Fall Feast

Today is a good day for braised brisket with cranberries, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and salad from the garden.

The Holidays Are Here

Tonight we're walking to Main Street Gardens for the beginning of the Christmas festivities. There will be lots of activities, including a visit from Santa.
Not having to worry about parking is a definite perk of living nearby.
For a complete schedule, check the Downtown Dallas website.
http://downtowndallas.org/dallas_city_lights_2012/

The Zingers Are Dead. Long Live The Zingers.

I grew up on Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Donettes, Wonder bread, and a host of other bits of baked goodness. Sadly, today it all may be coming to an end with the news that Hostess is seeking to liquidate the company.
We never gave TheKiddo™ many of these treats (and certainly no where near the number I was consuming at her age). So she won't miss them if they're gone forever. I will.
Honestly, it's the Zingers I'll miss most. From the days of the Peanuts characters on the Dolly Madison boxes until the chocolatey goodness I had just today, they always made me smile.

Review: Aladin "Cool Kid. Hot Lunch."

TheKiddo™ likes to pack warm food for her lunches some days. Lately, we've been using a new bowl and she loves it. It's keeping her food nice and warm until it's time for lunch. Plus, we haven't had any spills.
If you pack food you want to keep warm, get some of these.

Plenty vs. Poverty

Random thoughts keep running through my mind. They cross and part and intersect again. And at each intersection there is one overriding question, "What will the world be like when TheKiddo™ becomes an adult"?

I worry that it will continue to be a world under the sway of those who measure success by dollar signs. A world that measures success by how much one person can own.

And that is the fundamental problem, at least in the U.S. Yet it is a problem we refuse to face seriously. Because to face it, is to shake the foundations of power and success (at least as such things are currently defined).

Success is ownership. It has been that way since the founding of the nation when only free, male, landowners had a say in the way government was run, or could even be members of the government. What made it success was that you could be free, vote, and determine your own destiny.

Over the course of time, some of those barriers have come down. And others, such as slavery, have been nearly eradicated. Yet the basis of success and power has remained—ownership.

Ownership as success inserts an Oligarchy over any other form of government. Because the government becomes corrupted by those who have the ownership that those within the government crave for themselves—so they too can become obviously successful.

Sometimes the corruption is overt. Sometimes the corruption is subtle. Always the corruption remains. As long as there is ownership—and therefore power—to be earned and used.

Make no mistake, those who have the most ownership don't want to give it up. They hide trillions of dollars from their governments in order to keep them. They aren't interested in using their wealth to keep war, famine, pestilence and death at bay—except perhaps for themselves. Their interest is in retaining their wealth, expanding their ownership, and having more control. And with that control, they amass more wealth to continue the cycle.

The nations of this world could benefit from those trillions that are hidden. In fact, the dollars that are hidden are more than most nations ever produce.

Sadly, taking the money from them and redistributing it solves nothing. It would merely change the players but not the game.

So if these gluttons of wealth are determined to keep their monies, and if shuffling it to someone else would merely change the names/faces of the gluttons, there isn't a solution that is readily apparent. Until you look at the entire problem from a different point of view.

Stripping ownership of its power is the key to changing the rules.