Anticipation

Received email notification from the Transportation Safety Authority that the background check has been successfully completed and I've been issued my Known Traveler Number.

Happy and expedited traveling... 

 

The Devil is in the Details

President-elect Trump found his way to the White House in no small measure to his assiduous use of working-class anxieties about and laying blame upon the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for the loss of manufacturing jobs.  Now that the campaign has wrapped-up it is instructive to note that our neighbors ro the north and south are our largest trading partners taking in more than $500 billion in US goods each and every year.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce NAFTA is responsible for more than 14 million US jobs in everything from automobiles to aircraft, agricultural products, steel and pharmaceuticals.  The North American business community has invested billions of dollars to make this work to everyone's mutual benefit.

Understanding the metrics of NAFTA is complicated and a flippant campaign promise to tear-up a long standing trade treaty on day one flies in the face of complicated economic policies.

It will be fascinating to observe from the sidelines the new administration's understanding of these complexities and whether or not they imperiously scrap the entire deal or take an intelligent and more nuanced approach.

Friday Music

Ars Cantus is a non-profit Cultural Association which was founded on 10th December 1987, in Varese, Italy, with the aim "of developing and spreading interest in and enthusiasm for classical music, in particular Italian and sacred music, with special emphasis on the artistic and musical education of schoolchildren and young members of the public. In order to achieve these aims, the association co-operates in all possible ways both with public institutions and with those of the dioceses.

 Ennio Morricone's For a Fistful of Dollars....

Notable Quotable

Vladimir Putin is a thug and a bully and a murderer.  He understands strength, and that’s all that he understands.
                                                                - Senator John McCain

Uncle Dick's Tomato Juice

One of my fondest childhood memories is of my favorite Uncle Dick making tomato juice.  That's weird isn't it?  Growing-up in the 1960s I think most every family had a Foley Food Mill for grinding-up all sorts of stuff like apples and tomatoes.  I recently discarded the ancestral food mill that had been languishing in the basement.  It was dented and rusty and the paint was flaking from the wooden handles – likely lead-based paint too.  I have a newer Foley mill.  It is identical in design to the old one except it is 100% stainless steel.  I purchased it - along with additional canning supplies - at my favorite retailer.  The home canning aficionado's all-purpose resource - Fleet Farm - has everything you need.  But I digress.

About the juice.

There is no written record of Uncle Dick's tomato juice recipe but since I’ve been making the stuff for almost a decade if you follow these directions you can make juice too.

I fetched a bunch of jars of canned tomatoes from last summer's garden.  This year was a bumper year for tomatoes and I have something on the order of fifty quarts of canned tomatoes stored in the bunker.  The tomatoes have already been peeled and cooked via the canning process so it is a simple matter to dump them into the mill and merrily go about grinding them into juice.  

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It's rather old-school as far as juicing goes but it works just fine.  Do you have any idea how lip-smacking yummy canned homegrown tomatoes are when you pop the lid off? Wow!  It transports you right back to August and September.

Periodically removing the pulp for the compost bin and grinding away I filled my largest stainless stock pot. I seasoned the juice with some additional kosher salt and a dash each of white pepper and garlic salt.

 Gently raise the heat on your juice and simmer until just shy of a boil. 

Fill sterilized quart jars with the hot juice and top with a sterile lid and screw down the band finger tight.  Process in a boiling water bath in the canner for another fifteen minutes.  Remove and set aside to cool.  When the lids pop they're good to go.

Fourteen quarts of bottled liquid sunshine. 

Thanks for the inspiration Uncle Dick - you're the best!
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* A word about the jars and lids.  Sterilize your jars by immersing them in boiling water or running them through the dishwasher on the 'sanitize' cycle.  Lids are easy - in the microwave heat a Pyrex measure full of water to a boil. Drop your lids in the hot water.  Fish them out with a sterile tongs.

Sunset

Sunsets are going to be on the opposite side of the road for a bit but as the days grow longer they'll shift gradually to the west and then eventually to the west, northwest.

Mother Nature is showing-off again...

 

Something from Santa

click on the US Air Force photo to enlarge

Between August 2014 and November 2016, the U.S. Air Force flew more than 10,000 strikes against the Islamic State extremist group, according to official logs.  American pilots lobbed nearly 28,000 bombs and missiles at a variety of targets.

On Dec. 26, 2016, the U.S. Air Force released a couple of pictures of an F-16 from the Vermont Air National Guard’s 134th Fighter Squadron on a mission over Iraq or Syria. The most eye-catching detail was an unusual piece of gear the pilot was wearing  - a Santa hat over his or her helmet.

Read the complete story here.

Middle East Friends

Israel is in the news this week following the US abstention of a Security Council vote.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has got his undies in a knot.

For the record let the facts reflect the following:

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. Israel has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. 

Total direct U.S. aid to Israel has amounted to over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largess is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain*

And in September of this year the Obama Administration finalized a $38 billion package of military aid for Israel over the next 10 years - the largest of its kind ever.

Reflect upon this.

The US is going to borrow the funds to extend to our Israeli friends this munificence.  These are resources that will not be spent upon infrastructure, schools, universities, science, healthcare, research or anything here in the good old US of A.

Bibi.  Dude.  You and Israel need to lighten-up.  

Edit to add:   In other news, Israel's attorney general has just opened a criminal investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for bribery and fraud.
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*Source: The Congressional Research Service's report "U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel," written by Jeremy M. Sharp, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs, dated June 10, 2015.

Roots

At the end of October I finally took the plunge and had an Ancestry DNA test performed and apparently my roots grow deep.  The family oral tradition was rather simplistic - half German and half Irish.  According to the DNA results it's not that simple.
 

According to Ancestry DNA I am 39% Irish, 18% Great Britain, 26% Europe West, and 17% Trace Regions (7% Italy/Greece, 4% Iberian Peninsula, 3% Finland/Northwest Russia, 2% European Jewish, 1% Europe East and less than 1% Scandinavian).
 

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All of this can be explained so stay-tuned.  More on this to come as I continue digging into the family tree.

Claude

Claude l'ours vous raconte de joyeuses fêtes!

Holiday Decorations

Red osier dogwood with white pine and white spruce.  

Elegant in its simplicity.

From our forest.

Merry Christmas

The girls send you holiday greetings.

And everyone here on that staff of The Platz wishes you a very merry Christmas.

NORAD Santa Tracker

The North American Aerospace Defense Command conducts aerospace warning, aerospace control and maritime warning in the defense of North America.  For over 60 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa's flight. Follow Santa as he makes his rounds around the world.

Redirect to NORAD here.

To track Santa's route in 3D use the navigation controls on the upper right to change the view. Icons show locations Santa has been spotted. Click on an icon to learn more about the location. Video icons indicate that Santa Cams have recorded footage of Santa at that location. Click on an icon to watch the video.

The toolbar on the upper left is used to change the camera between following Santa and free roaming, to switch between 3D and 2D, and for other tasks.

In addition to the navigation controls, hold the left mouse button and drag to rotate the view, and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

Christmas Eve Sunset

The Winter Solstice for the northern hemisphere was last Wednesday - three days ago - and as a consequence the sun is setting on the other side of the road in the west, southwest.

The sun put on a nice show this afternoon for Christmas Eve.

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Tracks

On the driveway...

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Elf on The Shelf

Elf on the shelf always loses to Ursus americanus - bear on the wall...

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Friday Music

Snows moved in just before sunset and it is absolutely magical outside.  No wind.  If you listen carefully you can actually 'hear' the falling snow. Today's Friday Morning Music is better played at night....

Tweet of the Absurd

Another week comes to a close but not without the president-elect tweeting nonsense in the early morning hours.

I have a vision of him sitting on the throne in his gilded bathroom Android device in hand.  While contemplating the call of nature he's contemplating what manner of distraction he can distill to 140 characters or less.  I hope he washes his hands afterwards.

This week brought us a revisitation of the nuclear arms race and a request that Boeing magically produce a less expensive - but comparable - alternative to Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet.  Never mind that this results in Lockheed shares plunging by more than 2 percent.

As per usual these early morning bathroom pronouncements are devoid of facts and background.  Nonetheless, they're useful inasmuch as the vast throng of low information followers hardly ever over think something.  My takeaway is this.  If you wouldn't take advice from a teetering drunk at the bar take the tweets with a grain of salt.

The President-elect tweets the absurd. 

Manna for his minions.

Pulling Out the Stops

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As you can see in this photo we've pulled-out all of the stops on the Christmas decorations this year...

Stollen

 click on the holiday bread to enlarge

This is a traditional German stollen baked by someone who came from Germany.  It's in the freezer for safe keeping and so there is no temptation to snitch it.

Stollen is a cake-like fruit bread made with yeast, water and flour, and lemon zest. Chopped nuts and dried or candied fruit and spices (cardamom and cinnamon) are also added.  Traditionally served around the Advent and Christmas holidays this is a traditional German treat.

Last week I scored a homemade cranberry nut bread from a German client and this week I scored a homemade stollen from another.

We're going to be enjoying these home-baked delicacies over the holidays here at The Platz.

Raising a toast to having one of the best jobs around...

Score One for the Good Guys

Last week more than 26 tons of cocaine was brought ashore at Fort Lauderdale.  This represents the results of twenty seven separate drug interdictions by the US Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Navy in the eastern pacific.

Just in case you've ever wondered what $715 million dollars worth (wholesale) of cocaine looks like...

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