if I was a boy

I'd wear a bow tie, if I was a boy

Four Cups, Four Saucers, Four Dollars

Super Oatmeal Brownies

2/12 cups rolled oats (quick oatmeal)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup melted butter

1 package brownie mix (including ingredients needed in mix, such as eggs and oil)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix oats, sugar, flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl; stir in butter. Pat oatmeal mixture into the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake 10 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare brownie mix as box calls for. Pour brownie mix over the cooled oatmeal bottom. Bake according to directions on box. Cool for at least an hour before cutting.

Good luck!

time to go home

Summer Reading List

In His Brother's Shadow: The life of Thomas Ward Custer- Roy Bird

George Armstrong Custer: A Biography- Mark L. Gardner

The Lost Symbol- Dan Brown

Tatanka Iyotanka: a Biography of Sitting Bull- Michael Crummet

The Girl He Left Behind: The Life and Times of Libbie Custer- Suzanne Middendorf Arruda

Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond- Joe Medicine Crow

Pride & Prejudice- Jane Austen

Custer's Last Fall: The Native American Side of the Story- David Humphreys Miller

Secret Lives of the First Ladies- Cormac O'Brien

Sense & Sensibility- Jane Austen

Wish List

tea with milk and sugar

stained glass

great dane

wine

hardwood floors

mint

world globe

giant wood desk

fresh bread

scarves

bright colored nail polishes

four poster bed

blue bicycle

fountain pens

What to do?

History Crush

White Girls

Today I was having dinner with my sister in Billings and an Indian man, obviously drunk, came wandering by our table and asking for food. My sister and said that we were not interested in giving him our food, especially as we had not even ordered yet. He intensely stared at us for a few seconds and then stated, "You don't give a shit about me, you stupid white girls. Go to hell."

Now residing in Southeast Montana, and on the Crow Indian Reservation, there is a high population of Indians living on reservations whose boundaries were created over a hundred years ago. Already, I feel like reflecting on the racism still palpable between Indians and Montana's white residents, tensions that were established with manifest destiny hundreds of years ago, and thrive still today. I will hopefully have more reflections on the subject as the summer progresses.

Painting by Edgar Samuel Paxson, "Custer's Last Stand"

I've Graduated

The Victim

"'What was the defendant wearing?' That was Mr. Freeman's lawyer.

'I don't know.'

'You mean to say this man raped you and you don't know what he was wearing?' He snickered as if I had raped Mr. Freeman.

'Do you know if you were raped?'"

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

On Religion, Sir

Four Books, Four Dollars

Chopin

Adorned in snowy red rain boots and a large oversized coat, I was greatly surprised when I was led into the Lied Center and brought up onto the main stage, where they had arranged seats around the grand piano. Sitting directly behind the pianist’s seat, I was going to get the experience of watching the performance in the most intimate manner. Nervously aware of my dripping red rain boots making a mess on the stage floor, I was quickly distracted when Steven Spooner swiftly walked onto the stage, bowed, sat, and aggressively threw his hands onto the keys in a motion that took less than a second. And thus the concert went, the pianist playing with complete confidence, assuming his role as Chopin with poise. At times, when the music hit an assertive note, he would stomp his left foot, reel his head back, and raise an asymmetrical hand, frozen until the next note. In these moments he looked as the crazed Frankenstein, obsessed and enthralled with his creation. When the music lulled, I found myself drained and sleepy, only to be cuffed when the aggression resumed. The concert was one of dramatics, the pianist playing the role of puppeteer and deciding our sensations with the strokes of his fingers on the keys. The entire audience relinquished their emotional control to the music, and for one hour and a half, on a Sunday afternoon, we all befriended Chopin.

Keepers of My Thoughts

Antique,Boutique

Found this aged travel bag, $11

Gerald L.K. Smith

Do very much react to the the rhetoric of this gentleman, speaking during the Great Depression on unemployment and the gold standard:

"Pull down these huge piles of gold until there shall be a real job, not a little old sow-belly, black-eyed pea job but real spending money, beefsteak and gravy, Chevrolet, Ford in the garage, new suit, Thomas Jefferson, Jesus Christ, red, white, and blue job for every man. Amen."

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

Stars and Bars

We stumbled across the 9/11 flag touring the country. It is comparable to seeing the Iwo Jima flag, I think. Pretty exciting!

Mr. Phillips

Then, again, men say, "She is so different from man, that God did not mean

she should vote." Is she?-

Then I do not know how to vote for her.

(Applause.)

One of two things is true. She is either exactly like man,- exactly like him,

totally like him,- and if she is, then a ballot-box based upon brains belongs to her

as well

as him: or she is different, and then I do not know how to vote for her.

Wendell Phillips, National Woman's Rights Convention, 1860

History Fact of the Day, 1/29/10

Surprisingly, many students of the 1929 American stock market crash cannot apply a cause-and-effect linkage between the Crash and the following Great Depression.

Even when the market seriously fumbled in the fall of 1929, many saw it as a possibly positive event. John Maynard Keynes noted that Black Thursday was a promising mishap to hopefully cleanse the system from speculative to productive uses. Herbert Hoover said in the autumn of 1929, "The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."

In 1930 the New York Times cited the biggest event in 1929 was Admiral Byrd's expedition to the South Pole.

The Great Depression did not fully devastate the country until a few years after the Black Thursday; after all, less than 2.5% of the population owned stocks at the time.

source: David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear

Dear Flower

Dear Flower, Sun-Dancing

About the Ladies

Estimated by a 1980 United Nations report, women do two thirds of the world's labor, receive 10 percent of the world's income, and own 1 percent of the world's property.

Apple Green

History Fact of the Day, 1/10/10

Before the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson taught mathematics at Virginia Military Institute. Though celebrated in the war, at VMI Jackson was greatly disliked by his students. At one supposed incident, a couple of angry VMI students attempted to kill Jackson by dropping a brick on his head from the top of a building. The brick hit Jackson's hat, sparing him

To me Jackson looks older than his late thirties, which is when he died. This photo was taken a few days before Chancellorsville.

Cherry Blossom

Beauty

Is not less

For falling

In the breeze

James Clavell, Shogun

Cranberry Scones

Let's Make Cranberry Scones

Ingredients:

1 cup buttermilk/ plain yogurt

1 egg

2 3/4 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup coarsely chopped cranberries (fresh or frozen)

1/2 cup sugar

1 orange, rind of

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1/4 cup icing sugar (powdered sugar + water)

-Preheat oven to 375 degrees

-Beat buttermilk(plain yogurt), and egg in small bowl and set aside

-In large bowl, measure flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt

-Cut in butter

-Mix in cranberries, sugar, and orange rind

-Add buttermilk mixture and stir until soft dough forms

-Using your hands, form dough until large ball forms and place on floured surface

-Knead dough about 10 times

-Form into a disc shape, and cut into scone shape

-Bake 15-20 minutes

-Directly after removing from oven, coat tops with melted butter and drizzle icing sugar

And Enjoy! Eaten here with some British clotted cream.