Fairmount Water Works Fish Cam

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"The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter" on NPR

Imaginary Landscape No. 4

Version I:



Version II:




Note: Click Here For Background Info

Fridge & Freezer

I Miss You!

"We were together for over a year but that ended last night. I was drunk and now its too late for us. I'm sure when people saw us together they thought you made me look bad but I didn't care! When I was with you... It was like seeing a new world with fresh eyes. Farewell. I hope you ended up with someone who has the same feeling for you that I did. You were, literally, a great pair of inexpensive, store-bought reading glasses. I hope my next pair will be as good to me as you were."

submitted to 'I Love You / I Hate You' on April 15th


More:

Click Here For Related A.A.(P.) entry

Free Library Festival: Saturday & Sunday, April 17 & 18, 2010

Free Library Festival Street Fair & Literary Marketplace

Recipe

Louisiana Brown Jasmine Rice and Shrimp Risotto

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 cups Cajun Grain brown jasmine rice (see note)

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 1/2 cups chicken stock

2 medium onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 jalapeño, minced

1 acorn squash, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces

2 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/4 cup scallions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.


Directions:

1. Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Melt 2 tablespoons butter. Sauté the rice and black pepper until rice is well coated and nutty smelling, about 3 minutes. Add 2½ cups stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover tightly and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir and quickly re-cover. Continue simmering for another 20 minutes. Stir again. Turn off the heat and replace the lid. Set aside to continue steaming off the heat while preparing the rest of the dish.

2. Heat a large sauté pan (at least 5 quarts) over medium heat. Melt 4 tablespoons butter. Sauté the onions, garlic, jalapeño and squash until soft, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the shrimp and cook until pink, about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup stock and the cooked rice and stir well to combine. Bring to a simmer and heat thoroughly while stirring, about 5 minutes. Stir in the scallions and parsley. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Serve immediately. Serves 6.

Recipe by Christine Muhlke
Adapted from Ryan Prewitt at Herbsaint in New Orleans

Note: Cajun Grain rice can be ordered at (337) 207-0966, or at cajungrainrice.com. Brown jasmine rice is also available at most health-food stores.

Photograph by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times; Food stylist: Maria Washburn.


More: Excerpt from Related New York Times' Sunday Magazine Article

Field Report - Rice Dreams in Louisiana by CHRISTINE MUHLKE (Published March 28, 2010)


When you own a 150-acre farm, having a change of heart about how you do things is a slow, costly process. When you’re a third-generation rice farmer in rural Louisiana —a state with just 23 organic farms — deciding to try to grow brown rice without pesticides or chemical fertilizers is enough to get you certified not organic, but insane.

Fifteen years ago, Kurt and Karen Unkel of Kinder, La., decided the risk was worth it. “I started this because I could not see the future in conventional farming,” Kurt told me when I visited him last month. Back then, he and his brother were farming 2,000 acres. But “it got to where you could plow 100 acres and you wouldn’t find one earthworm.” As he spoke, he turned over the soil in his experimental vegetable garden, sending earthworms squirming back toward the ground. “And as I learned about the nutrition, there just wasn’t no stopping. You’re dealing with life!”

Cookie Fortune & Books

Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man.

Learn Chinese:

qian xi - dry cleaning

Lucky Numbers: 24, 5, 49, 38, 2, 20


Books Checked Out From The Free Library of Philadelphia:

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Armageddon In Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

Slash by Slash with Anthony Bozza

Surfing the Himalayas - A Spiritual Adventure by Frederick Lenz (on hold)


Note: Books listed in return due date order

On This Date

Today is Saturday, April 10th
The 100th day of 2010.
There are 265 days left in the year.

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Today's Highlights in History

On April 10, 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals.

On April 10, 1847, Joseph Pulitzer, influential 19th-century American newspaper editor and publisher , was born.

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On this date in:

1847 - Newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer was born in Hungary.


1866 - The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was incorporated.


1912 - The luxury liner Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.


1925 - "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published.


1932 - Adolf Hitler came in second in voting for German president to the incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg.


1972 - Some 70 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed an agreement banning biological warfare.


1981 - Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won election to the British Parliament.


1992 - Financier Charles Keating Jr. was sentenced in Los Angeles to nine years in prison for swindling investors when his Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed. (The convictions were later overturned).


1996 - President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique that opponents call partial-birth abortion.


1998 - Negotiators in Northern Ireland reached a landmark settlement that called for Protestants and Catholics to share power.


2001 - The Netherlands legalized mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.


2007 - A woman wearing an explosives vest strapped underneath her black robe blew herself up in the midst of 200 Iraqi police recruits in Muqdadiyah, killing 16.

Letter To The Editor

re: Back Channels - That working meeting? It was the Zoning Board (*)

According to writer Kevin Ferris, "Oh my, no, those people from the videos are not on the board. They were sent to the State Department's Central America desk to work in brothel support."

Why is Mr. Ferris' journalistic scoop buried in the last paragraph of his column? It should be leading news when the Obama administration mistakenly considers the RNC to be part of Central America.

Allan Smithee
Philadelphia


(*) published on the Insights & Observations Page in the Easter Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia Phillies vs Washington Nationals

1:05 PM


Update:

Meet The 2010 Phillies

Happy Easter Weekend

re: Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris

Included in the exhibition is the World War II era of Pablo Picasso's career when the artist remained in Nazi-occupied Paris while dictator Francisco Franco ruled Spain. Picasso worked mostly in sculpture then, using bronze for such pieces as Man With A Lamb despite wartime prohibitions on the use of the scarce metal. He chose bronze as a way of protesting the occupation.

excerpted from an article by William Kenny
published 3/25/10
The Port Richmond Star
pgs 39-40

Note: 1st Sunday of every month is pay-what-you-want admission at PMA. Special exhibitions such as Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris are not included in the discounted price.

Library Notice

In observance of Good Friday,
all Free Library of Philadelphia locations
will be closed on Friday, April 2, 2010.