"Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts." - Charles Lamb

Homegrown Asparagus becomes available in Pennsylvania from April through June. It is perfection in May. I love asparagus so much I am already salivating with anticipation. A list of pick-your-own farms in Eastern Pennsylvania can be found HERE. 

The photograph comes from Petr Kratochvil. 

Everyone has favorite ways to eat Asparagus. My Mother, the Polka Queen, made Creamed Asparagus on Toast. This recipe for Chinese Asparagus Salad is one of my favorites. 

Chinese Asparagus Salad

2 pounds fresh Asparagus

1/4 cup Soy Sauce

1/2 teaspoon Sugar

1/2 teaspoon Vinegar (Cider or White Wine are good)

1/2 teaspoon Salt

2 teaspoons Sesame Oil

Some folks peel Asparagus and you can if you want to. I never do. I just snap it. Use a potato peeler if you are going to peel it. Wash the Asparagus well. Cut the spears diagonally across in 1 1/2 inch lengths. Cook the pieces of Asparagus for one minute in boiling water. Then drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking. Mix all the other ingredients (soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, salt and oil) together in a large bowl. Add Asparagus and toss. Enjoy.

TEXAS Raped This Woman. God Have Mercy. God say Be Calm. Galatians 6:7.

rape
early 14c., "booty, prey;" mid-14c., "forceful seizure, act of snatching by force; plundering, robbery, extortion," from Anglo-French rap, rape, and directly from Latin rapere "seize" (see rape (v.)). Meaning "act of abducting a woman or sexually violating her or both" is from early 15c. Late 13c. in Anglo-Latin (rapum).

Somebody suggested the Anti abortion Zealots do not want this to go SCOTUS. Why? It makes the logical consequences of the Abortion Stalker Law mighty obvious. Every single thing I predicted has come to pass. An innocent Woman was effectively stalked, kidnapped, raped and unjustly imprisoned by StateGov.

It is Gosnell City now in Texas. Dr. Kermit Gosnell murdered pre and post partum infants and called that legal abortion. He kept the corpses in his refrigerator. All possibility of compliance with law is eradicated in Texas. All regulation as to time and safety of procedure is gone. And the wombsniffers screaming LIFE have now created destruction.

If democratic voting will not preserve our civil rights now, and law also will not protect our Family or Women, we are left with no political choice but assassination. Hang Alito and Barrett and Roberts should do it up good. Forget chivvying me FBI, I am too old, crazy and crippled to carry it out. But others are not. It is not just Margery Taylor Greene calling for assassination now. I am a hippy peacenik Quaker GrandMother calling for assassination. I have Daughters. You just might have a another big fat problem uprising on your hands.

Bede's Beat - April 15 marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865

In 1942, Aaron Copland's mind was on the past and the present, because he was commissioned by André Kostelanetz write a piece about an "eminent American" for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,

Copland -- like Kurt Weill, who was contemporaneously setting several of Walt Whitman Civil War poems to musical accompaniment -- turned to the figure of Lincoln as a means of explaining to his countrymen precisely what they were fighting for in battle against the Axis.

The result was The Lincoln Portrait a work written for full orchestra with narrator. Over the years, many famous actors and Americans have performed the Lincoln Portrait, including Henry Fonda (with Copland himself conducting), Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Marian Anderson, Katherine Hepburn, Esther Rolle, Vincent Price, Walter Cronkite, Carl Sandburg (in a performance that won a Grammy), Gore Vidal, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Armstrong, Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Adlai Stevenson.

Carl Sandburg with André Kostelanetz conducting the New York Philharmonic [winner of the 1959 Grammy for "Best Performance – Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy)"

Community Standard or Do Not Be a Dick

We have a good crowd of intelligent, funny, friendly commenters here who can and do really talk to each other. I treasure my commenters.

TROLLS BEWARE!

I am now banning IP addresses as well as screen names. You cannot come here and irritate, harass, lie about the facts, and trash and sneer at people. Go elsewhere for your kind of fun.

People can have a good clean fight here. Fighting can be educational and fun. Just do not be a dick. And use facts. And the most important rule of all is I am the Queen. Do not piss me off.

Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists
Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response.
https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Happy Earth Day!

These Poems seem appropriate. Peace.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I Think I Could Turn And Live With Animals...
By Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Just poking my head out briefly. I cry now while watching the news. Now we can see the Children dying.

FOR TUCKER CARLSON

Clucker’s like
Rose from Tokyo.
Bold faced because
So not broke-e-o.
Grab his bowtie
And give choke-e-o.
Don’t kill him oh no;
Stop the NewSpeak flow.
And let’s send Clucker
Off to the pokey-oh.

Tucker Carlson and the Fox Network practice stochastic terrorism. 

Stochastic Terrorism 1. The use of mass communication to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. 2. Remote-control murder by lone wolf.

Gender Confusion - UPDATE

A record 7.1 percent of U.S. adults self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, and members of Generation Z are driving the growth, according to results from a Gallup survey published Thursday. Alfred Kinsey speculated that most folks are bisexual. Too bad he did not live long enough to comment on current developments. 

If you read Leviticus, you come to understand that the tribe of Levi were a sexy bunch. The Levite rules about what one is 'not supposed to do' in a tent, tell us 'what they were doing' in the tent. Auntie Diddlers, evil Father Rapers (apology to Arlo).

Modern life has become a bit more complicated thanks to Science. I am experiencing gender confusion. Think of the flavors available:

Male, Female, Celibate, Polyamorous, Asexual, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Homosexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer. Did I leave something out?

I have played at all these things (at one time or another) whenever a situation seemed to require it. You do enough of that and eventually all orifices begin to look alike. Talk about confusion. Even the protuberances become mere supporting structures guiding one into the pink, undulating, lubricious, steaming center of the Pile. Anybody remember Plato's Retreat? The place gave new meaning to the mob phrase "going to the mattresses." But I digress.

I have come to the conclusion that I am a member of a hitherto unsung sexual minority: the Polymorphous Perverse. Subsumes all the other letters. Thank you, Sigmund Freud and Merriam Webster, for clearing it all up for me.

"adj.

Characterized by or displaying sexual tendencies that have no specific direction, as in an infant or young child, but that may evolve into acts that are regarded as perversions in adults; 

and:

Relating to or exhibiting infantile sexual tendencies in which the genitals are not yet identified as the sole or principal sexual organs nor coitus as the goal of erotic activity."

I blame some of my confusion and frenetic activity on the Menopause. When the estrogen went ByeBye, I was swept away by a tidal wave of testosterone. Progesterone? I grew a faint mustache. I have never looked back.

Human sexual variation is a fact of life; it is not an opinion, a sin, or a choice. I am so fricking old that I remember the Sixties. I was there. If it feels good, do IT, we said. Safely. I had to add that thought in the 80s.

And then somebody will find a name for It, ban It, write a book about It, make a video of It, develop a program for swearing off It or a pill to make the sensations more exquisite. Ah, modern life. I am not sure how I feel about it.

OMG GOP WTF? - Queen Guiliani Haz a Hair Ball - Update

Giuliani Triples Down On Racist Tirade Over Brown Killing, Wants Witnesses Prosecuted For Perjury By Heather 

Is Rudy Guiliani competent mentally and politically? Here is Rudy Guiliani doing the Drag Queen. He has a 'right to kill.'

This is what a Drag Queen looks like.

And this is what a Drag Queen looks like. Fabulous. If I want to see a tired out old Italian Nonna, I can look in the mirror at home. Are you listening SNL?

Is Rudy Giuliani competent mentally and politically? About as competent at being a respected public figure as he is at being a Drag Queen. You are killing me, Rudy Baby. Killing me. STFU.