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baby artichokes
baby artichokes]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=120 Mon, 14 May 2012 17:21:40 -0800 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=119 bagels

I made bagels Saturday! The recipe is from "The Best Bagels are Made at Home". I agree with the title!]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=119 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:37:04 -0800 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=118
trailhead

The hike is only 2 miles each way, but there is a pretty good elevation change. By my GPS, it was 900 feet bottom-to-top elevation change, but about 1200 feet walking elevation change because the trail goes up and down a few times. A couple stretches were very steep — a few good switchbacks would have been nice! The trail was mostly smooth, with very few hard and rocky steps to navigate.

We got almost to the top and I sat down. To get to the very top, you had to scramble up through a notch in the rocks. Well, I don't like heights, so I said to John "you go on up, I'll wait here". He got up there and yelled down that I just HAD to come on up, that the view was fantastic and it wasn't scary. (You can see him in the "notch" in the photo below if you click on the photo to enlarge it.)

John at top

Alright, alright, I'll do it. I left my pack but took my camera.

Well . . . yes, the view was fantastic. Below is a series of panoramas, beginning looking west, then going clockwise towards north and so on back to west. You will see a few rocks in the foreground — if I were brave, I would have climbed on top of them to get better panoramas.

pan 1

pan 2

pan 3

pan 4

pan 5

pan 6

From the top, we could look down and see my car in the parking lot.

car from top

And you get a great view of Estes Park.

Estes Park

Time to head down the notch in the rocks.

back down the notch

When we got back to the car, I took a photo of Kruger Rock. Pretty cool!

Kruger Rock


]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=118 Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:14:14 -0800 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=117 plastic bag
And on the streets of Africa last fall, the sights were abysmal.
plastic bags in Africa
plastic bags in Africa
I remember when the big supermarket chains first began offering reusable cloth bags to their customers. I thought: What a great idea! Inspired, soon after an Earth Day somewhere in the 1990s I started purchasing store-brand shopping bags as I could afford them.

As time went on, the design and colors of reusable store-bags changed, but I continued to buy bags from different stores as the whim befell me. Eventually I ended up with a hodge-podge of variously-logoed cloth bags. I was a walking advertisement for many establishments as I handed them to the bagger at the check-out stand.

The bags were stronger than plastic, but the handles tore if you filled them with too many groceries. Eventually the bags became so dirty that I had to wash them. But they shrank! After washing, barely any groceries would fit into a bag. And the printed logos started to fade and crack.

Click on "read more" for more of this blog entry. Click here for how to make the bags: Bag-Lady Bags
(I stored the bags in the trunk of my Mazda, and once when I picked them up I found a mouse nest in them. That car’s vents were infested with mice and it became known as my “Mouseda”.)

One day I realized that I looked like a “bag lady”. I put my groceries on the check-out stand and handed a motley bunch of bags in various stages of stains and sizes and rips to the checker, and the bagger reluctantly took them and start to fill them. When he was done, the guy standing behind me in line said: “oh, wow, she is using pillow slips for her groceries”. I slunk quickly away, pushing my cart in front of me, keeping my mouth shut about how I was saving the environment. He didn’t get it, and maybe he had a point. The bags were ugly.

Inspiration hit me again sometime around 2000: I could make my own cloth grocery bag! I’m a seamstress, I could do a better job! And my bag wouldn’t have a logo on it. So I designed a bag and found some good heavy cloth at the fabric shop. I washed and dried the fabric before I cut it out, so that it wouldn’t shrink after it was sewn together. I double stitched all the seams and especially the handles. When it was sewn together, I decided to add some whimsy to it with stenciled-on designs of animals and flowers.

The bag was so cute and durable that one year I decided to make several and give them away as Christmas presents. As time went on, I made more bags for myself. Now I have so many that I don’t have to use any plastic bags when I go to the grocery store. The checkers at Safeway still groan a bit when they see my cute bags, because the bags don’t stand up in the little plastic-bag stands. But at Whole Foods, they always cheerfully thank me for bringing in my own bags. I donate my “bag credits” to their current charity, too.

It is now 2012 and all the bags I’ve ever made are still in great condition. My favorite bag is the one that I sent my mother for Christmas so long ago. Everytime I see it, still with the paperclip that she had put on it, I think of her carrying that bag to one of her club meetings, and I remember her smile.

cats bag

I took some time and made a web page on how to make my "Bag-Lady Bags". I've meant to do this for years!

Bag-Lady Bags

]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=117 Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:50:50 -0800 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=116
After a bit of web searching and some photo-taking, I identified the birds as "Eurasian Collared Doves". They are an invasive species that was first introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s. By 1982, they had spread to Florida, and by 1996, 7 nesting Eurasian Collared Doves were found near Denver.

I'm not an ornithologist by any stretch, but I do find this interesting. The websites that I accessed today (links below) don't think that the invasion is necessarily a call for alarm. Time will tell. For now, I'll enjoy watching and listening to them.

dove
dove

Sources:
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Eurasian Collared-Doves in Colorado, Yahoo Groups
Bird Source
]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=116 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:55:25 -0800 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=115
Well, not real chickens, at least I don't think so. I'm talking about decorative chickens, all over my kitchen.

So here I am with plenty of time on my hands so I decide to clean the soffit area in our kitchen. I take down the ceramic chickens that reside up there - some of them inherited from my mother - and dig into the difficult task of cleaning all the greasy grime from their myriad surfaces. The job is so tough that I clean one and then take a long break before I attempt another one. Slowly, clean and shiny chickens join each other on the opposite counter top.

I come to a point when I am almost done. Turning slightly, I glimpse something disturbing. There is a mob of chickens clustered on the counter . . . are they ganging up . . . is that a sinister look on the old rooster in front? . . . is he guarding his clutch? . . . why is that one hen so surprised?

. . . maybe it's time to put them back up on the soffit. Separated.

gang of chickens

Click on this link for a past blog entry on my obsessive chicken collection and the Chicken God.

For a photo of the chickens back up on the soffit and a little techie photo talk, click on "read more" below.Chickens back up on the soffit:

chickens on soffit

Below is a photo of the chickens on my counter with a lot of clutter behind them. I decided this type of photo didn't get my point across, so I removed the background clutter. Later, I went back to the cluttered shots and played in Photoshop to see if I could get more details in the shadows. Here is the result:

merged HDR

I created the above image using the "merge to HDR" function of Photoshop. The original shot employed "bracket exposure, 7eV", which means the Sony camera took two separate different-exposure photos. Then you open both photos in Photoshop. The program aligns them and makes shadowed areas clearer and brighter without over-brightening the non-shadowed areas. It took awhile for my MacBookPro to render the photo, and it looks pretty good, except I should have used a tripod. As a sidenote, the camera will do the same function in a shorter amount of time, but only if you choose to shoot in jpg, not in arw (raw).

Two original photos:

1959

1960]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=115 Thu, 5 Jan 2012 04:57:09 -0900 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=114
When we toured the village, we said “this is so interesting, it should be an ecotour!” Well, Tammy has done just that: arranged several ecotours. This brings one more small business into the Tsevie area.

Becky decided not to bring her dog back to the US, but the carrier was used by some other PC volunteer.

Tammy’s bunnies had bunnies!

207

Tammy got a kitty, too. She said “it was stuffed into this cage with all these ducks, and I just had to bring it home.”

John and I realize that not only are we richer for the travel experience, we are stronger. We can travel to a place that is out of our comfort zone. We also realize how much we missed seeing the wildlife of Africa, like elephants and lions and monkeys. This isn’t Tammy’s fault, she offered us the option of going to Mole National Park in Ghana and we declined. But when we got home, a flyer offering a certain tour, arranged through the CU Alumni Foundation, came in the mail. We both looked at it at separate times, and then one evening looked at each other and said: “Let’s go!!!” So next May we are off to Africa, this time on . . .

Safari!

First post in the African trip series.]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=114 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:13:50 -0900 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=113
We just scratched the surface of learning about the culture of west Africans, and we liked it. I am so proud of my daughter for immersing her life amongst theirs, learning so much about their ways, and sharing with them some American ways, and helping them learn methods to improve their lives.

I could delve into the issue of the abject poverty that we saw. Are they happy living in the conditions? Yes, mostly, it seems; at least they were not angry. But they have few opportunities to change how they live. Could they, should they? We have such a wealth of ways in which we can spend our days, spend our lives. If we get sick, we can get medical attention. We have freedom of choice and lots of choices. We may get angry at our government, but at least it is not corrupt at every level. I don’t necessarily wish on the rich African culture the hectic, busy, consumer-goods-obsessed ways of Americans, but to me, never to have had the chance to study science, nor have a plethora of foods to choose from, nor be able to travel, nor have a daughter who can devote her life to whatever she chooses, nor have my son cured of cancer . . . I know where my heart is.

I used to think it would be easy to help pull Africa out of poverty. Just start opening factories there, why not? There are a lot of people there who need work. Well, the infrastructure is just not there. Roads, power, stable governments, sewage and trash systems; the issues are mindboggling. When we first got back from our trip, people asked us what we thought of Africa, and John and I both said “It’s complicated.”

And to those who say “the US is becoming a third world country” we say “uh uh, no way near it”. If that’s what you think, travel to one, and you will know.

We are glad we traveled to one, and especially that we traveled to west Africa. Our lives are a lot richer for the experience.

Epilogue.


First post in the African trip series.]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=113 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 04:30:51 -0900 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=112
The hotel was close to the Togo-Ghana border, so we rolled our bags along the sidewalk next to the beach. At the border, we got through the typical passport/visa border rituals, and then walked to the tro-tro station.

This time, we found an actual bus to take us to Accra. It was large, pretty new, clean, had good shocks, had seat belts, and even a DVD screen. It sat probably 20 people. It took awhile to fill this bus - probably 45 minutes - before we could leave. During this time, of course the vendors are trying to sell us stuff.

One woman gets on the bus and in her bag is a chicken. Could that really be what I saw? Why yes, it soon squawked, proving it was there. What’s a trip to Africa without a chicken on a bus?

A little later we hear the apprentice arguing with one of the women on the bus. It went on for awhile. Finally they stopped arguing, and started stuffing a large matress onto the bus. Most of the people on the bus started laughing! This was rare, usually everyone just sat and endured whatever was happening.

So they get the mattress on, and it’s right in front of John, kind of vertical. For a long time, the driver played the same irritating music tape over and over. Then he put on a DVD, on a screen that John couldn’t see because of the mattress (no loss). The movie was locally produced and about a village and killings and witchcraft. Tammy says that this type of melodramatic film is quite popular.

The driver didn’t drive too fast, amazing. But the bus kept getting stopped by the Ghana police, who repeatedly pulled this one guy off the bus for questioning. The police carried guns, by the way. AK47s. Each time, the police checked this guy’s papers and then his bags in the back of the bus. Probably, each time the guy had to pay a bribe. Tammy said he was either Nigerian or a rastafarian.

One time the bus stopped, and everyone started getting off. Finally I figured that this is a “rest” stop. So I followed Tammy to the “restroom”. So far on the trip, when out in public I had always used a restaurant or bar’s toilet facility. And except for once, that meant an actual toilet. Only once was it a “urinal”, and that time, it was a private urinal. A woman’s urinal room is a tiled room, and along one side there is a trough. You are supposed to pull down your pants, squat down, and direct your pee into the trough. This time, I follow Tammy into the restroom facility, and plunk down a coin and am directed to a room that was a urinal. There are about 10 women there peeing. They are all wearing dresses. I start to pull down my pants and then just can’t do it. I went back out and paid more money and was directed to a real toilet. (Men in west Africa often just pee in the street, in the open.)

We hit traffic about 10 miles out of Accra. One time, there was an accident causing the traffic, other times it was just volume. Our flight doesn’t leave until 11 pm, so we aren’t in a big hurry for that, but Tammy had an errand to run for her PC site mate, Becky. Becky supposedly has a pet carrier waiting for her at a certain pet store in Accra and supposedly the pet store closes at 3 pm. (Becky has a dog that she wants to bring home with her to America in a few weeks.)

Tammy looked at a map and figured the general area of Accra the pet store must be in, and asked others in the bus where to get off. Before we are in the heart of Accra, the bus stops, and someone on the bus told her that this is our stop. People in Ghana are really helpful. We found a taxi, and the driver helped us find the pet store, even calling the pet store on his phone and asking strangers inside a local business. Again, helpful people.

We arrived at the pet store at about 2:30 pm. But they didn’t have a pet carrier. The salesgirl called her boss. Finally by about 5:30 pm, the boss came. In the meantime, we had drinks at a bar and then dinner across the street from the pet store. The time was well spent, as we were all together, enjoying food, drink, and conversation.

When the boss came with the pet carrier, he told us that he didn’t take Tammy’s Visa card (the whole point was that he was supposed to take Visa while Becky had been there and they didn’t take Mastercard). The guy was really nice, though, and offered to take us to an ATM so she could withdraw cash. Then, he drove us directly to the airport. That was awfully nice. We all got out and went inside the terminal.

Tearfully, we said good bye to Tammy.

John and I went to catch our plane for Dulles. Our plane left at 11:15 pm. As the plane rose off the runway, I gazed down at nighttime Africa, pale orange lights spotted through the city, and then just large areas of darkness.

Next: Africa, last impressions.]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=112 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:35:32 -0900 http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=111 great tuna lunch at Tammy’s friend’s house. A taxi picked us up at Tammy’s house and took us all the way to the Hotel Phoenicia in Lome. No more bush taxis for us!

After we settled into our hotel room, we walked a couple blocks to the beach, and sat at a “bar” that was sheltered tables and chairs on the sand. As we sat and talked and ate a few snacks, hawkers kept coming by to sell us stuff. Tammy bought some DVDs. One guy was selling cigarettes and viagra. Yup, viagra.

Later, we walked to a restaurant for pizza. We felt kind of guilty for abandoning the food of the local culture, but we were hungry for something other than rice and sauce. We wanted cheese! We had to ask the restaurant workers to turn down the music. I forgot to mention this before, but the Ghanaese like to play loud reggae music through bad speakers. I like music, but it’s hard to hear over it when what you really want is good conversation.

The Hotel Phoenicia had TVs, hot showers, and even wi-fi. They also had a restaurant and bar. Our last night in Togo began a slow transition back to the creature comforts that John and I are so used to. We snuggled into the crisp sheets, cooled by a noisy but effective air conditioner. It's bittersweet, though. We know that tomorrow we have to say good-bye to Tammy.

Next: To the airport.]]> public http://www.pfeist.net/blog/index.php?itemid=111 Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:05:56 -0900