Open Thread WE 25 AUG 21 ~ melon call ya'


Cantaloupe-Melon.jpg
“Friends are like melons, shall I tell you why? To find one good, you must a hundred try.”

— Claude Mermet

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Welcome to today's open thread. Something sweet for you today. Just pared down two more local friendly ripe cantaloupes. They are sooo good this year. Sweet and moist, firm and full. Nature smiled on this fruit. Tomatoes too. A very good season. The corn is doing swell as well. A benefit for living rural is having access to the area harvests. No middle diddle -- just a stand at the side of the road. Support small farmers!

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As a poor black child, our family would take summer trips from MI to upstate eastern NY, where mom's people lived. The town had a local grower selling Hand Melons, mostly shipped to NYC. Very sweet and fun to eat. Guess that is where my love affair with melons started. Still reliving the texture.

Watermelons seem to have wide appeal. Never cared for them too much. Too seedy, grainy and watery. Although when infused with strong spirits, they have a pleasant summerish effect. What are your favorite melons?

“Green Buddhas on the fruit stand. We eat the smile and spit out the teeth.” — Charles Simic

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Oops, I forgot this is a political blog. Guess you folks will have to fill in the rest. Is there something important happening in the world beyond ripe melons? Not so sweet I imagine.

~

Cheers!

~
harmony.jpeg
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1825 - Uruguay Declares Independence from the Brazilian Empire Smile

1829 - President Jackson makes an offer to buy Texas, but Mexican government refuses Smile

1894 - Japanese scientist Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet Smile

1916 - US Department of Interior forms National Park Service Smile

1950 - US President Harry Truman orders army to take control of railroad to avert a strike Sad

Make history today!

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Please don't label this as a political blog. It's an anything blog. Labels are divisive.

Melons are yummy!

Enjoy the day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

@Raggedy Ann

Thanks RA!

Honeydew-Melon.jpg

Honey Dew for you.

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All three are so yummy and great from the Farmer’s Market. Of course, here is Santa Fe, the green chiles being roasted add to the good things coming from the Farmer’s Market.

When buying cantaloupe from the local grocers, always thump them and sniff the end where they are pulled from the vine. Seems to work for me and sometimes pass them when don’t pass the thump test. One day was thumping and sniffing melons when a lady walked and asked what I was doing. Told her my theory on good melon hunting and she asked me to find her one. Did my best and them while we were discussing this, a man walked up and asked me to find him one as well. Kind of fun interacting with others with no real agenda in mind except a good melon.

Have a good day and I am off for breakfast of fresh melon and boiled egg!

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

@jakkalbessie @jakkalbessie

Learned years ago to press on the ends to give an indication of ripeness. Should be slightly soft.
There are many varieties under the muskmelon umbrella. Sugar cube, Santa Claus, Honey Globe, Valencia, Sprite, Crenshaw, Snow Leopard, etc. en on ..

Melon is a delicious fruit packed with nutrition. The term “melon” diversed in many different plants belong to the family Cucurbitaceae. Containing niacin, vitamin A, B6, C, potassium and their high water content, make it an excellence diuretic.

Melons originated in South Asia, Africa, India, and Iran and have been cultivated for thousands of years. Melons are botanically a type of berry in the Cucurbitaceae family of fruit.

These look funky - Kiwano

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Like your eggs and melon idea. Had mine with cottage cheese, S & P today. Yumm.

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Granma's picture

@jakkalbessie what sound are you hoping for?

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@Granma It tends to be a hollow likes sound. Not sure exactly why but that is the sound I am looking for.

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

@jakkalbessie

If you want to select the best melon every time, here are a few tips:

Inspect the skin to make sure that there are no bruising or soft patches.
Checking the skin color is also important. Yellow melons such as canary melons should be vibrant, whereas honeydews should have a pale-yellow color. Avoid ones that have green patches. Depending on the variety, the rind color of muskmelons and cantaloupes should be light green, golden, or orange under the beige-colored netting.
Check the weight because heavier melons tend to be more succulent and juicier.
Do the smell test because popular varieties of melon such as honeydews and cantaloupes should have a fragrant, fresh aroma.
Gently tap watermelons to make sure they have a hollow sound.

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CB's picture

@Granma
to hear the correct sound of a ripe melon, just knock on my head with my knuckles while forming my lips and mouth as if I am making an "O" sound.

It seemed to work. Yes 3

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earthling1's picture

@jakkalbessie
here in the PNW.
I always get a slew of 'em, roast, peel, bag, and into the freezer.
Have tried growing my own, not the same. Has to be from Hatch Valley, NM.
Have a great day.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

CB's picture

who not only lit the spark, they maintain the rage to this day.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv0d8_JCWpI]

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@CB This time any claim for victory will fail as the entire world watched the debacle as we retreat in disgrace.

What I like best about this clip is that it is not Just Saigon, 1975, it is every endeavor we undertake. We have failed the human race, but oh, how wealthy our .001 % has become.

Enraged boomer two thumbs up rating.

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NYCVG

@CB

rage against the war machine
not in my name, nor with my blessing
do these warmongers destroy the earth

the war economy must die

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earthling1's picture

@CB
Thanks for that, CB.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

enhydra lutris's picture

@CB

know how many here get her e-mails or routinely check her site.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Schadenfreude can be delicious.

The Emmy foundation has clawed back the Emmy Cuomo got for his daily narcissistic and false TV shows. The word Cuomo has been scrubbed from its files.

Cuomo's book publisher stopped the publication and canceled the paperback edition because it was written by his staff on the public dime. Look for a revocation of the $5 million advance.

The New Governor in her first public remarks yesterday told the ACCURATE death toll in NY from Covid, which Cuomo has hidden and lied about.

The NYS AG plus 5 district DA's are going forward with fraud and corruption charges against deposed King Andy.

sometimes Karma is visible.

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NYCVG

CB's picture

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/533018-west-destroyed-afghanistan-pdpa-revolution/

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their “allies” destroyed.

In 1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Daud, the cousin of King Zahir Shar. It was an immensely popular revolution that took the British and Americans by surprise.

Foreign journalists in Kabul, reported the New York Times, were surprised to find that “nearly every Afghan they interviewed said [they were] delighted with the coup.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “150,000 persons… marched to honour the new flag… the participants appeared genuinely enthusiastic.”
...
For women, the gains had no precedent; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40% of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70% of its teachers and 30% of its civil servants.
...
“Every girl could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked… We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian films on a Friday... it all started to go wrong when the Mujahedin started winning… these were the people the West supported.”

For the United States, the problem with the PDPA government was that it was supported by the Soviet Union. Yet it was never the “puppet” derided in the West, neither was the coup against the monarchy “Soviet backed,” as the American and British press claimed at the time.

President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, later wrote in his memoirs: “We had no evidence of any Soviet complicity in the coup.”
...
In 2010, I was in Washington and arranged to interview the mastermind of Afghanistan’s modern era of suffering, Zbigniew Brzezinski. I quoted to him his autobiography in which he admitted that his grand scheme for drawing the Soviets into Afghanistan had created “a few stirred up Muslims.”

“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.

“Regrets! Regrets! What regrets?”

When we watch the current scenes of panic at Kabul airport, and listen to journalists and generals in distant TV studios bewailing the withdrawal of “our protection,” isn’t it time to heed the truth of the past so that all this suffering never happens again?

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enhydra lutris's picture

@CB

history twice in the past few days for folks who were unaware of anything pre-dating our invasion. Yes kids, it really is Jimmy Carter who was behind it all way back in the day.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

usefewersyllables's picture

The garden is showing the lack of daylight. The zucchini is calling it quits this week, the tomatillo has already gone into leaf-shedding mode, an I can no longer keep the tomatoes from looking chlorotic. If the local conventional wisdom holds true (6 months to the day from first thunder to first freeze), we'll have the first freeze on October 10. But it looks like the plants will all have hung it up except for the serranos, parsley, chives, and mint by the week after Labor Day.

I'm not looking forward to this winter. Time to start the winter herbs, anyway.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Wall Street is negotiating the sale of Afghanistan in a trade deal with China.
Anonymous sources were quoted as suggesting the Taiwan bargaining chip
would seal the deal.

snark

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CB's picture

@QMS
bargaining skills of Xi Jinping and Wang Yi. I'm positive these men will convince the clueless Biden/Harris administration to take the Philippines in trade for BOTH Afghanistan and Taiwan.

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lotlizard's picture

“Son of a balrog, what was it, now? Cantaloupe? No. Zucchini. Squash. Gourd. Cucumber. Botheration!” </tolkien>

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enhydra lutris's picture

Just took a peek at the Cucurbitaceae and there sure are boatloads of them. It's almost enough to drive one out of their gourd. Today is a must run out for specific groceries day, possibly a good day to snag cucurbits too. The monkey mind just popped up Qbert as a vaguely homonymic entity. Heh. How is Qbert related to pickles?

Well, enough of that. It used to be said that everything was politics (Thomas Mann, among others) but, oddly enough, not that politics was everything. That is a significant detail.
Perhaps that still is the case, though buried in the fog of semantics because the polity can no longer distinguish between that which pertains to the polis and whatever gross monstrosity this "party politics" is. How did politics become a party anyway? Ol' George Washington and others of quasi-mythic proportion in this country bemoaned and decried the rise of political parties as destructive of the state and of "democracy"; I believe that assorted ancient Greeks did likewise, except that they called them factions. The assertion that all such parties die from swallowing their own lies is variously attributed to folks like Twain and Arbuthnot.

Here's John Addams on the matter:

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

That is muchly the crux of the matter. That is different from mere everyday politics, the politics of getting along with each other and getting shit done and when to plant beans and whether sweet corn should be boiled or grilled.

All of that said, there is an underlying assumption that we are reasonable and reasoning beings and can cooperate and shit like that. Are we?

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

https://nos.nl/artikel/2395076-ijzeretende-bacterie-gevonden-in-kanaal-v...

An iron-eating bacterium has been found in the canal connecting Ghent and Terneuzen, a phenomenon known as MIC (microbiologically influenced corrosion). It eats its way right through iron and even through steel. In the marina of Zelzate, just across the border in Belgium, several boats have already been badly damaged. Belgian researchers are very concerned.

The bacterium is not only a danger to boats; steel from sheet piling along the canal can also be affected.

Researchers from the Antwerp Maritime Academy and the universities of Ghent and Leuven discovered the bacterium. They are surprised by its power. Where normally steel under water corrodes at the rate of about 0.1 millimeters per year, this bacterium eats away up to half a centimeter annually, say the researchers.

The iron disappears fifty times faster than normal. "I have already examined hundreds of sea-going vessels, but this is unprecedented. The bacteria eat up the ship, as it were. Never seen how fast this bacterium strikes," professor Kris De Baere of the Antwerp Maritime Academy told public broadcaster Omroep Zeeland.

De Baere does not rule out the bacterium also being present on the Dutch side of the canal. "The open water means the bacterium can easily spread and for the time being we have no idea where else the bacterium is." He calls for a major study into the bacterium and its spread.

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@lotlizard

Belgium Bacterium Eats Ships

Gac-Melon_1.jpg

gac melon

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enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS

Wooden Boat

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

CB's picture

@lotlizard
in her non-ending struggles against the speciously misnamed Homo sapiens sapiens.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@lotlizard

who did this? This is definitely an act or war, and Biden better gear up and come up with an appropriate response this time.

/snark?

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhyra lutris

some better than others
depending on the goals of said beings
the money / power grabbers tend more toward
competition whereas the rest of us find
cooperation more productive

According to the wiki world Qbert doesn't resemble a pickle. Unless they grow Qpickles in Qberg?

Q*bert segments between 1983 and 1984. The show is set in a United States, 1950s era town called "Q-Burg", and stars Q*bert as a high school student, altered to include arms, hands, jacket, and sneakers. He shoots black projectiles from his nose, what he calls "Slippy Dew", to make his enemies slip. Characters frequently say puns that add the letter "Q" to words.

bitter-melon.jpg

bitter melon

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lotlizard's picture

@QMS  
Obligatory plug for Ting Wong’s in Philly Chinatown…
https://www.phillymag.com/best-of-philly-archive/ting-wong-4/

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Lookout's picture

Buy your melons from the trader when you can smell the cantaloupes before you see them.

We're splurging on fresh peaches from trade day now. The tomatoes have been super this year, but now I'll be glad when they play on out. We've got plenty put up.

Baby fall crops coming on. Will do some direct seeding in the garden next week, lettuce and such.

Enjoy your melons. We're having our third dry day in a row.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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@humphrey

baby banishes formula but
beams when beholding a beer Wink

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There are no local farmers selling them here. I am never satisfied with the ones from the stores, and just do not have the time to tend a garden.
When I did garden, I raised red and yellow watermelons, regular and small round ones, and cantaloupes. I raised honey dews occasionally.
Good times.
I am taking in all kinds of cases, civil and criminal, involving family violence. Lots of stressors in the country right now. These are the bad times.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

usefewersyllables's picture

@on the cusp

a Coloradan, we can introduce you to the Rocky Ford canteloupe. You'll like 'em. (;-) Rocky Ford is to canteloupes as Hatch is to chiles, Palisade is to peaches, or Olathe is to corn (and I won't hold the fact that Olathe is actually in Kansas against the corn!)...

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

@usefewersyllables will be in melon season! Woohoo!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

CB's picture

@on the cusp
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLTbEC1prcs]

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/algeria-morocco-sever-diplomatic-ties

Yet another clash with a lot of potential for nastiness heating up — mostly unnoticed…

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