The firing and the merger are both being justified as cost-cutting measures, but 600 people showed up to a hastily organized protest outside the university's main administration building after word of the firing got out (in what can charitably be described as a poorly managed communications effort on the university's part). Last week, administrators faced a skeptical audience and some tough questions at a meeting of the university senate, where one longtime staff member let the higher-ups know that "trust is eroding," not so much because of budget cuts but because of problems with process and a perceived lack of inclusion. Goose, who is serving on the senate this year, grilled the provost on the merger proposal, saying that it was causing considerable distress on campus because it seemed to be motivated more by economic exigencies rather than intellectual ones. In a moment of uncharacteristic restraint, she did not use the snarky name for such diversity-dumping schemes offered up by a friend from another school that entertained the idea of putting, oh, women's studies, African American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and maybe something about Jews, Asians, and disability together: Mothers, Brothers, and Others. (Brilliant, don't you think? And you were worried about the lack of jokes in this post!)

Finally, as the image at the top of this post indicates, the California system is poised for further action over the next few days, as the UC regents meet to consider fee increases that, if approved, would mean that the cost of a UC education will have tripled since 2000. A system-wide strike of students and teachers has been called for the next three days to protest the budgetary priorities of the UC administration and to demand greater transparency and accountability. Amy Goodman has a terrific conversation with leaders of the strike on today's episode of Democracy Now! Tape and transcript available here.

Are you beginning to see the pattern here, kids? For all the local dynamics that inform and fuel any particular crisis (e.g., the California budget catastrophe, the Illinois admissions scandal), it's clear that a general chasm of mistrust has opened up between administrators and seemingly everyone else on campus. In many cases that mistrust has less to do with the failures of particular administrators than with the deepening sense among many faculty, staff, and students that a particular model of administration (call it corporate, call it neoliberal, call it No Dean Left Behind) has failed, monumentally, and has come dangerously close to destroying the institution of public higher education. Perhaps a chart can succinctly convey one possible source of what we might, without sounding overly dramatic, describe as the new crisis of mistrust on campus. The chart (picked up here) shows the increase in the number of senior managers in the University of California system relative to the increase in the number of faculty since 1997:

As Richard Evans, who crunched the numbers, puts it, the near-convergence of those two lines on the right side of the chart suggests that some day soon, "every faculty member [in the UC system] will have a personal senior manager" -- and what a day of rejoicing that will be, eh, kids? Think of the reports you could generate if you only had your very own manager breathing down your neck demanding some kind of accountability every moment of your professional life! We are, of course, much too lazy to try to track down comparable data for QTU or any other school, but we're willing to guess the changing ratios are fairly similar at most schools. The problem with having so many administrators running around is that they tend to do a lot of breathing down other people's necks making up administrative work to do in order to justify the exorbitant salaries they command. Such "work" takes time away from other types of work -- such as research and teaching -- that faculty value highly and that make institutions of higher learning exactly that (rather than, say, Report-Generating Machines).

Twenty or so years into this corporate model of university administration, those upon whom it has been imposed are well within their rights to demand some assessment of the assessors, a cost-benefit analysis of just how efficient the efficiency model of higher ed has proven to be. Such demands are being made by a number of individuals in a range of venues: by Judith Butler in a hard-hitting October piece in the Guardian that spoke of a "profound loss of confidence in the [UC system's] mode of governance" and in system president Mark Yudof; by professor of city and regional planning Ananya Roy in her remarks at the Berkeley teach-in on the crisis, where she asks the perfectly logical question of why, if outcomes assessment is the new regime, aren't administrators being fired for having failed to produce winning fiscal outcomes?; by UIUC's Antoinette Burton, who echoes Roy and has a few choice words about diversity in the corporatized university at a roundtable on Frank Donoghue's The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.

The questions are valid and, arguably, long overdue. There is relief in hearing them asked, a certain Schadenfreude in watching administrators grit their teeth and try to come up with answers. But the outcome, as it were, of this recently awakened commitment to campus-focused campus activism is by no means clear or certain. Now that the thing is going, we have to keep it stirring -- and at some point we'll need to pause to figure out just what it is we've got in this pot. Pushing back is a vital, first step. Knowing how to push forward is more vital still.

For now, though, darlings, just keep pushing.

(H/T to the Shy One and Lauren Berlant for links.)

Will Phillips for President

Gay Wads for Justice Edition

A ten-year-old Arkansas (yes, you read that right: Arkansas) boy says he will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance until gays and lesbians have equal rights. Will Phillips, who wants to be a lawyer when he grows up, says he carefully studied the Pledge, particularly that ending business about "liberty and justice for all," and realized that we are a long way from fulfilling that ideal, because, Will explains, "gays and lesbians can't marry, [and] there's still a lot of racism and sexism in the world." When Will's teacher (a substitute) gave him grief for refusing to stand and recite the pledge, Will pointed out to her that it was his right under the First Amendment to do so. After four days of challenges from the teacher, he apparently ran out of patience, telling CNN's John Roberts on American Morning that he

very solemnly, with a little bit of malice in my voice, said, "Ma'am, with all due respect, you can go jump off a bridge."

At which point, of course, young Will found himself in a little bit of trouble. Will's parents have been supportive of his stand, though he did have to write a letter of apology to the teacher for telling her to go jump off a bridge. He tells Roberts that many classmates have assumed he is gay and that he has had to put up with being called a "gay wad" in the cafeteria. "What's a 'gay wad?'" Roberts asks. "I really don't know," Will replies. "It's a discriminatory name for homosexuals."

Did we mention that Will Phillips is ten years old -- and from Arkansas? Take that, all you chardonnay-swilling blue state elitists who can't even preserve marriage equality once you've managed to achieve it!

Dear Will,

When you grow up, before you run for president, we hope you'll consider attending Queer the Turtle University, where you can practically major in being a gay wad, and everyone will think you are really really cool for standing up for what you believe in. We think you are an awesome kid, and we look forward to the day when you will be running this country. We think America needs more close readers committed to strict constructionism when it comes to the phrase "liberty and justice for all." Best of luck getting through fifth grade. And, you know, law school.

Yours sincerely,
Roxie

You must watch this vid. (A transcript of the 7-minute interview is up on Newsbusters, but we don't want to supply a link. Just Google "Arkansas boy won't say pledge," and you'll find it.) Should we send a few anonymous copies of the tape over to the White House so that the president can study an example of what a Fierce Advocate for LGBT equality really looks and sounds like? Sounds like a swell idea to me. PAWS UP for Will Phillips!



(H/T to FB pal Kelly for the link to the CNN story.)

Wine Country Safari

Or, Riding High With the Girls of 1959

A picture-perfect autumn afternoon, six middle-aged chicks, three of whom are careening into their second half century this year, a hired limo, a movable feast of a picnic, and a list of northern Virginia's up and coming wineries -- It's either the script for a really bad film that Bette Midler and Diane Keaton haven't made yet or the best idea for a theme party since Pin the Tail on the Donkey was invented. We'll go with the latter and thank Moose's childhood pal Mel for coming up with the plan and executing it to perfection. Fun was had, wine was consumed, and, because the sun finally deigned to make an appearance in the Washington area, photographs were taken.

Oh, and before you go all snarky on the idea of Virginia wines, check out the list of wines Epicurious is recommending for Thanksgiving. It includes two Virginia viogniers and a delicious Barboursville cabernet franc that the moms sampled this afternoon. I'd be willing to bet there'll be a bottle or two of something from our neighbors to the south on the table here in Roxie's World this year.

Peace out, kids, and remember -- You're only as young as your friends are willing to let you act, so choose your friends wisely and hold onto them for dear life.




(Photo Credits: Moose, on her iPhone, Loudon County, VA, 11/15/09)

Secondhand Smut

(Image Credit: Picked up here.)

We intended to break our unconscionably long blog silence with a detailed, trenchant analysis of the health insurance reform debate that would settle the burning question of how bad a bill has to be before you pronounce it Truly, Totally, Irredeemably Sucktastic and declare your opposition to it. (Fortunately, others have weighed in on this question. Bill Clinton urges the Senate to hold its nose and vote, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the better than nothing, etc., etc. Dr. Marcia Angell disagrees, arguing that the bill passed by the House is so flawed, so unlikely to control costs and offer anything like comprehensive coverage, that it might actually be worse than nothing.)

Or, we thought, perhaps we'd offer up one of our Deep Feelings about Big Events pieces on how Virginia's execution earlier this week of convicted DC-area sniper John Allen Muhammad had somehow failed to provide us with the sense of closure we had been led to expect by those who were in such a big hurry to prosecute, kill, and bury a man who was clearly insane at the time of his killing spree right here in our ridiculously large back yard in the fall of 2002. We remember that time vividly -- the walks we didn't take because our beautiful trail suddenly felt unsafe, the series of jokes Moose came up with as a way of coping with her anxiety. ("Why does the FBI think George W. Bush might be the sniper?" she quipped in an e-mail to friends. "Because they both work short hours, run really fast, and take weekends completely off." By the way, we believe this series of publicly broadcast tasteless jokes may have been what led some misguided souls to encourage Moose to start blogging.) In any case, John Allen Muhammad is dead, and we don't feel one bit better. In fact, we feel rather worse, implicated in the sickness of a culture that thinks an eye for an eye is the model of justice to which we should aspire. Really, kids? Is this the best we can do?

Or, in light of recent electoral setbacks (in, you know, Virginia, New Jersey, and Maine), we thought we might crank out another rant on how the Hopers and Changers in Obama's Washington are likely to go right on being the Waiters, Seers, and Thumb-Twiddlers when it comes to LGBT issues. Fortunately, law prof Nan Hunter beat us to that punch with a smart bit of blognostication suggesting that a likely upshot of those losses is that d. p. benefits for federal employees is likely to jump ahead of a trans-inclusive employment non-discrimination bill because it will be seen as safer (=less likely to arouse a storm of wing-nut controversy than anything involving the T-word). Way to go, Dems. You inspire us, as always, with your profiles in courage.

Or, Moose insisted, we could blog about the weather, which, thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ida, is miserably, apocalyptically, Their Eyes Were Watching God-ingly bad in the Washington area right now. This is particularly difficult for Moose, who keeps finding herself looking out the window at the endless, hideous rain and then clicking back to iPhoto, which has dozens of pictures of the epically gorgeous blue skies of her undisclosed location. She is glad to be home, but she wishes god would turn the lights back on.

Anyway, we might have blogged brilliantly and productively on any of those topics, but our plans were derailed by a story in this morning's Wa Po on a matter of great social and political import that had somehow totally escaped our notice. (You see? Newspapers still matter! Let's hear it for dead trees, even if, technically, we were alerted to this story by way of University Diaries.) The Style section story by Monica Hesse focuses on recent dramatic evidence suggesting that the handbasket to hell we are all riding in may be much closer to its destination than any of us who aren't members of the Westboro Baptist Church might have supposed. We refer, of course, to the shocking new phenomenon of pornography being consumed in public -- in places such as planes, trains, and sports arenas -- thanks to the miracles of wireless access and ever more portable communications devices.

The article is hilarious, full of funny/strange stories of innocent bystanders awkwardly encountering someone else's smut in unexpected places and often in confined quarters from which there is no immediate escape. (We also credit Hesse for the phrase "secondhand smut," by the way, which should have been the headline on the story but wasn't.) We were amazed by the tale of someone stuck in an interminable Beltway traffic jam behind someone watching porn on a TV in an SUV. We were amused by the woman who found herself stuck next to some guy on a crowded Metro car who started watching porn on his laptop. Glared at by fellow passengers who could hear the, um, sound effects coming from the guy's computer and assumed she was with him, the woman grappled with what to do but eventually just decided to go with the flow. "She leaned into her seatmate and started watching," Hesse writes, until he silently folded up his laptop and stepped off the train a stop before hers.

Hesse has some good advice about how to negotiate the increasingly blurred lines between public and private in the world of the always-on, wide open Interwebs. She suggests that some public service announcements might be in order to help folks decide when the time and place are right for a little porn. You know, like this:

ATTENTION: As similar as this basketball arena may appear to your apartment, they are not, in fact, the same place. For further evidence, please ask yourself the following question: Does my apartment typically contain 20,000 complete strangers? If the answer is "No," then you are in a public arena. You should not be watching porn.

That seems like a good rule of thumb, doesn't it? We are more than a little appalled that such etiquette tips are apparently necessary, but then again it's not as if there is a well-established link between consumption of porn and highly developed sensitivity to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others, particularly if those others happen to be female. (Insert anti-porn rant here. That's not really the point of this post, but, hey, go for it.)

We are curious, actually: Have any of you had any close encounters of the type described in Hesse's story? Standing in the line at the grocery store and subjected to just a little bit more of Stagnetti's Revenge than you ever expected to see? Seated next to one of your colleagues who, you suddenly realize, is paying more attention to the action on his laptop than to the action at the budget meeting? How do you think you would handle such a situation? Would you try to ignore it? escape it? Would you be like the woman on the Metro train and decide to play along as a way of thumbing your nose at the undeserved opprobrium of your fellow passengers? Or would you go all church lady? Maybe channel your inner WAP crusader? Our male readers are not off the hook on this issue, by the way. We want to know how you would react, too, boys.

Porn in Public: Etiquette Challenges for the 21st Century. Discuss.

Home Again, Home Again

Sincere apologies to those of you who have been sick with worry about the fate of Moose and the Thinking Woman, who, when last heard from, were still 597 miles from home and in rather frightening proximity to a field of corn. Rest assured they made it safely back to Roxie's World Tuesday evening as scheduled. TW is settling in well, as you can see from the photo below. I think I am going to like having a companion statue. It's fun to hang out with someone whose mobility is even more limited than my own.

Meanwhile, Moose is trying to negotiate a soft landing back in the real world, which seems to have gone bat-$hit crazy in her absence. (That is a professional comment, not a personal one. We will have more to say on the subject soon, if we can figure out a diplomatic way to write about the intensifying crisis of higher ed right here in our own ridiculously large back yard. Meantime, read this, this, and this. Go, students!)

Advice to travelers from Moose on the Loose now Back on the Leash: The world to which you return will not be precisely the one you left. Do not be deceived by appearances. Remember that similarity is not sameness. Time has passed -- changed even -- and contents may have shifted in transit.

Memo to Texas from Moose on the Loose now Back on the Leash: We regret to inform you that the ginormous roadside cross conveniently located on the edge of I40 eastbound on the outskirts of Amarillo, TX (top photo below) is not, contrary to my earlier impression, the most spectacularly ginormous roadside cross on the face of dog's earth. A second view and evidence obtained from my iPhone camera indicates that that honor goes to the remote kingdom of Illinois, which has a super spectacularly ginormous cross (bottom photo below) looming over I70 eastbound on the outskirts of, um, nowhere, dwarfing trees and even the billboard for Denny's. Sorry, Texas, but you have been outdone in the category of Truly Ridiculous Public Displays of Affection (Jesus Division). Better luck next time!



Memo to Drivers from the Division of Highway Safety, RW Enterprises, LLC: Roxie's World does NOT condone the taking of photographs by drivers operating vehicles at high speeds -- unless, of course, the driver is alone and unwilling to stop the vehicle, and the photo is the only way to secure evidence necessary to make a snarky point about unseemly spectacles of religiosity in American culture. Some things are, you know, worth dying for.

All the bitches are back in the pack, kids, and all is right in Roxie's World. A happy weekend to you and yours.

In the Land of the Moosians

Moose and the Thinking Woman are now just 597 miles from Roxie's World! That's right, kids. They arrived in Moose's home state at around 3 this afternoon after two and a half long days on the road. TW has been a fine traveling companion -- quiet but congenial, curious about the changing surroundings (Geez, she was heard to mutter at one point, Missouri is really tacky!), able to go for hundreds of miles without a potty break.

By dinner time tomorrow, we're hoping all the old and new bitches of Roxie's World will be together, raising paws and glasses in celebration and snuggling and hugging and getting bronze heads and fuzzy tummies rubbed.

Thanks for all your good thoughts for our happy wanderers. We'll be back to regular blogalicious programming soon. Meantime, may your skies be blue and your highways litter-free. Safe home to each and all.

(Photo Credits: Moose on the Loose, End of No Place, IN, 11/2/09)