Thank You to Donors for the New Dictionary Project

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The fronts of the Thank You cards the kids made this week to thank donors for the dictionaries.
Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card Thank You Card

The New Dictionary fundraising project closes with some thank you notes from the dictionary recipients.

I asked my friend, the teacher at the school that received the dictionaries we raised money for to write something up to share with donors. She sent me the following:

Gratitude Attitude

Corny title, huh. That’s okay I’m feeling a bit sentimental towards the people that chose to become involved in my students’ education. Saying thank you because you made a difference sounds trite, but let me explain.

So often we are frustrated by the state of education and don’t know how to help. Funding alone will not make the difference, but getting involved does. When I felt defeated using dictionaries not adequate for my class and expressed this to my friend Maria Langer she chose to become involved. She set up the Indiegogo account and monitored its progress. Thanks, Maria!

Incredibly, people I’ve never met cared enough to donate to a fund to purchase 32 new dictionaries for over half of our school’s 6th grade class. Wow! Not only did you make this possible, but you have inspired me as a teacher with your involvement. Thank you for trusting me with your donation and your support.

Our first day back from winter break brought excitement as we unpacked our dictionary shipment. We explored our new books and students discovered word origins, geographical names and locations as well as all the usual components of a dictionary.
We practiced learning new words by me, the teacher, asking questions such as, “What would you do with a plover?” and offering the following multiple choice responses: “Till the dirt on your farm?”, “Observe it in the sky?”, or “Drive it? ” Then students would hurriedly flip through the pages to be the first to define it. New text to discover!

Excitement in learning made possible because of your contributions. Thank you for caring enough to share and changing my attitude of some resignation into one of gratitude and renewed energy.

My friend’s class also created Thank You cards, which will be shipped out today to one of two donors who contributed $100 to the project. (The other donor elected not to get a bonus.) I’ve scanned the fronts of the cards to show them off here. The insides are full of personal notes and student signatures. Kid art rocks!

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this project. It really made a difference to this sixth grade class.

15-Bean Soup

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No, not just 15 beans. 15 kinds of beans.

Bean SoupThe other day, I made 15-bean soup, a great, hearty dish, especially good on cold days.

One of my Facebook friends asked what recipe I used. I told her I made it up as I went along. Here’s the recipe as I remember it. (This recipe should also work well for pea soup; just use split peas instead of the bean mix.)

Ingredients:

  • 1 bag dried beans. I used 15-bean mix, but you might want to try a different mix. The problem with the 15-bean mix is that it includes black beans which, when cooked, make the soup dark and uglier than it needs to be. But it still tastes good. If the beans came with any sort of soup “flavor packet,” throw it away.
  • Ham hocks. I used a package of 3. Two of them didn’t have much meat on them, but the third had a lot of meat. You could, if you prefer, use about 1/4 pound lean, thick sliced bacon (cut into 1-inch pieces) or smoked sausage (cut into 1-inch pieces). Or you could leave this out entirely if you want a vegetarian soup.
  • 1 cup carrots, cut into 1-inch slices. I used baby carrots, halved.
  • 1 cup celery, cut into 1-inch slices.
  • 1 large onion, chopped.
  • 1 tsp dried thyme.
  • 1 tsp dried tarragon.
  • 1 tsp dried sage. (The sage I had at home had evidence of mold, so I didn’t use any.)
  • 2 bay leaves.
  • Salt and pepper to taste.

Instructions:

  1. Rinse the beans, then put them in a pot with enough water to cover them by at least 2 inches. Soak for an hour, then drain. Then return to pot, cover with water again, and allow to soak overnight.
  2. Drain the beans again, then return to the pot.
  3. Add 6-7 cups water and ham hocks and bring to a boil.
  4. Reduce heat and simmer about 3 hours, stirring occasionally to prevent beans from sticking to the bottom of the pot. During this time, it may be necessary to skim some ugly foam off the top. I use a slotted spoon.
  5. Remove the ham hocks from the pot and set aside to cool.
  6. Add the vegetables and herbs to the pot and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and simmer.
  7. Remove meat from ham hocks and return it to the pot. Discard fat, skin, and bones. (At this time, if there isn’t enough meat, you can add diced ham or something similar. I really like a meaty soup.)
  8. Continue simmering until vegetables are done.

Serve hot with some crusty bread.

I like a thick soup, so I usually just add 6 cups of water in step 3. If the soup seems to be too thick by step 5, I add more boiling water. The other day, I added about a cup to bring it up to 7 cups.

In all honesty, I’m clueless about herbs. I guessed on these and it tasted good.

I don’t know if it matters if you cover it. I covered it after step 6.

This soup freezes well. The recipe yielded about 3 quarts of soup; I divided most of it into pint-sized plastic containers, cooled it in the fridge, and then put most of them in the freezer. When I’m ready to eat the frozen soup, I can simply transfer it into a microwave safe dish and zap it on medium until done, stirring a few times along the way. Or let it defrost on the countertop and heat it on high until hot.

If you make it, let me know what you think.

American Express Transfer Email Message Scam

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Yet another email scam — this one supposedly from American Express.

I don’t even think the bits had even finished uploading on yesterday’s scam report when this one popped into my email inbox for the same email address (which I’m probably going to turn off very shortly):

Amex Scam

Once again, it’s easy for me to recognize this as a scam:

  • Bad email address. My Amex account uses another one.
  • I don’t have an American Express Open account at all.
  • I didn’t do any Amex transfers.

The message was from a noreply address at Bebo Services. All the links point to the same page on the kingspssq.org.uk domain. Again, I haven’t tried the links and have no plans to do so.

At this point, if you’re blindly clicking links in any email message you get that looks the least bit suspicious, you probably deserve whatever results.

Be smart. Think before you click.

Found: Journal from the Past

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I find a handwritten journal with entries from 1991 through 1993 that brings back memories and foreshadows the future.

I’ve been packing on and off for my upcoming move. I’ve been in this house for 15 years and, in that time, have accumulated a lot of stuff. As anyone who has moved can tell you, it’s best to weed out the junk before packing to minimize what you pack. That’s what I’ve been doing since I returned home in September.

Along the way, I’ve been finding all kinds of lost treasures.

The Journal

Journal Cover
The journal I found in my closet on Tuesday.

While cleaning out my “stationery closet” — a closet in the room I used as on office on and off over the past 15 years — I stumbled upon a hard-cover “blank book” that wasn’t blank. I opened it up to discover a journal I had begun back in 1991 that had entries spanning through 1993. It was basically my blog, before blogs existed — a journal of what was going on in my life when I found time to write about it.

I didn’t have much time to look through it — I was leaving shortly to meet some friends for dinner — but I did read enough to realize that I’d found something special: a look into my past life. And, as evidenced on the very first paragraph of the first page’s entry, dated September 10, 1991, it hinted at the difficulties I was already having with the man I’d later marry:

Yet another in a long line of “Nothing” Books. When I bought this in Williamsburg last Saturday, Mike told the people we were with that I’d never write in it. So begins my efforts to prove him wrong.

Open Journal Page
The first page in my journal, dated September 10, 1991.

Yes, I really wrote that more than 21 years ago. Even then, Mike was putting me down.

One of my biggest gripes with him over the years was his habit of putting me down — almost gleefully — in front of family and friends. It usually came out of the blue, totally unexpected, usually on a day when we were getting along just fine. We’d be with other people and he’d say something about me to point out one of my weaknesses or something dumb I’d said or done while alone with him. Something I thought he’d be smart — or kind — enough to keep to himself. It was belittling and embarrassing and the cause of more than a few arguments over the years. It was one of the reasons I didn’t marry him until much, much later, when I thought — mistakenly, it seems — that we were really life partners forever and that I could trust him.

(Yes, I’m an idiot. I’m sure he’s pointing out my stupidity for trusting him to his girlfriend and his friends regularly, even to this day. Love is apparently not just blind, but stupid.)

I remember why I called it a “Nothing” book. Back in the 1980’s I got my first blank book, which was actually titled “The Nothing Book.” (I’m sure I have it around somewhere; I don’t throw anything like that away.) I don’t think I wrote much in it at all.

But this book was more than half filled. A gold mine or stories, full of accounts of traveling for work and pleasure, camping and motorcycle trips, and my freelance career. It’s a diary where I documented what was going on in my life in occasional entries over a two-year period when I was in my early thirties and just beginning to realize what life was all about.

It will make interesting reading and fodder for future blog posts.

Verizon Acknowledgement Message Scam

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Another email scam, this one purportedly from Verizon Wireless.

Got this message in my email inbox today:

Verizon Scam Message

This is obviously a scam. Several things tipped me off:

  • I did not recently do any new transactions with Verizon Wireless. In other words, there was no real reason to contact me.
  • The message was addressed to an email address Verizon does not have for me.
  • Pointing to any of the links in the message reveals the same destination URL on the domain jsslcctv.com — which has nothing to do with Verizon.
  • I didn’t check the account number, but I’m pretty sure mine is my phone number and it doesn’t end with 8281.
  • Poor grammar/wording indicates the person who wrote this message was not a native English speaker.

I don’t know what clicking these links does and I don’t want to know. I just want to warn others that this is yet another scam that could easily suck you in if you’re not paying attention. Think before you click!