This is my sister, Stacy Donovan’s work and I couldn’t resist showing her off. She is creatively brilliant and I am regularly in awe of her. Her work, “Box” is a conceptually and physically beautiful piece of Theatre. This review is a fabulous description of the work.

The first notable moment in “Box,” a new experimental theater piece from Stacy Donovan GS’93, is in the playbill. While most dramas can usually credit one or two writers, the list on the “Written and Developed By” part of the playbill seems endless, ranging from the actors to the costume designer to Donovan herself…..

I played around with some bean type hummus and this one really stood out! It is quite marvelous if I do say so myself. I brought this to a small wine festival picnic and it was a huge hit! Enjoy!

Cest Moi – Citrus Mint Black Bean Hummus

1 lb bag black beans (or) 15.5 oz can
(by all means use organic no salt added if you can)
1 tbsp minced garlic
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large orange
orange zest
fresh mint (approx 8 leaves)
sea salt & pepper
splashes of lemon Perrier or any lemon seltzer
(optional) 2 slices of lemon and one extra mint leaf

Cook the black beans until soft. (optional – treat the water with a couple slices of lemon and one whole mint leaf)

*If you use canned beans just drain and rinse well*

When the beans are ready pour them into large mixing bowl with the garlic, olive oil, and a generous sprinkle of sea salt and pepper. Blend with mixer until the mixture starts to smooth. Chop the mint leaves (medium to fine chop) and add to the bean mixture. Halve the orange and squeeze the juice from both halves into the mixture. Zest 1/2 of the orange into the mixture and add a splash of the lemon Perrier. Blend again with the mixer until the mixture becomes quite smooth. If you find it is too stiff, add splashes of the Perrier as desired. The Hummus should be silky and smooth but you won’t want it too thin so use the Perrier carefully. You can enjoy the hummus immediately but it is best after allowing the citrus and mint to infuse overnight. Keep refrigerated

Rachel Maddow – and if you don’t know her, then you simply must tune into MSNBC weeknights at 9pm EST - found herself somewhat let down by President Obama’s Oval Office speech on the BP Oil disaster in the Gulf.  She’s brilliant, she pulls no punches and now we know she would make a damn good “shoot from the hip” President.   Check out her version of what that Oval Office speech should have sounded like:

An oil-soaked bird struggles against the side of an Iron Horse supply vessel at the site of the oil spill off Louisiana on May 9. AP Photo Gerald Herbert

Oil moves  past an oil rig, top right, in Chandeleur Sound on May 5. AP Photo Eric Gay)

A pod of bottlenose dolphins swims in the oily water of Chandeleur Sound on May 6.  Five days later, six dead dolphins were found along the Gulf Coast.  AP Photo Alex Brandon

A dead jellyfish  floats amid oil May 6 in the Gulf of Mexico, southwest of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River on the coast of Louisiana. AP Photo Patrick Semansky

Pelicans fly past a nest of eggs apparently stained with oil on a Louisiana island May 22. The island is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as well as terns, gulls and roseated spoonbills. AP Photo Gerald Herbert

An oil-covered dragonfly, stuck to marsh grass, tries to clean itself May 18 in Garden Island Bay  near Venice. AP Photo Gerald Herbert

The IWC will meet next month to finalize this atrocity. Please sign this petition / letter to the White House.  This article will also lead you to the exact proposal, but it is shockingly twisted logic that basically says, if we legalize it and put a quota on the number of whales, they will then kill fewer than they do now while violating the international ban on commercial whaling.  HUH!!!!???  For Japan, it’s been free-for-all hunting season on whales, law be damned.  So if we just make it legal, they will exercise restraint?  Have you ever heard such nonsense?

It’s an outrage.

Don’t let President Obama lift the Whaling Ban – not on Earth Day, not Ever. | Animals | Change.org

animals.change.org

*By:  Megan Donovan* …………..

And the garden is off and running.

I am now utilizing my full sun deck space for an organic container vegetable garden.

I have been buying and eating organic for many years now but in my efforts to live in a sustainable environment, lessen my carbon footprint, and of course avoid food that is either not fit for consumption or is toxic, it becomes so important to think “outside the system”.  That system, which delivers something it would like us to call food, devastates natural resources, industrializes animals, and poisons humans.

Because it doesn’t get more real than pulling from clean soil a gorgeous vegetable that you have grown, washing it in clean water, and eating it…let’s get back to the garden.

There are many who believe that a container garden is a sacrifice made because of limited space.  It’s actually the best choice for an organic gardener.  Once soil is contaminated with pesticides or any inorganic matter, it can remain tainted for years and sometimes decades.  If you want a truly organic garden, container gardening and the control over the soil that comes with it is the way to go.

I am actually off to a somewhat slow and gradual start.  I have been planting, I am now, and I will be into Summer I am sure.  In my area, planting is best done by April 15 – May 15 (depending on the plant of course)  and if you want a Spring harvest. I have found I rather enjoy less planning and more planting.

The pictures I included here are of my yellow cherry tomatoes, yellow bell peppers and white cherry tomatoes.  I am so proud of the tomatoes.  In just a few weeks they have grown so much!  I have opted to go with just cherry tomatoes this year.  The color and flavor varieties are marvelous and they will be so much easier to work with when I do some canning.

I am pretty excited about the herbs too actually.  If I do say so myself, my mint is magnificent!

I say…

Earth Day…Every Day

The masters stand on high balconies at a distance and speak in a language only this particular crop will understand.  They prod their seedlings on and chant to them about enemies only they can see.

It’s harvest time.

Filled with rage and the validation they need from their masters, the seedlings pick up their blades, and their bricks, and their guns and head out to slay; they head out to slay because so lustful are they for it, they needed only the slightest provocation.

And the masters know this of course.  But they feel entitled and above accountability.  No risk of ensuing evil is too great in a less than noble quest.

———-

“That’s politics” is no answer to violent unrest. In the past 72 hours crimes that range from vandalism, and death threats, to attempted murder have been perpetrated by the maniacal political fringe.  In the United States, we don’t address that kind of behavior with silly platitudes, we address it with criminal prosecution.

Decent citizens demand that we hold accountable those who have committed these crimes.
And hold accountable all who have incited this dangerous mob.

I had to share one of those moments that quite literally took my breath away tonight.  The performance of Hallelujah by Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris.  An astounding rendition that is now my favorite version of a long favorite song.

Please visit – Hope for Haiti Now

Pardon my sarcasm but our cartoonish politics demands sarcasm and irreverence.

Massachusetts honored 47 years of public service from Ted Kennedy by saying no to Democrat Martha Coakley and voting in Republican Scott Brown: used-to-be nude model, who talks a lot about his truck and agreed that a curling iron should be stuck up Martha Coakley’s butt. Ah yes, that is the prime stock; the intellectual talent now at Senatorial helm representing the state.

A valid argument can be made for Martha Coakley being an idiot. Had she actually waged a campaign, perhaps the folks of Massachusetts wouldn’t have settled for such a distasteful example self aggrandizing, tea bagging, radical politics.

Mr. Republican Senator-elect from Massachusetts, Brown says his claim to fame will be KILLING HEALTH CARE REFORM. You are THE cartoon of the moment sir, go for it. Our super majority has seen to proposed health care reform that offers very little reform and will, in the end only mandate that we line fat insurance industry pockets. “Health Care Reform” slipped into the abyss a couple of months ago, so kill away.

To date there has been little noticeable advantage to the Dem “super majority” so from 60 to 59 will likely mean little more than media “super unending pontification“.

Who knows, maybe if the Dems get pissed enough…
Oh, I am not even going there. I have been a Dem long enough to know better.

See ya’ in the funny papers.