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Common sense

Where Education Goes, There Goes America

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Down the tubes, that’s where it’s going. Education, I mean. Especially higher education. And by extension, all that we know as America the Beautiful is in the toilet, too.

Mercifully I don’t have to teach in the lower grades, where administrators and taxpayers feel teachers should work for poor pay in worse working conditions and are reviled for daring to organize. Instead, along with legions of my colleagues, I get to teach the products of those conditions.

Here’s what’s on the wind at the Great Desert University: At a recent college meeting, faculty were informed that the university plans to eliminate as many faculty associates as possible.

“Faculty associates” are grossly underpaid part-timers, desperate enough to take contract work with no benefits and, given the de facto workload, at less than minimum wages. When I was teaching at GDU in a full-time adjunct position with a modest salary and benefits, I taught eight sections a year. For what my salary and benefits cost the university, GDU could have hired FAs to teach eighteen sections, and still had $945 left over. Most adjuncts teach the required lower-division scutwork courses, especially freshman composition, a hugely work-intensive writing course.

So, a large portion of the FAs are to go, but some will remain. Those who do remain will be required to teach a hundred and fifty students. That’s 75 students per writing course, since GDU limits part-timers to two sections per semester. A full-time adjunct, who teaches four-and-four, would be teaching three hundred students each semester in writing-intensive L-1 courses.

By way of pretending to accomplish this impossible task, the university will recruit undergraduate students to work as “peer reviewers.” These kids, whose job will be to “review” but not to grade papers, will be trained by the director of composition. In other words, they will not be true teaching assistants, but just one more responsibility for the adjunct to have to deal with.

One full-time adjunct on the West campus has already announced she’s walking, unemployment being a far more attractive option than slave labor of this magnitude. She told friends the work was crushing her…and that was before this announcement came down.

Such a short-sighted and merciless scheme came about because the state’s extreme right-wing legislature, while it’s busily engaged in passing laws that engender one costly lawsuit after another, in suing the federal government over health-care reform, and in fulminating that President Obama should prove (to their satisfaction) that he was born in the U.S., is killing the beast by cutting education funds to virtually nil. State funding for the community colleges was cut 85 percent this year, and you can be sure they’ll do something similar next year.

Students come into my classes from the public high schools better prepared (maybe) than they were a dozen years ago, but only by dint of ridiculous standardized tests that put them into ticky-tacky boxes so they all come out looking just the same. They can recite a few facts and they can organize a standardized three-paragraph or five-paragraph essay. But they still can’t formulate a logical sequence of thoughts on their own, they still can’t discern a reliable fact from raw baloney, and they have become artists at gaming the system.

This semester I decided that instead of knocking myself out riding herd on two or three dozen learning exercises and quizzes, I would take a leaf out of the University of Phoenix’s book: don’t grade the things. The UofP, according to a friend who teaches there, inflicts the same kinds of quizzoids and exercises on its lower-division comp/communication students that I do, with the same purpose: to focus attention on the high points of reading and lecture material. But instead of motivating students to do these exercises by paying them in the currency of the classroom (grades), the UofP tells them that the exercises are there for the students’ benefit. If you want a decent grade in the course, students are advised, you’ll do the exercises. If you don’t do them, you run the risk of getting lower scores on the assignments that are graded. And then: the only graded assignments are the actual, required writings.

For the English 102 sections, this cuts my workload from 23 graded assignments to nine. I’m still scoring drafts and peer reviews, since we’re required to teach writing as a “recursive process.” Drafting and peer reviewing is part and parcel of this theory of composition pedagogy. If that were not the case, making the students responsible for their own learning process would cut my workload to three graded assignments.

Okay, so this semester we’re seeing exactly how the new strategy works. Over the weekend I reviewed their responses to an exercise asking them to apply some new knowledge (i.e., stuff they should’ve learned in the fourth grade but didn’t) to some specific examples.

The exercise went online in one of Blackboard’s pseudo-blogs, which allow students to post material in a format that appears on the instructor’s end as long toilet-paper pages containing everyone’s work. The program eliminates the endlessly time-consuming task of downloading, opening, and re-uploading file after file after file. They can see each other’s work in the “blogs”; BB just changed providers for this program, and I can’t find any way to block students from viewing other students’ posts (as the previous program would do). I’m told it would do this, but apparently it won’t do it retroactively in “blogs” that were created before the program was {snark!} “updated.”

Of 50 students, 27 posted responses. And get this: a bunch of them cheated!

No joke. They copied each others’ work and posted it, for an assignment that bore NO CREDIT.

How do I know?

They copied and pasted the same typos. As in “the car cab goes from zero to 60….” They meant can, not cab. Or at least, the person who first wrote it meant that.

And how did they do on the fourth-grade work with which they were presented? Well, they had 20 questions. One of these snared 17 wrong answers from students (out of 27 respondents!). One had 13 wrong answers, and two had 12. These figures aren’t surprising, considering that they’re copying and pasting each others’ errors. What is surprising is that as they’re copying and pasting, they don’t spot typos and obvious bêtises. The only thing you can conclude is that a significant number of them aren’t even looking at what they’re pasting.

Cheating at solitaire…

Well, my friends. Those of you who work in HR, who run businesses, or who expect to do so in the future will soon have these fine young job applicants at your doorstep.

And that is why the future of America looks dimmer and dimmer.

Did you know that only 37 percent of white Americans have bachelor’s degrees? Those who do are getting them on the strength of this kind of work. By short-changing our schools, colleges, and universities, we’re short-changing ourselves and short-changing our country.

We are, in a word, screwed.

Dateline Arizona: Various News of the Day

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Amid all the sorrow in Tucson, where a nine-year-old child was buried today, miracles are happening. Gabrielle Giffords is opening her eyes of her own accord, apparently recognizing those around her, responding to directions by moving her arms and legs, and even sitting up and dangling her feet off the side of her hospital bed. Her doctors, who profess their astonishment, are being greeted like conquering heroes.

So, it looks like what began as a submicroscopic hope that the wounded Congresswoman might recover is growing into a credible possibility, maybe even a probability.

Sadly, the demented wretch who wrought all this misery will never recover, nor presumably will his parents, whose lives have been destroyed by their only child’s mental illness as surely as his has.

Meanwhile, lunatics are climbing out of the woodwork and cockroaches crawling from beneath refrigerators all across the land. Three local Republican stalwarts resigned their elected posts, alarmed by the irrational violence and fed up with the nastiness that pervades Arizona politics, even within the party. You don’t have to be a Democrat here to become a target of flying vitriol.

Sarah Palin, she of the infamous crosshairs, has found herself the target of threats from dangerous-sounding fruitcakes—how many and of what nature, we don’t know, but we’re willing to believe her alarm. The poor ill-educated soul created another flap in trying to defend herself, in her ignorance choosing an amazingly inappropriate term to describe the criticism aimed at her over the misbegotten crosshair map publicity tool. It’s a terrifying situation. Much as some of us wish she would feel inspired to run for the Anchorage City Dogcatcher’s office, no sane person wants any harm to come to her. Let’s all hope and pray she stays safe.

Hope and pray we all stay safe: these are the times that bring the crazies into the daylight. Whenever some madman or child lets loose with a fusillade, he seems to be followed by a host of imitators. You can hardly blame Legislative District 20 Chairman Anthony Miller for knowing when to fold ’em, as his wife worries that the local right-wing activists will take pot-shots at their home. But as immediate threats, the vocal extremists can’t hold a candle to the silent sickos, known only to a few around them and isolated from psychiatric care by a dysfunctional healthcare system.

All things pass, they say. Let’s hope the present disaster passes soon, and without further incident.

Whence Bag Lady Syndrome?

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At home in the bus stop

I suffer markedly from bag lady syndrome, the haunting sense that one of these days I’m going to end up living on the street. Sometimes I wonder where the hell it comes from. Really, there’s enough in the bank to support me without my ever having to lift a finger in paying work again…but I do lift fingers—all ten of them—in that cause. What am I so scared of?

Late last summer, Sandy L wrote a post at FirstGen American that threw some light on the issue: she suggests many women are subjected to verbal abuse that leads to negative self-talk. We convince ourselves that we’ll never amount to much, because we’ve been told so. Often.

Although my father was not a drinker like Sandy’s, I spent my childhood and early adult life watching my father manipulate my mother by exploiting the fact—and it was a fact—that she couldn’t take care of herself financially. When, as he did every now and again, he would tell her that if she didn’t quit spending “his” money he was going to leave her, he was abusing her.

Now, it’s true that neither of them would have seen it that way. My guess is, they both would have regarded the basis of his threats as ordinary reality. The most she ever earned, working full-time, would not have paid our rent.

Like most women in her generation, she couldn’t support herself on whatever tiny salary she might have been able to earn. To this day, it’s a fact that a large proportion of elderly women end their lives in poverty—even if they spent most of their years in the economic middle class. As the Great Recession was about to descend on us, among women 65 and over, 37 percent of those who were divorced or separated were living in poverty; 28 percent of widows lived in poverty; and 22 percent of single, never-married women lived in poverty. Think of that. Over a third of divorcees, over a quarter of widows, over a fifth of singletons are spending their “golden years” dirt-poor.

It explains a lot about why I live in fear of ending up in a campsite beneath the Seventh Avenue Overpass. I was brought up to think women—particularly me—can’t take care of themselves. As attitudes go, it’s a very difficult one to overcome, particularly when the reality of senior women reinforces it.

My father treated me like an idiot. He made it clear he thought I was stupid, strange, and incompetent. A Phi Beta Kappa key, a doctorate, and three books published through high-quality presses did nothing but confirm his suspicions.

And yes, I was a weird little kid. Like other girls in my generation, I was brought up to be a housewife and urged to get training as a secretary, “just in case” I should someday need a job if the real breadwinner was incapacitated, died, or abandoned me and his kids. My craving to grow up to be an astrophysicist was beside the point; “you can,” I was told, “always have astronomy as a hobby.”

How fortunate I was that his influence was counterbalanced by the women on my mother’s side of the family! Though I don’t buy into Christian Science, the worldview to which my great-grandmother and great-aunt subscribed, nobody espouses “positive thinking” more powerfully than do Christian Scientists. These two, who took in my mother as a teenager and partly raised her, lived together in a pretty little Berkeley foothills bungalow after my great-grandfather died. During the process of his dying, the existence of a long-term mistress in San Francisco came to light. As you can imagine, my great-grandmother, affectionately known as “Gree,” was in no hurry to remarry after having spent a lifetime laboring as a man’s house servant, and I suppose the effect must have reverberated with her daughter, my great-aunt.

Gertrude,  said great-aunt, lost her young husband in the 1917 flu epidemic, shortly after her son was born. She became an executive secretary (today the position would probably be a middle manager) at Crocker-Anglo National Bank, and from then on her pay, which must have been fairly modest, supported her, her son, and her mother in a pleasant home and in a cozy enough lifestyle. She sent her son to UC Berkeley and had enough to help him purchase land and build a beautiful house in Kensington, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. He became a vice president of Standard Oil.

They didn’t live like Queens of Sheba, but they never wanted for anything. They each lived to the age of 94, and at no time could they have been said to live in poverty. When, late in her life, I asked Gertrude if she had ever thought of remarrying, she gave me a funny look and said, “Why on earth would I ever want to take care of another man?”

The object lesson I took away from Gree and Gertrude was that you can think yourself sick and you can think yourself well: positive thinking in fact is very powerful. So is negative thinking. You can convince yourself that you should be afraid, be very afraid, and you can convince yourself that you are or easily could be helpless.

Until my generation a lot of women were socialized to think like this. It was objectively true: most women were not allowed into the workplace and could not earn enough to support themselves. When, in 1966, I went into a bank and applied for an opening in its management training program—the very same kind of job my male classmates in all majors were landing with no problem—I was told the bank didn’t hire women into their management training program, but I’d be great in the secretarial pool.

The feminist movement of the 60s and 70s changed things for all American and European women. Because of it, the world is a different place for women. But in some respects, things haven’t changed so much. Even women of considerable wealth and accomplishment, the likes of Lily Tomlin and Katie Couric, have admitted to bouts of bag-lady syndrome. In the MSN Money article that reveals that gem, Certified Financial Planner Kathy Boyle observes that this widespread fear is not altogether unrealistic:

“Being single costs 80% that of a couple, and women are seven times more likely to be single and live six years longer. . . Given a 50% divorce rate and that the average age of widowhood is 56, there’s probably good reason to be concerned.”

I’ve never succumbed to the symptoms described in this article—refusing to think about finances or feeling unable to make a decision. And I don’t stash all my assets in low-income financial instruments (to the contrary, I’ve taken some breathtaking risks…). But I do worry a lot about money, sometimes to the point of obsessiveness.

Just as you can’t deal with money by pretending it’s not there or it doesn’t matter, so you can’t deal with it by obsessing over it. Best thing to do is get the advice of a trustworthy financial advisor, learn what you can about budgeting and wealth management, make a few basic decisions, and then revisit the issue no more than three or four times a year.

One night as I lay awake worrying over money, shortly after I had divorced my husband and set out on my own, I found myself asking the question, “Can I do this?”

Those are the words that coalesced in my mind, there in the darkness.

Then I heard my great-aunt’s voice, just as clearly as if she were sitting in the room. She said, “Of course you can, my dear.”

So it proved to be.

Ladies. Of course you can!

Image: Mikescottwood11. A chronically homeless individual inhabiting a bus shelter in Porter Square. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Three reasons to keep the land line

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SDXB called the other day to say he’s going to get rid of his land line. Figures it’s going to save him a ton of money. Not only is he going to ditch the land line, he’s also going to kill his Cox high-speed Internet connection, effectively taking his computer offline. His plan is to haul his laptop to the library whenever he wants to read his e-mail. Won’t that be fun?

He’s not alone on the land line issue. The other day Echo, over at Boomer and Echo, reflected on the joy of land-line freedom, listing three good reasons to get rid of the thing.

Me, I’m not so sure. If you don’t already have a cell phone, which I don’t because I can’t afford it and I don’t deeply want one, several reasons argue strongly in favor of keeping the land line. Even if you do have cell service, there’s no reason to rush to judgment. Consider…

Cost

Around here, cell phone service runs about $60 a month—that’s before you buy the gadget, which can cost several hundred dollars. Get yourself into a cell phone plan, and you may not be able to get out, even if the service stinks. Experience suggests that most service from most communication providers stinks. I would, for example, never go near Qwest again, and all you have to do is enter terms like “Verizon,” “Comcast,” or “At&T” into the Consumerist search bar to be given permanent pause about cell phone providers in general.

Cox’s land line costs all of $29, half of what SDXB pays for a cell phone connection that does not keep him in touch if he goes hiking very far into the sticks, exactly when you would have the most need for such a connection. So, while yes, he will save money by canceling the land line, he pays twice as much for the privilege.

Convenience

Own a cell phone, and you have a cell phone: that’s one, count it, (1). When it jangles or vibrates at you, you have to find it. That may be easy enough if you’re a guy, because you probably tote the thing around in a pocket everywhere you go. But most women’s clothes don’t have pockets. So that means the cell gets put down…wherever you happened to put it down, or wherever you happen to have last dropped your purse.

So, every time the thing goes off, what are you gonna do? Run all over the freaking house trying to find it, that’s what.

Last time I bought a land-line phone—it was very cheap, by the way—it came with not one, not two, not three, but five extensions. I’ve got a phone in every room, and every one of them has its own squawk box. If I set one down and can’t find it quickly when someone jangles me up, all I have to do is walk into the next room to pick up another unit. My phone is never lost!

I don’t happen to think having to carry an electronic tether everywhere you go is especially convenient. Nor is it convenient to have to remember to turn it off whenever you go into a restaurant, a theater, a church, or choir practice. At choir, we pay a $5 fine every time our cell phone goes off. One of our members underwrites cake and cookies for 50 people with her repeating fines.

Freedom

Speaking of having to carry an electronic tether around, that’s exactly what a cell phone is. If you’re hauling that thing everyplace you go, you really have no excuse not to answer it.

What happened to privacy? What, hevvin help us, ever happened to alone time? Who needs to yak on the phone while driving, while walking around the grocery store, while sitting at a restaurant, while strolling down the street, while hiking in the desert? About 99.9999 percent of phone calls can wait until you get home or to the office.

When people can bombard you with phone calls everyplace you go and demand your attention right now, you’re never free. Your time is never your own. Even turning the thing off doesn’t really free you. You’re expected to check in regularly, or let the phone nag you by vibrating at you. If you don’t, you feel guilty and antsy until you do so and then get back to callers, often not at your convenience but right this minute.

I appreciate hearing from my friends and business associates, but I feel no need for that degree of connectivity. Or for that degree of immediacy. Except for the occasional car wreck, nothing really needs to be dealt with instantaneously. When I’m out and about, I’d rather have the peace and quiet, thank you, to focus on what I’m doing and who I’m with. When I get to a landing spot, that’s when I’ll deal with callers’ issues.

As for freedom from nuisance phone calls, I rarely get telephone solicitations anymore. The National Do-Not-Call List proved to be surprisingly effective. For those rogue solicitors and off-shore pests who scoff at the law, a handy device called the TeleZapper disconnects almost all of them. Phone solicitation stopped being a problem for me several years ago.

Contrarianeity

The cell phone is one of those gadgets that brings to mind my mother’s favorite old chestnut: Just because the some of the sheep jump off the cliff doesn’t mean we all have to. IMHO, the very fact that everyone else is doing something is a good reason not to do it. Especially if it costs you money.

Does anyone ever consider how silly a person looks, walking down the street yapping on the phone and not paying the slightest bit of attention to anything around her? How annoying her blatting voice is as she shares her private business with ten or fifteen people who don’t. want. to. know? How insulting it is to interrupt a face-to-face conversation to pull a phone out of your pocket and answer an inconsequential call? Or how spectacularly dangerous and stupid it is to drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other punching numbers into a cell phone?

Now, I’ll admit I’d love to have one of those swell smartphones, which really are less telephones and more extremely portable computers. But that’s not going to happen, because I can’t afford it. Failing that, I don’t see any good reason to tie an electronic tether around my neck.

A land line lets you stay in touch, without making you look like a fool or putting you at risk. By and large, it keeps you in control of who you’re going to speak with and when. I wouldn’t get rid of it, even if I could afford a smartphone.

A Holiday Feast that’s Easy and Good and NOT Turkey

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Where is it written that holiday dinners have to feature turkey? Right here it’s about to be written that they should not feature turkey!

Yesterday I cooked a turkey that I’d found at Safeway for a good price. As you know, I feed Cassie the Corgi real food, a mix of about half starch & veggies and half meat. For this purpose I look for meat that’s under $2 a pound—as far under as possible. The turkey was only $1.29/pound. True, the package said it was “up to” 6 percent water, and true, it was a product of one of those hideous mass farming operations. But the poor critter was dead already, so why waste the meat, eh?

Well, after roasting in the oven, so much water leached out of it that I was moved to wonder exactly how much water my money had bought. So I poured it into a big measuring cup and skimmed off the fat. It filled a quart measuring cup. Set on the kitchen scale, it weighed over two pounds.

2 pounds/14 pounds = .14 = 14 percent!
14% of $24 = $3.88

That’s right…I paid almost $4.00 for water. Bad-tasting water, we might add. The whole bird had a funny off-taste, kind of chemically or dirty-tasting.

Folks, I’ve been around the block a few times and I know what turkey is supposed to taste like. This is not nostalgia for a fantasy “good ole days.” American turkeys have tasted terrible for decades. When we were in England, a friend invited us for Christmas dinner and insisted on serving turkey. We really didn’t want to take the train down to Kent from London and stay overnight for what we expected would be a mediocre meal, but we enjoyed our friends as so of course we accepted their invitation. The turkey was incredible: it actually tasted like turkey used to taste, the way it’s supposed to taste. So it’s not my subjective opinion that American turkey doesn’t taste like turkey.

Thank goodness I didn’t serve this thing up to guests yesterday. It’s barely adequate for dog food.

In addition to poor flavor and questionable provenance, turkey is a nuisance to prepare. The bloated giants coming out of factory farms are too large to handle easily or safely, they often come frozen and take days to defrost, and few people know what to do with the carcass or have time to do anything with it, so the leftovers go to waste.

Do yourself a favor and serve up something other than turkey. Let’s consider three options: pork, beef, lamb, and some other variety of fowl.

If you’re not Jewish or Muslim, pork is relatively inexpensive and it tastes ten times better than turkey. Some cuts can even be stuffed, if your friends and family just can’t live without stuffing. Pork loin is tender, delicious, and easy to cook. Personally, I prefer a good pork loin to ham, which is oversalted and overprocessed. Here’s how to fix it:

Buy a pork loin roast large enough to serve all your guests. It’s OK to buy two or three, if one won’t suffice. While you’re at the store, get some fennel seed, dry sage, garlic, onion, a can or box of low-salt chicken broth, and a bottle of inexpensive dry white wine. If you don’t have any olive oil around the house, buy a small bottle of that, too. You’ll need some flour; if you don’t keep flour in the house, buy the smallest bag you can find on the grocer’s shelves.

For each decently sized roast, pour out enough fennel seed to fill the palm of your hand. Toss that into a blender. Add about 1/4 that much sage. Cover the blender cup and whirl the spices long enough to pulverize the fennel seeds. Peel one or two cloves of garlic and toss those into the blender. Add about two teaspoons salt. Pulse the blender briefly–just long enough to chop (not liquefy!) the garlic and mix in the salt.

Next, pour a little olive oil over the roast and rub it around. Wipe your hands on a paper towel. Then pat and rub the spice mix all over the surface of your roast. Stick a meat thermometer into the roast and set the meat in an oven-proof pan that is not made of glass.

Cut up a couple of nice sweet onions. Arrange these around the base of the roast. If you’ve got some carrots, toss those in there, too. Preheat the oven; for tenderloin, set the oven at about 400 degrees; for a loin roast, at about 325 to 350 degrees. Cook a boneless loin or tenderloin about 25 to 30 minutes a pound; a bone-in loin about 20 to 25 minutes per pound. The thermometer should say 160 to 170 degrees.

Now, what if people just must have stuffing? For heaven’s sake. Get yourself some decent bread—a French or Italian-style baguette will work. You’ll need a bunch of parsley, a couple cloves of garlic, and some bottled herbs. Break the bread into pieces and whirl them in the blender or food processor to turn the stuff into crumbs. Add a peeled clove of garlic, roughly chopped garlic, a little salt, and a teaspoon or so of whatever greenish bottled herbs you like. Tarragon is always nice. It’s hard to go wrong with thyme or sage, too, but remember a little sage goes a long way. Whack this stuff around in the blender with the bread crumbs until it’s nicely chopped and blended together. Divide the pork into two, three, or four smaller roasts, depending on how much you have. Coat as above with a flavorful rub. Set the pieces of roast in the pan and pack this stuffing between them. Secure the package with string, or use those metal turkey-stuffing skewers to hold them together. Pour a little olive over the stuffing, and cook as above.

If you don’t eat pork, or if you’ve noticed that factory-farmed meat of the pig also doesn’t taste like real pork, substitute a good standing rib roast for the above, dispensing with the stuffing (35 to 40 minutes a pound at 325 degrees). Use the same rub, or simply season to taste with salt and lots of fresh-ground pepper.

Lamb makes superb feasting food. Try to get imported New Zealand lamb, which is far superior to the muttony American lamb. It should be cooked rare to medium; if you like your meat well-done, opt for something else. Cook a bone-in leg of lamb 15 to 20 minutes/pound for rare and 20 to 25 minutes/pound for medium; boneless leg, 20 minutes/pound for rare or 25 minutes/pound for medium. Over the rub described above, spread a layer of Dijon-style mustard before roasting.

Or cook a passle of Cornish game hens, one for each guest. These also will roast in about 45 minutes or an hour in a 325- to 350-degree oven. These can be stuffed, if you feel compelled to work that hard, but I wouldn’t be bothered. Instead put some stuffing (see above; add a few pecans or walnuts if so moved) in a baking dish, moisten it very slightly with chicken broth and olive oil, cover, and bake in the oven with the other food. Duck is good, as is goose, but it is not hassle-free; avoid if you’re looking for ease of preparation.

While the meat roasts, put things into the oven to cook with it. Baked potatoes should be first on the list. Wash these; dig out any damaged spots with the tip of your paring knife. Punch each potato all over with the tip of your knife (otherwise it can explode inside your oven). Stick these on a rack in the oven at the time you put in the roast.

It’s hard to miss with butternut squash. Slice the squash in half lengthwise, scrape out and discard the seeds (yes, I know, you can roast them for a snack; do this only if hassle-free is not your main goal). Line a cookie sheet or other pan with tinfoil; rub olive oil over the surface of the tinfoil. About an hour before the meat is done, set the squash cut-side down on the tinfoil and stick it in the oven. Melt some butter in a small pan with a liberal squirt of honey. After a half hour, turn the squash over so the cut side is up. Pour the honey butter in the hole and brush some of on the rest of the squash. If possible, reserve some of the butter for serving. Cook another half-hour, until perfectly tender.

Once all these things are in the oven (or, if you’re ambitious, earlier in the day), make a green salad. For ultimate ease, buy some packaged precut salad greens. For maximal laziness, do nothing more—just serve it up with some bottle salad dressing. With minimal extra effort, you can cut up one or two little green onions, chop a carrot, add some canned marinated artichoke, and, at the last minute, cut up some tomato and toss that in. Use your favorite bottled dressing or make a real dressing with one part sour stuff (lemon juice, wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, or even plain cider vinegar) to three parts olive oil, seasoned to taste with salt & pepper and some bottled herbs.

Now the meat and veggies are cooked and you have those baked potatoes. You can serve them with Greek-style yogurt or sour cream for those who like their potatoes that way. But if you’ve made a good pork roast, you have killer pan drippings to make the gravy from heaven. Ditto a beef roast. The potatoes cry out for the stuff.

This is the only thing you’re going to cook on the stovetop, and if you’ve played your cards right, it’s the only thing you’re going to do any visible work on while your guests are present.

Remove the meat from the pan. Get someone else to slice it. Open the bottle of cheap wine; use red for beef, white for pork. Open the can or box of chicken broth (you can use beef broth for roast beef, or just wine). Remove any vegetables from the drippings and discard (or, if they’re not blackened and too greasy, consider serving them on the side).

If the drippings are very fatty, pour off all but about two tablespoons of melted fat, reserving the delicious brown drippings in the pan. Place the pan over a burner and turn on the heat to medium-high. Sprinkle two or three tablespoons of flour over the drippings. Stir this around to get the flour toasting a bit. Carefully pour in some broth, stirring around to mix. Add wine. I like about 50-50 wine and broth, but it’s very forgiving. You can use all wine or all broth, whatever works for you. Stir this around some more over the heat. Observe the thickness. Add more liquid to thin, if desired. If the gravy seems too thin, get a coffee mug and mix about two tablespoons of flour with about a half- or three-quarters  mug of wine or broth, stirring well to eliminate any lumps. Mix this in a little at a time with the gravy to achieve the desired thickness.

If your pan drippings are not mostly grease but instead contain a lot of liquid, mix flour with wine from the git-go, rather than starting by toasting the flour in the oily drippings.

And that’s it. Slice the butternut squash into serving-size pieces, pour the rest of the honey butter over them, serve everything up with some wine or beer, and enjoy.

Dessert? Grocery store or baker. It’s hard to ruin pumpkin pie and some bakers can make a decent apple pie. Pick up a good pie at the bakery and, if you crave whipping cream, get the canned variety. Most people can’t tell the difference. You’re into healthy eating ? Well, that’s easy: serve a bowl of fresh fruit for dessert, accompanied by a plate of two or three excellent, sharply flavored cheeses and a sweet dessert wine or a pot of coffee.

Images:

Roast Pig, by Elias Tomaras. Public domain.
Red Onions, by Stephen Ausmus. Public domain.
Butternut Squash, Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Apple Pie: USDA. Public domain.

Was your data caught up in the Gawker hack?

by

Here’s a tool to discover whether your username or e-mail was hacked in the recent attack on Gawker Media and its manifold sites. If like me you downloaded the list of compromised usernames, you found they were all “hashed,” and no explanation of how to translate your username or e-mail into the code used in the document was given. This tool at GawkerCheck converts your comprehensible terms into “hash” and then provides a list for you to search.

Here’s another tool from Slate that’s easier to use. If you want to test more than one username or e-mail, reload the page between attempts.

By now you probably realize that Gawker itself was not the only hacked site. Others include

• Gizmodo
• Jalopnik
• Jezebel
• Kotaku
• Lifehacker
• Deadspin
• io9
• Fleshbot

This morning (Monday) Consumerist reported that when the site went over to Consumer Reports, subscribers were asked to change their passwords. Some people, however, neglected to do so; if you were among them, your data might be compromised.

GawkerCheck claims that, contrary to some reports, if you signed in to any of these sites through Twitter or Facebook, some of your information may appear in the hacked database; while your password will not have slipped through, you still could be at some risk. Might want to consider setting up a dummy e-mail address or two by way of shifting your identity.

If you’re in the habit of using one or two passwords at several sites, it would be wise to change them forthwith. Start with anything even faintly resembling a financial institution and then move on to your e-mail and websites. GawkerCheck advises not changing your password on the Gawker sites.

As of this morning, I couldn’t access the password-change function at Consumerist. If I ever had one at Lifehacker, I sure can’t remember what it was. Probably is outdated by now, if it ever existed. Obviously, though, if the information vandals are still able to hack into the databases, changing your password there would be highly counterproductive.