Tighter Financial Regulations

Who doesn’t think we need tighter financial regulations?
by Charlie Leck

Doesn’t everyone in the entire friggin’ country think we need tighter financial regulation after the banking disasters of 2008? After watching the way the banking industry conducted itself for the last decade, don’t you believe Congress should move to more strictly regulate the financial industry? Doesn’t everyone?

Well, not the banking and financial industry itself. It doesn’t. With the aid of a recent Supreme Court decision that lifts restrictions on the donation of money by corporations to political campaigns, there comes a flood of cash streaming from the big banks into the coffers of very conservative Republican candidates. Is anyone surprised?

Right now, on Wall Street, there is an immense backlash against President Obama. He’s just been too hard on them. Let’s see, first he managed to get them billions and billions of dollars to bail themselves out of deep, deep trouble. Then he suggested that Congress look into reinstating strong regulations that would prevent the financial industry from getting into this kind of trouble again.

The NY Times quotes Thomas Nides, an executive at Morgan Stanley and Chairman of the Securities and Financial Markets Association as saying: “I am a big fan of the president, but even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t feel good.” [read entire NY Times story]

JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Chase are just a few of the dozens of big banking companies that will be sending lots of money to the Republican National Committee this year, to assist them in their election efforts.

Here’s what it means!
It means the little guys are going to be asked again to give and give and give, in order to off-set the mega millions spent by the big guys. We’ll have to join together and send in whatever we can afford to provide the funds for Democratic Party candidates to stand up to the giant interests of big money. If people – if all of us – will open up and give a little bit, we can match the insane spending of the big financial interests that want to stop regulation.

Let’s just hope our money gets spent wisely.

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Why am I so lost in a fog?
by Charlie Leck

I’m a' sittin’ here this morning’ just a listenin’ to the glorious sounds of Sweet Honey in the Rock. A day ago I didn’t know the first thing about them.

“Will you two be coming to WITNESS at the Ordway on Feb 14?” A friend, the well known music genius, Philip Brunelle, put the question to me. “Great program with our special guests, Sweet Honey in the Rock!”

“Really,” I stammered and stuttered, thinking I might pretend I knew who he was talking about and then realized I would only trap myself. “Whoever the hell Sweet Honey in the Rock is. I guess I better google her and find out.”

Philip is patient with me. He always has been. I always provide him a laugh or two.

“They are an AMAZING group of 6 women, all African American, who sing about community involvement, activism, and all the good things that you and I believe in.”

So, in the quiet of a Sunday morning – the sun still an hour away from rising – I went and found their web site. Sweet Honey in the Rock! Right there on the opening page you can click a little button (the jukebox) and sit back and let the rhythm roll all around you and listen to the voices of black America celebrating its never ending journey toward freedom.

We are the ones.
We are the ones.
We’ve been waitin’

We are the ones.
We are the ones.
We’ve been waitin’

We are the ones.
We are the ones.
We’ve been waitin’

We are the ones. We are the ones we’ve been waitin’ for…

The music pounds around me. It’s very celebratory and jubilant. It makes me want to sway and swing. It carries me to other places and other times. There’s heart in this music and, of course, soul.

Freedom!
Freedom’s comin’ and it won’t be long….
Freedom!
Feedom’s comin’ and it won’t be long ...

Well, I took a trip on a Greyhound Bus…
I got to fight segregation now… this we must
I got to fight segregation around the nation
We got to keep on fightin’ all around the world

I ain’t scared a’ nobody

You can hinder me here…
You can hinder me there…
But I go right down on my knees and pray…

Yes, I will pray for freedom…
I will sing for freedom
I got to keep on a fightin’ for freedom
I got to keep on a marchin’ for freedom

O’ my freedom is comin’ and it won’t be long!

The lovely ladies carry me back to the sixties – to Mississippi and Alabama and to Los Angeles and Chicago. I can hear Chicago’s Mayor, Richard Dailey, shouting out loud: “Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill!”

I can see the dogs unleashed in Birmingham. I can see the burned out station wagon pulled from the swampy Mississippi water.

Sweet Honey in the Rock!

Amazing that I didn’t know about them! They’ve sung at the White House. They’ve won Grammies. Though their singing members have changed, they were singing more than 30 years ago. I know them now. Their singing lifts up my heart and gives me hope.

But my people will not listen to my voice;
Israel would have none of me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
To follow their own counsels.

O that my people would listen to me,
That Israel would walk in my ways!
I would soon subdue their enemies,
And turn my hand against their foes.

Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward him,
And their fate would last forever,
I would feed you with finest of the wheat,
And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.
[Psalm 81:11-16]

Is Obama Ready to Put on the Gloves?

A lot of commentators are saying that the President is ready to mix it up and live up to the promise we expected! What do you think?
by Charlie Leck

Charles Blow, in a commentary in the NY Times, writes that Obama is coming out of “a year in which he toddled about as if someone had slipped him an Ambien, taking punches and not returning them.”

Now, however?

“He almost looks like the president people thought that he would be,” says Blow, “ – a paladin, not a pacifist.”

Let us, for the sake of the country and the sake of the Democratic Party, hope so. We need a fighter. We need a leader. I would be thrilled and eat every one of my words of the last few months in front of public witnesses. However, don’t start printing out those blogs yet; for this is a President who has shown us signs of valor and determination in the past, only to step back and away from a clash for what seemed to be political reasons.

His new sense of determination is, nevertheless, hopeful.

This is a President who needs to find his stride again. In reading, a couple of times, the extraordinary book, Game Change, it became obvious that Obama was knocked off his stride a few times during the campaign. He’d actually lose his style and his speeches became more like the “aw shucks” lingo of an Alabama redneck. He’d circle and circle and circle an issue, but never land. He seems to have had that same problem for the last few months. Now it appears that someone has butt kicked him and he’s ready to roll again. Maybe it was his remarkable campaign manager, David Plouffe, who was called back into the White House by those surrounding Obama just in order to have a long conversation with the President.

Our President campaigned hard on bi-partisanship. It was a lofty ideal. In fact, the Republican Party has rejected his attempts to court them. The President acted like a teenager who’d lost his girl to the fat kid who plays third-string tackle for the high school football team. Could this really happen to him, the handsome and popular quarterback?

I think Plouffe shook the President up and suggested he get back to work on the agenda he had promised the American people and the Republicans be given another chance to get aboard along with a warning that the train was leaving the station with or without them.

Obama is suddenly acting like a President with an attitude. I, for one, like it.

Bobby Kennedy was a remarkable political thinker. I’ve enjoyed reading his ramblings on politics and political strategies in America. He believed that winners in major elections were nearly always that candidate who came closer to making the voter believe he was in the middle or centrist position. However, once elected, Kennedy did not believe that the guy in the center, the moderate, was very much liked by those who watched him. The public wants a President who leads us into action rather than stalling out because he cannot gain a consensus.

“I would advise this new Obama to stick around for a season,” Blow concluded in his commentary. “I prefer my presidents walking tall, not sleepwalking.”

And I advise that David Plouffe stay nearby, so he can give the President a good, swift kick in the pants on those occasions when Mr. Obama needs it.

Trout & Caviar

Local, haut cuisine blog has praised Sheepy Hollow lamb in not uncertain terms! Or, the story of Sheepy Hollow!
by Charlie Leck

"Anne Leck is the woman behind Sheepy Hollow, which produces the best lamb around in my opinion." [Trout & Caviar Blog]

Well, dosh-garn, or, I mean, gosh-darn, are we happy this morning. I’m happy for and proud of the little woman. She’s just won a lot of praise for her efforts to produce a high quality, free ranging lamb (meat) product here on our farm.

In blogs on January 28th and February 2nd the bloggers at Trout & Caviar, a local and highly respected blog about haut cuisine dining and cooking, really gave Sheepy Hollow a lot of complimentary publicity.

Brett Laidlaw is the creative genius behind Trout & Caviar and one of the real food geniuses in Minnesota. He’s also the baker over there at Real Bread, which produces the best bread around in my opinion (if I may steal and remanufacture a line, please).

First, I’ll tell you what he wrote about my terrific wife and then I’ll tell you “the rest of the story!” Here’s what he wrote about Anne:

“Mary had a little lamb. I had some, too. Tranche de gigot "La Boutarde," pan-fried leg of lamb slices the way they cook it at that Parisian bistro. It looks like Mary and I will be having a little more lamb in future: That's our half a Sheepy Hollow lamb (photo below), dressed weight around 26 pounds. Sheepy Hollow is our Midtown Farmers Market lamb vendor. Anne Leck is the woman behind Sheepy Hollow, which produces the best lamb around, in my opinion. Our friend Lynne arranged our lamb buy, and took the other half. She kindly let us have the offal: heart, liver, kidneys, and tongue. I am not at all sure what I'm going to do with that stuff. I'm excited about the opportunity to work with offal that's this fresh and lovely. And I am filled with trepidation, at the same time: I want to really like it, but I'm not sure I will; I want to do it justice, but I have almost no experience cooking this sort of thing. I think I'll let Fergus be my guide.

Another part of me, the Joycean part, is inclined to take this passage from Ulysses about Leopold Bloom's gustatory preferences, and just wing it:

'Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.'

“The lamb leg cutlets were fantastic. The recipe, from Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking, adapted from La Boutarde in Paris, is simplicity itself. That was exactly what I was looking for, because 1) I didn't want to go to a lot of trouble, and 2) I wanted our first taste of this lamb to highlight the flavor of the lamb, rather than showy cooking technique. The accompaniments were equally simple, a mixed mash--potatoes, carrot, celery root, and parsnip--a slice of fresh bread, a glass of red wine (the bargain brouilly we opened was halfway to vinegar; a four-dollar Argentine Syrah saved the day).

"This meat was simply wonderful. It was dense and a bit chewy, but supremely juicy, with a depth of flavor that's rare to find in meat these days. Mary and I agreed that the flavor was almost more like that of grass-fed beef than run-of-the-mill lamb.”

And that’s only from Mary Had a Little Lamb, one of the two blogs. There’s another, called Absolutely Offal, which also hails Anne’s lamb product as something very special.

The whole story of Sheepy Hollow really begins with Garrison Keillor.

That’s right, Garrison Keillor, many, many years ago -- I think it was probably early in 1979, when I was driving across the city and heading for my office early in the morning. Back in those days, Keillor was doing the Prairie Home Companion Show on only a local basis – going out only to the Minnesota Public Radio Network. A farmer from up in the northern part of the state, Ron Parker, called in (or maybe it was his wife, Teresa). The years dim one’s memory. They raised black sheep. One of them told Keillor that they’d had an unusual number of triplets born that late winter and they were trying to come up with creative triplet names for the newborns.

“You know,” the caller said, “like Good, Bad and Indifferent; or Faith, Hope and Charity.”

Well, I got a good laugh out of that and continued the giggling as I drove along while Keillor’s listeners called in their remarkable and unremarkable ideas.

"How about Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry?"

"I think Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato is good!"

"Why not Gold, Silver and Bronze?"

Again well, over dinner that evening, I shared the story of my drive and the cute names that were called in to the radio show. I even remembered the names of the farmers who called-in – Ron and Teresa Parker – and the town in which they lived. From across the dinner table I could see my wife’s eyes brighten and I saw that look she gets when a wild idea is about to be turned into reality.

Within a couple of days, Good, Bad and Indifferent were living with us. Soon after, a ram was purchased from someone (perhaps the Parkers) and then there were dozens of sheep pasturing on our farm. It wasn’t very long before there were hundreds.

Anne set about studying lamb production. The American Lamb Producers Association was immensely helpful. She experimented with breeds and hybrid crosses and eventually settled on a cross-breeding process that became her great secret.

The key to her lamb is our land. We control everything that is put on the land and grown here. That allows us to control everything the critters eat. We can tell our customers that our lambs are free-ranging on land where no pesticides have been introduced and their food is pure and free of chemicals.

Listen to me! I keep saying “we.” Change that. It is “her” or “she” and not “me!”

Somewhere during that first year or two of study, Anne came up with the idea of calling the operation Sheepy Hollow. I had business cards made for her and designed a few signs and a letterhead. Then we created a web page. We soon found out that the name was already trademarked and owned by someone else – an operation in Australia. Thinking it was another lamb producer, I called down under and found out it was really a manufacturer of motorcycle seat-covers made of sheep’s wool. Gracious, what a surprise! I also found out that the owner was a cheery fellow and we arrived at an agreement, which he soon put in writing for me, that we could use the term “Sheepy Hollow” if it was always used as a connection to our farm name. So, we legally became “Sheepy Hollow at Native Oaks Farm.”

Anne sells by the side or whole lamb. Its popularity has spread all over our region and her list of regular customers continues to grow and grow. At farmers markets she sells individual cuts or folks may order sides cut to their specifications.

Every Saturday Anne sets up at the Midtown Farmers Market in south Minneapolis (Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue). She’s made an awful lot of good friends there. One of them is Brett Laidlaw, who sits across the way at the Real Bread booth. Brett makes the finest bread I’ve ever tasted. He’s traveled all over France (and many other parts of the world) learning about bread baking techniques. He’s usually sold out half way through each Saturday's market and that leaves him time to wander around and get acquainted with other vendors. Brett is also a remarkable chef.

We also set up at the Excelsior Farmers Market on Thursday, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Thanks, Brett, for all the wonderful photos.

A new friend, with whom we’ve become acquainted only in the last month or so, formerly owned and operated one of Minneapolis’ finest restaurants – the New French Café. She bought a whole lamb from us and happened to share one of the sides with Brett. That’s what prompted the wonderful comments about Sheepy Hollow lamb on Brett’s blog.

We can’t thank Brett enough for his good comments. If you love to cook and eat scrumptious food, you should become a regular reader of Trout & Caviar.

barbeque riblets are pictured above

What a Difference a Year Makes!

The wonderful caucus system!
by Charlie Leck

Man, what a difference a year makes. I went to our community’s political caucus last night. There were seven (7) – yes, that’s right, SEVEN – of us there to help decide the future of our state. Last year, during the Obama craze, over 120 people attended our small town’s Democratic Party caucus. It was pretty exciting last year. This year it was boring as hell. That, however, is the way real politics is – it’s boring and tedious.

A friend of mine and I went as a tag team. We both wanted to get to the State Senate endorsing convention as delegates and even on to the State Convention so we can support the guy we’d like to see run for Governor of our state (Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak). With our two votes and another from someone else in the caucus our candidate got three (3) straw-ballot votes – one (1) more than anyone else got. Rybak did well all around the state and came in as the leader in the straw ballot vote.

We really need a progressive Governor in this state and this has got to be the year!

My buddy and I were both terribly interested, however, in the neat lady who is seeking the endorsement to run for the U.S. Congress in our district. We both had the sense that she looks like a winner. We haven’t had that feeling in our Congressional District in a long time. We desperately need to defeat the Republican incumbent and elect a progressive Democrat to that seat. So, if anyone of you wants to help us, be sure to contribute. Maureen Hackett for Congress will tell you all about her and provide you an easy means for contributing. Come on, climb aboard and help us out here – even if you’re from faraway places like Colorado, Georgia, South Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey or Paris. When you read Maureen Hackett’s resume you’ll agree with me that she sounds like a great person to represent us in Congress.

I’ll tell you this: She wants a public option in the health care bill.

She’s a military vet – a tour of duty in the U.S. Air Force – and she’s a medical doctor. She’s terribly involved in progressive issues, big on protecting the environment and it sounds like she can both raise money and work a crowd. I can’t wait to meet her.

I was impressed with Obama’s call to the Party – to not cave after Massachusetts, but to get in there and work even harder to get progressives elected. It’s difficult to believe how important this one seat is. We’ve got to elect Maureen Hackett to Congress.

Out of Touch and Out of Gas

Who the hell is Beyoncé?
by Charlie Leck

One of the really cruddy things about getting old is how you lose touch. I turned to the NY Times this morning to read the important news of the world – you know, all the news that fit to print. And there was a headline: BIGGEST HAUL AT GRAMMYS BELONGS TO BEYONCÉ.

Just who the hell is Beyoncé? I hear the name all the time, but I’ve never really heard her (I don’t think). Today, in the newspaper, I got my first really good look at her. Stunning, in a crazy sort of way! So, I took a listen to a You Tube Video – Single Ladies: Put a Ring on it!

So that’s the hot music nowadays, ey? Oh my gosh! Is it as dumb as the stuff we listened to as teenagers? I remember how hot Bobby Vinton was, and how You Are My Special Angel was “our song" when I was a senior in high school! I wonder where she is today! You can hear a more modern recording of the oldie as sung by Tania Depp (to Johnny).

If you weren’t a really cool teenager, as I wasn’t, you were also listening to recordings by Perry Como, like Magic Moments (“…the way that we kissed while taking a hayride...”). Do they do hayrides anymore? My goodness! A hayride with a girl who would hold hands with you was about the end of the world when I was a teenager.

Johnny Mathis singing Chances Are was about as good as it gets. Music was soft and mellow and you could make out every word and they sent chills down your spine when you were standing near your steady girl.

When I think back – way back – on high school days, my most pleasant memories are the music as it streamed through the radio on my ’51 Ford (dark blue, with lots of chrome and skirts and with a foxtail flying from the radio antennae). You drove down Main Street, driving slowly, with the windows down, and Earth Angels by the Penguins was blaring out the window. It was cool and it was beautiful.

Elvis came along toward the end of my high school years and dominated the charts in ’57 and ’58. I liked him okay, but I didn’t want to see the mellow, soft music go away. All Shook Up was at the top of the charts for a good part of my junior year. It was radical music to our parents and they thought we were crazy – as crazy as I think the current teenage generation is.

At the beginning of my senior year, Sam Cooke grabbed the top of the charts with a song we all loved and listened to constantly: You Send Me. And boy, did I have a girl who sent me – straight to heaven on a rocket ship that was as smooth and quiet as a Cadillac, baby.

Then Roger Williams came along, playing the piano and making it sing. Kids don’t have this kind of sheer beauty in their music today. Is there anyone out there old enough to remember him playing Till? When our parents heard Roger playing they thought there was hope for us and that we’d gained back some of our sanity.

Till the moon deserts the sky…
Till all the seas run dry…
Till then I’ll worship you…
Till the tropic sun grows cold

Till this young world grows old…
My darkling I’ll adore you...
You are my reason to live…
All I own I would give, just to have you adore me…

Till the rivers flow upstream
Till lovers cease to dream
Till then I’m yours…
Be mine!

Then, as I was coming down the stretch in high school, approaching graduation day, along came Paul Anka and You Are My Destiny. I can remember traveling to baseball games in the spring and summer of ’58 and listening to this song, blasting out on the cheap radio in the front of the bus. Anka was cool back then and he was so loved that old geezers, like I, still flock to his performances in Vegas.

It all came to end about the time I graduated. Presley was huge and rock and roll took over and the soft and lovely mood songs started disappearing. Danny and the Juniors put an exclamation mark on the era-change with Rock and Roll is Here to Stay! Watch them belt out the proclamation in nicely pressed blazers, crisp dress shirts and very conservative ties. It was about to all change in a big way, but I had managed to graduate during the time of mellow!

When I turned 18, confused and wondering about my future, left broken hearted a couple of times by girls I adored, I could only turn to music for healing. The Big Bopper was singing Chantilly Lace; and Fats Domino jiggled and wiggled out Whole Lotta’ Loving; while Ricky Nelson tried to heal me with Lonesome Town.

There ‘s a place where lovers go to cry their troubles away
And they call it Lonesome Town where the broken hearts stay
You can buy a dream or two, to last you all through the years
And the only price you pay is a heart full of tears

Goin’ down to Lonesome Town, where the broken hearts stay
Goin’ down Lonesome Town, to cry my troubles away
In the town of broken dreams, the streets are filled with regret
Maybe down in Lonesome Town I can learn to forget

Maybe down in Lonesome Town I can learn to forget

I don’t get it. Times have changed too much for me. Girls don’t seem sweet and soft anymore. Guys have too hard an edge. High school was a dreamy, wonderful place where you learned to be nice and where you learned about the sweetness and softness of girls – and also a little math and Shakespeare -- and you got your heart broke-hard. I got out just in time – the Beattles had not yet landed (they wouldn’t perform in America until 1964). Rock n’ Roll was in its infancy and hadn’t taken on its hard, sharp edge yet.

I was born for music like Connie Francis singing Whose Sorry Now?

Short Takes

Late on a lazy Sunday afternoon!
by Charlie Leck

Late on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve come up with a few good short takes that you may find interesting. I had a good day today. There was plenty of quiet time to read my hard copy edition of the Sunday New York Times. I gathered plenty of print ink on my finger-tips to prove it. We have a snow-white counter in our kitchen. It doesn’t get along well with my favorite newspapers. I also got to take in Sherlock Holmes (the movie) and found it clever and bearable (if not a bit too loud and slappy at times). I think it’s worth seeing. Just remember, this is not your father’s Sherlock Holmes! If you don't like loud noises and lots of mayhem, don't go to this one.

Muddled Selling of the President
Richard Stevenson, in the New York Times wrote a sterling article about President Obama and his political packaging. As a tease, here are the first two paragraphs.

WASHINGTON — On this much, President Obama’s friends and foes could agree: He eludes simple labels.

Yes, he’s a liberal, except when he’s not. He’s antiwar, except for the one he’s escalating. He’s for bailouts, but wants to rein in the banks. He’s concentrating ever-more power in the West Wing, except when he’s being overly deferential to Congress. He’s cool, except when he’s fighting-hot.

In a world that presents so many fast-moving and intractable problems, nuance, flexibility, pragmatism — even a full range of human emotions — are no doubt good things. But as Mr. Obama wrapped up his State of the Union address on Wednesday night with an appeal to transcend partisan gamesmanship, he was plaintively testing a broader proposition: Is it possible to embrace complexity in a political and media culture that demands simple themes and promotes conflict?

A Friend and His Friendships
Sunday morning brought a clever email from a friend who lives out in the country, with his dogs, Buddy and Puppy, at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, just a few miles from where the Rockies start to get serious. Perhaps the high altitude had addled his brain just a touch.

Buddy is the Smartest Dog Ever

It's easy to tell... first, by the way he sits...and stares up into your eyes... silently saying... I'm here and I'm game... bring it on... and when you smile at him as you must... his tail wags and wags...

he understands come, sit, stay, down and up just like a normal dog... but he also understands the way I feel and what hurts and when there's something good to look at out the car window...

and he likes it when I say something funny... he doesn't laugh, but he smiles...

and when I eat, he patiently sits and waits for me to finish (almost finish) and give him first ups on the plate... and doesn't complain when I take it back to give his brother a chance to lick the almost clean plate... he knows about sharing...

and when we walk, he always walks on Puppy's right... protecting him from on-coming cars and trucks...even though there aren't too many of them out here.

but in the end, it [is] his eyes... they tell the whole story... what he's thinking and what he's feeling...

if i were a dog i know I'd be more like Puppy...I'd eat, [flatulate], sleep a lot and spend the best part of the day [grooming] myself...

the world needs more dogs like Buddy...

later, f

MacBeth to Open Soon at our incredible Guthrie Theatre
Our local rag of a paper carried a story this morning about preparations for the opening of MacBeth. We've got tickets to see it in the middle of the coming month. Michael Dowling, the theater’s artistic director, is staging and directing the play. He’s mighty fine and so I’m up for seeing the play again – perhaps for the 12th time or so. [Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t seem to have included the story in its on-line version!]

Obama is whacked on the hand because of the economic crash; but just how did the banks escape blame?
We mustn’t forget that it was the American financial system – with the banks at the heart of it – that brought our economy tumbling down around us last year. The “crash” left us in our weakest financial condition since about 75 years ago. We can still feel the shaking and trembling under our feet. Far too many people are still out of work and there is no promise of a rapid correction. Obama wasn’t even in office when this crash commenced; yet he is now taking a substantial part of the blame for our stalled economy. That blame is ill placed. We need to look back a few administrations to put the blame on a congressional de-regulation of the American banking industry. Everyone agrees that we need a reorganization of the banking industry and new, tougher regulations to stop the banks from taking too many risks. This kind of thing should be right up the Republicans’ alley, but they are being awfully slow to take leadership in such reform.

That’s enough for one Sunday afternoon. My partner is home from her week long ski trip to Alta (Utah). I’ve shared a photo (above) of her and her sister. Below you may peek at A Man and his Friends.