BING

Bing is here and it ain't all bad!
by Charlie Leck

Stanley Bing has a blog. It's called The Bing Blog.

In the last couple of days Microsoft unveiled Bing, it's powerful and glitteringly new search engine. Now you'll have to decide if you want to google something or bing it. And, believe it or not, you may be in somewhat of a dilemna.

I've had Bing up on my Internet Engine for a few days now and I've alternated between it and Google when I've done searches. Bing is every bit as good as Google and maybe a little cleaner and more pleasant. Perhaps it's because it is early in Bing's life, but there isn't so much clutter with ads and plain old garbage.

Bing seems to sense what I'm looking for and if there are unusual options it points that out, and then asks me questions to direct me further. Google is solidly tucked into the minds and hearts of almost all of us and there is going to be an enormous loyalty factor involved in making any change, but I urge you to bing instead of googling a few of your searches in the next few days, just to see how you like it.

If you use Windows Internet Explorer, go up to your search window in the very top bar and click on the little down arrow next to the magnifying glass. Then click on "find more providers" and, when you get to the list, choose Bing and then click that you want to make it one of your search engines. I made it my default search engine because I have the Google Tool Bar installed and that search option is always there.

Then go back and forth in your searches and see what you think.

Microsoft is spending an absoute fortune on advertising and promoting the roll out of this search engine. They have a huge banner today on the New York Times web site. Everywhere I turn on the web I'm seeing invitations to Bing it instead of Googling it.

Now back to poor old Stanley Bing. He's chuckling about the confusion this presents for him and is enjoying the increase in readership. For instance, I never would have come upon his blog in a million years, but, I'll tell you, it has some interesting stuff. However, it's not interesting enough to me to bookmark it, but plenty of people will. Congratulations, Stanley, because you're in the big time now.

There is also a graphic design firm out there called Bing Limited. They're far too worried about the confusing branding identity between Microsoft Bing and their little firm. "Oh, my goodness," they worry, "people will think we're copycats when we were really here first!" Suck it up, boys, and enjoy the ride. You're in for a lot of traffic and maybe some surprising business. Think big (or maybe think "bing") and make this work for your little company.

EATING FRESH & LOCAL IN MINNESOTA

Two Pony Farm has been at the Midtown Farmers Market selling tomato plants.

The wonderful season of fresh vegetables and fruit is about to burst upon Minnesota!
by Charlie Leck

My wife’s great-great grandfather, Bradford Wakefield, arrived in Minnesota in 1856. They journeyed here from Ohio in a covered wagon pulled by a pair of oxen (via Mower County, Minnesota, where they spent one very difficult winter). He brought with him his wife, Maria, and a half-dozen children. Bradford’s good friends, John and William Harrington, had arrived here a couple years earlier and had already set up their settlement farm on the shores of Lake Minnetonka in an area that is now just a tad southwest of the village of Wayzata.

Bradford and Maria purchased land, which had been set aside for the local public school system, and was just northwest of the village in an area that is now partly occupied by Wayzata Country Club. The land extended west and north and included a large part of the south and east shores of Long Lake (including Billy’s Lighthouse Restaurant and the old Union Cemetery). There, along Old Long Lake Road, Bradford built a 16x16 foot settlement cabin and the big family moved in.

One of the boys in that family, Warren Wakefield (my wife’s great-grandfather), would later write of their first winter in Wayzata.

“We were a happy family that winter on the Bowman Hill, where we had plenty of palatable corn bread, fresh fish and venison and cranberry sauce, after eighteen months of wandering and trial we were mighty glad to be at home.”

Now, granted, that early Wakefield clan ate local and they ate relatively fresh here in Minnesota. There were not jumbo jets that could haul thousands of bushels of fruit and coffee up from South America. And there were not giant semi-trailers bringing vegetables galore from California. The family pretty much ate what they grew – potatoes, corn, green vegetables, eggs, maple syrup and maple sugar – or what they could buy from neighbors – apples, milk, wheat flour and some occasional meat. Otherwise they fished in the surrounding lakes and hunted for venison and other tasty animals.

The vegetable cellar was an important part of any of those settlement homes. There the produce of summer and autumn would be stored to carry the family through the harsh winters. With luck, there would be a few apples, potatoes, carrots and other vegetables still left when spring began to slide into the state. Warren penned an interesting story about a Sioux tribal leader, named Cut Nose, and the family vegetable cellar (it was a thrill for me to read the account in Warren’s original hand and on the original paper upon which he scratched it out).

“One spring we had a cellar full of vegetables that we could not use, so father invited all the squaws who lived near us to come and get some. They came and took them away. In the cellar also was keg [sic] and a two gallon jug of maple vinegar. Cut Nose, one of the finest specimens of manhood I have ever seen, tall, straight and with agreeable features in spite of the small piece gone from the edge of one nostril, was their chief, and came the next day with a large bottle, asking to have it filled with whiskey. Father said he had none, but Cut Nose said he knew there was a jug and keg of it in the cellar. Father told him to go and take it if he found any. He sampled first the jug and then the keg with a most disgusted expression and upon coming upstairs threw the bottle on the bed and stalked out. This maple vinegar was made from maple sugar and none could be better.”

In addition to this fresh, local food, Maria would make taffy for the children from her maple sugar and the kids also discovered they could make a chewing gum from the inner bark of certain elm trees. The gum was eventually named Slippery Elm.

Peter Gideon, one of the earliest white settlers in Minnesota accomplished what he had been told would be virtually impossible here; that is, he developed several species of fine eating apples – including the Wealthy and the Duchess – and he became very famous in these parts.

When Anne’s great-grandmother, Abby, arrived in Minnesota in 1868 as a 17 year old kid, she spent, by arrangement, “two happy weeks” in the home of the Gideon family. Here is how Abby, later in her life, remembers her arrival with her sister, Frances.

“A funny little steamboat – I think it was called the Governor Ramsey – awaited the train. It carried passengers to Excelsior. They were helped on board and soon the boat was chugging merrily over the water. At Excelsior they transferred to a rowboat which awaited them and were rowed around the shore into what was then called Gideon’s Bay to the home of Peter Gideon, the originator of the Wealthy, Duchess and other Minnesota apples. It was believed by many at that time that apples could not be grown in Minnesota, but Peter Gideon knew better and planted the seeds of the hardiest apples he could find and faithfully cared for the seedling trees until they came into bearing, retaining those worthy of preservation and discarding those bearing inferior fruit. To his work we owe much, though for many years most people thought he was wasting his time."

Today, Minnesota also boasts the wonderful Harrelson apple and the Minnesota Honey Crisp, as well as the Fireside and the Minnesota Delicious. The Keepsake is a late freshening apple that is pretty easy to keep through the winter.Well, now, here in Minnesota, we have about 5 months ahead of eating fresh and local. As I write this, on the first weekend in June, the local farmers markets are showing fresh asparagus, cauliflower, rhubarb and some sprouts, green lettuce and mushrooms. That’s about it. Late in June the raspberries will make an appearance. In July we’ll start to see beans, beats, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, eggplant, squash and blueberries. Late in July we’ll see strawberries, garlic and fennel.

It’s not until August that we can get really fresh and local in Minnesota and, oh, what a glorious month it is. I truly don’t believe sweet corn on the cob is any better anywhere in America than our own Minnesota corn. And, of course, we’ll also see tomatoes in August and I’ll stop on many days during the week at the wonderful Two Pony Farm in Medina to pick up some of Lisa Ringer’s fabulous heirloom tomatoes. I’m in heaven in August because the markets are flush with so many wonderful, fresh foods. My camera goes crazy taking photographs of all the spectacular varieties of potatoes, onions, peppers, melons, zucchini, cucumbers, cabbage, celery, and dozens of herbs.

A platter of heirloom tomatoes from Two Pony Farm

Minnesota Grown program, which touts itself as “Minnesota’s Buy Local Headquarters.” If eating fresh and local as much as you can interests you, you might like to visit the organization’s web site.

THE GREAT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF THE 1960s

When and how did it all begin?
by Charlie Leck

Most of you aren’t old enough to remember, but take my word for it, the 1960s were amazing in so many, many ways. The civil rights movement – a movement attempting to get equal rights for racial minorities in America – was a big part of the chaos of American history during that decade.

When and how did it all begin?
Well, a major civil right hero wasn’t behind it all. Neither was any single one of the big civil rights organizations. I’ve looked at and identified a lot of events as the beginning points of the 1960s, a decade that formed my thinking and stamped its character so indelibly on me. Rosa Park refused to go to the back of the bus in 1955. One could try to argue it was the beginning of the 60s. In a book I wrote, I dated the beginning of that historic period as the school integration crisis of 1956 that caused Eisenhower to send federal troops into the south.

Now, I would point to something else. When February 1, 2010 rolls around, it will mark the 50th anniversary of the lunch counter sit-in that took place in Greensboro, North Carolina. No organization was behind it and no civil right leader planned or motivated it. Much like Rosa Parks and her tired feet, the historic action of that day, nearly 50 years ago, came about as a result of a dormitory bull session between two roommates and two other students at the nearly all black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

To repeat, there was no organizational structure behind it and it had no structured set of goals. The four just decided one night to do it. They were tired of not being allowed to slide up to the fountain-counter and sit down to have a coke and burger. Those places were for “whites-only.” The colored folk were relegated to a stand-up table at a far end of the dining area of F.W. Woolworth’s five and dime store. They were allowed to spend their money anywhere else in the store – to buy toothpaste or menstrual pads or pillow cases.

So a nagging kind of anger motivated the four students, Joseph McNeil, Izell Blair, Franklin McCain and David Richmond, to go over to the Woolworth store to buy a few items and then slide into the stools at the lunch counter. There, they asked to be served. A black woman working behind the counter sneered at them.

“You are stupid! Ignorant! You’re dumb! That’s why we can’t get anywhere!”

The shocked lady pointed them to the other end, where they belonged. They stayed put and they were ignored. They came back each day and eventually they started to get some attention from the press. The white folks asked for a breather, to work out some solutions. The students, who had been joined now by other students, consented to stay away for two weeks; however, the sit-in had become larger than they were and the next day there were over two dozen students at the counter. Lunch counters at other Woolworth stores attracted black students from other colleges in Durham and Raleigh. Then it happened in Charlotte, Fayetteville, High Point and other North Carolina communities. By mid-month there were sit-ins in Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

The 60s had begun. They got started on February 1, 1960. I was a college student and I was hooked. I watched the action on the TV in the basement rec room of our dorm.

The non-violent character of the student demonstrations inspired civil rights leaders and a new way to confront injustice was born in America.

And it all began as a result of dormitory bull session. Soon, we'll celebrate that event’s 50th anniversary. I hope we make a big deal about it. How I remember those brave but frightened faces, sitting at that counter -- at that counter where they had every right to be.

EAT AWFUL WELL

This is a great summer recipe that will make you feel guilty as hell!

by Charlie Leck

One of my daughters -- the one who lives out in Portland, Oregon -- the national capitol of progressivism, tree hugging and the fresh, local and organic food movement -- writes a wonderful blog called EAT WELL. I really enjoy it and she posts lots of wonderful recipes about fresh and healthy eating.

I'm presenting you today with a recipe that won't make the grade in her blog, but it is a fantastic summer, informal and sinful hamburger. If you like hamburgers you're going to love this one!

I call it "the incredible egg and cheese topped pepper burger." To cook four burgers my way you'll need to have a pound of good, lean hamburger, four hamburger buns, a half cup of chopped peppers (your choice and taste), 1 medium thinly sliced pepper, 4 eggs, a wedge of brie or Gorgonzola cheese (I love the Gorgonzola), lettuce leaves, salt, pepper, mayo and ketchup.

Here's how you do it!

1. Heat up the grill (outdoors preferably)


2. Brown a variety of peppers in a fry pan on your stove top
   


3. Mix pepper in with the ground beef and form 4 patties
   


4. Brown slices of onion
   


5. Put burgers on the hot grill and grill to medium
   


6. Top burgers with a wedge of the cheese for last 2 minutes
   


7. Fry four eggs over easy as the burgers grill
   


8. Remove burgers from grill and put on the buns and on platter
   


9. Put dab of Mayo on each burger and top with fried onions
   


10. Top that with a section of the over-easy fried egg
    


11. Top all that with a very thin slice of tomato and small leaf of lettuce
    

Serve with a super potato salad and chilled hamburger pickles and serve with ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper available as toppers.

Yum! Notice that I didn't salt for health purposes and leave that up to the diner.

CHENY FINALLY GETS HONEST

FINALLY! Cheney gets honest with himself and us!
by Charlie Leck

Wish I could blog this morning or sometime today but I can't. On my way out of town and won't have access. I'll get to this matter on Thursday morning, but it is amazing that Dick Cheney finally, publicly states that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack on 9-11.

Now, without that, and without WMD, tell me again: Why did we go to war in Iraq?

More later.

DIRTY POLITICS FROM THE LEFT

I hate rotten campaigning from Right or Left!
by Charlie Leck

A millionaire – more than 400 times over – out in Colorado is having a big impact on state election races around the country and some of his work is pretty rotten. Now, we’ve gotten use to this by renegade Republicans in things like the Swiftboat ads and in the work of the bastard himself, Karl Rove. But I get really upset when I find out this is happening in the Democratic Party, too.

Tim Gill is a political activist from Denver. He’s in his mid-fifties and established his wealth through a company called Quark, the publisher of a very successful desktop publishing software.

Atlantic magazine calls him the nations “biggest gay donor.” That’s shaky grammar, but it really means that Gill is gay and donates more to political campaigns than another other known gay. So far I’ve got no problems with that.

Gill has done some politically clever thinking and built some interesting strategies to take out known opponents of gay legislation at the state levels. This is a remarkable strategy. Gill believes he get more value for his dollar at the state level, where a few thousand dollars can have a big impact on a state legislative race. He affected his game-plan very well here in Minnesota in 2006 by spending a small amount of dough against a State Senator from one of our northern St. Paul suburbs. Somehow the winning candidate has attracted campaign money from pretty alluring locations like New York City and Boston – from Hollywood and Coral Gables – and from Tim Gill. The results, knocking off a Republican State Senator I didn’t care for, but the methods suck. I don’t think there’s room for this in politics.

A lot of people credit Gill for being behind the stunning switch of Colorado from the red column in the Presidential election to the blue column.

To this point, still no problem.

Here comes the problem
Gill’s organization used clear Swiftboat kind of tactics to knock off this State Senator, picturing her in one TV ad stripping a watch off a dead body and pointing out that the Senator had voted to allow nursing homes to charge residents’ estates to collect past expenses after their patient had died. You can watch the sleazy ad below!




If that’s not enough, Gill’s money and political organization also ran another ad against the Senator, depicting her pick-pocketing a soldier on the battlefield. It seems she had voted a one-time bonus for battlefield soldiers. Again, here’s that video if you want to watch it.




There were also a number of false allegations against the Republican State Senator that came, interestingly, out of Colorado.I feel strongly that both the State Democratic Farmer Labor Party and the national party organization should take a stand against this kind of advertising. We hate it and decry it when it’s used against us and we shouldn’t use it against our political opponents.If you want to read this revealing article about Tim Gill, you can find it in this issue of the Atlantic Monthly Magazine. As you would expect from this outstanding magazine, the article is long and thorough. In this case, it is also downright fascinating. Here’s a tease from the article by Joshua Green:

“Gill’s idea was to identify vulnerable candidates like Danny Carroll and move quickly to eliminate them without the burden of first having to win the consent of some risk-averse large organization or board of directors. Another element of this strategy is stealth. Revealing targets only after an election makes it impossible for them to fight back and sends a message to other politicians that attacking gays could put them in the crosshairs. Independence also allowed Gill to pursue an element of his philosophy that chafes many national gay organizations: the belief that enduring acceptance can be won only with Republican support. “If you want a majority, you have to change people’s minds,” he said, noting that in Colorado, Republicans outnumber Democrats. ‘Just because you’re conservative doesn’t mean you’re antigay.’”

SIT DOWN & SHUT UP

The former Vice President is wrong, wrong, wrong – and so are his facts (or lack of them)!
by Charlie Leck

Lately we’ve had the former Vice President, Richard Cheney, running around and screaming about the sky falling. “It really is,” Cheney pleads with listeners, “it really is. The sky is falling! The sky is falling.”

Frank Rich calls it pushing “poison” and says it best in his NY Times column:

“The Republicans at least have an excuse for pushing this poison. They are desperate. The trio of Pillsbury doughboys now leading the party — Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Cheney — have variously cemented the G.O.P.’s brand as a whites-only men’s club by revoking Colin Powell’s membership and smearing the first Latina Supreme Court nominee as a “reverse racist.” Republicans in Congress have no plausible economic, health care or energy policies to counter Obama’s. The only card left to play is 9/11.”

The former Vice President is not acting with the dignity his post in retirement commands. Instead he’s acting like a spoiled brat who can’t get over the complete rejection of his war-time policies by the American people.

By the way, though I agree with Rich’s sentiments, I think it is a terrible insult to equate them with the Pillsbury Doughboy – an insult, that is, to the Doughboy.

Just remember, this is the same man, this Richard Cheney, who was running around the nation in 2002 and 2003, crying out to us that the sky was falling – that the sky was falling – that the sky was falling and that Iraq had a massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Oh, yes! Now you remember.

Back then, a couple of damned good reporters, in the McClatchy newspaper system, reported with great accuracy that the Vice President was wrong, wrong, wrong! [read it]

Now, the same reporters write about the 10 big, big lies in Cheney’s current stump-speech about Obama’s Iraq policy and the President’s stand on ending torture. [read it]

Mr. Cheney is doing nothing to repair the terrible image with which he left office; rather, the former Vice President is making matters worse. This man was one terrible leader. He presented a visage of hatred and rigidity. His world-wide image was a terrible one that did the U.S. absolutely no good. He is doing the nation absolutely no good right now. He should sit down and shut up!