Shivers Up My Spine

When I hear the words, “radiation leak” or “radiation in the water supply”, it sends shivers up my spine. Misspeaking like this causes me to question everything I read in that paper or hear on that newscast. Radiation is an effect, not a substance. The substance that emits radiation is a radioactive material and that can be contained in emissions (or leaks) from a nuclear facility.

Why does no one ever correct this misnomer? I expect that newspapers or newscasts rely heavily on words, so I would think that they would try to use them correctly. I guess I would be wrong.

I have spent 38 years working in the nuclear industry and have tried to explain to my family and friends and neighbors what I do and how the plant works and what the many myths surrounding this industry are. Most people’s eyes glaze over when I start telling them why the plant can’t blow up like an atomic bomb, or what the effects of radiation on the human body are. That is one of the biggest myths; we don’t know what radiation does to the human body. If you believe the myth, we can still have giant ants in the desert and fire-breathing dinosaurs under the ocean.

The truth is not as compelling as the myth. Radiation causes damage on the atomic and molecular level. Radiation causes ionization of the material that it interacts with. This ionization can directly break apart molecular bonds and cause direct damage to molecules within the cells (e.g., DNA or RNA or other biological protein strands). It can also ionize individual atoms or break molecular bonds to create free radicals. These can chemically interact with in the cell structure to damage or kill the cell.

When the individual damage is combined with other damage in very high doses, it can cause biological systems to break down. This only happens in very high doses. This is called radiation syndrome or radiation sickness. It starts if you were to receive twenty times the annual limit for radiation workers in a short time.

What we can measure in lower doses is an increased risk of cancer. This is problematic because there is already such a high risk of cancer; roughly one in four people will get cancer if they received no extra dose of radiation. So, of a group of ten thousand people, twenty five hundred could reasonably be expected to contract cancer (plus or minus the statistical variance). If each person in that ten thousand person group were to receive one fifth of the annual limit for radiation workers, we could expect to see six extra occurrences of cancer (unfortunately within the statistical variance of ten thousand subjects – so it can’t be identified as being caused by the radiation dose).

This is part of what I do. I’ve worked as a Radiation Protection Technician, a Radiation Protection Instructor, a Radiological Engineer and several other jobs that I did to pay the bills. I never forget that what I do is outside the norm, but it is interesting work. I don’t like it when people that don’t understand it try to tell others what’s going on. As I said – it sends shivers up my spine.

Chile and Chili

One of the "masters" of Tex-Mex style chili is a guy named Wick Fowler. He is an enigma. He told his friends that chili shouldn't contain tomatoes, or masa harina (finely ground corn flour used in making tortillas also just called masa). He then put out a chili kit (Wick Fowler's Two Alarm Chili) under his name with instructions to add tomatoes and it includes masa as an ingredient.

The Roy Rogers Show

I think that it would be great to be a kid today. Playstation, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox are head and shoulders above any toy that I had. My brother and I watched “The Man in the Iron Mask” on a daily movie show that was on at 4:00 o’clock and ran until 5:30. It was called the “Big Show”. When it was over, we went out and broke switches off of a tree in the back yard to use as swords to reenact scenes from the movie. Today you can put a fencing game into the Wii and watch your avatars sword fight up and down stairs and all across castle rooms - just like in the movie.

That being said, there is a lot to be said for growing up as part of the “baby-boom”. I don’t think kids today ever had a straight forward World War 2 series like “Combat”, or a goofy puppet show like “Kookla, Fran and Ollie”. And we had Roy Rogers.

The Roy Rogers Show was one of my favorites. Roy, and his wife, Dale Evans, were joined by Pat Brady, a hired ranch hand.

Pat Brady was different than any other ranch hand on TV. He hardly ever rode a horse. Instead he drove a jeep that was likely to break down at any minute. He called his jeep “Nellie Belle”.

Pat provided comic relief for Roy and Dale. Together, they were a family that included their horses, “Trigger” and “Buttermilk”; and their dog, “Bullet”. They all lived in the wide open spaces on the Double-D-Bar Ranch.

I later read that one episode was based on a true incident. It seems that Roy went to Texas and had a pair of Tony Lama cowboy boots made specifically for the show. They were extra fancy, and fit him like a glove. He was very fond of those boots (as only a cowboy can be).

On the first episode of 1956, Roy was out with Pat, rounding up some bad guys that had rustled a prize bull from the ranch next door. It got late, so they made camp and bedded down under the stars.

In the middle of the night, there was a noise. Roy jumped up to investigate and he could see the bull on the ridge silhouetted against the sky. He was so excited, jumped on Trigger in his stocking feet and left his boots next to his bedroll.

By the time he got the bull roped and wrestled into submission, it was near dawn. Pat and Roy went back to break camp and found a mess they couldn't believe.

It seems thay after they left, an animal (probably smelling food and seeing no one around) tore up everthing in the camp looking for food. It had torn apart Roy's Tony Lamas and chewed every bit of the leather!

The King of the Cowboys was so mad that he was barely able to discern the mountain lion tracks all over the camp. He vowed that the cougar's hide would get hung on the wall of the bunkhouse.

They got the bull back to it's rightful owner and stopped by the ranch to provision for the hunt. After explaining what happened to Dale, Pat put food and extra camping gear in Nellie Belle, along with plenty of extra gasoline. Roy put on an old pair of boots, grabbed extra ammo from the ranch house, kissed Dale, hopped on Trigger, and they were off in a cloud of dust and jeep exhaust.

They started tracking and in a short while, they heard the animal's high pitched scowling roar. It ran up a ridge and was gone over the top before either could get a shot off. The animal must have known that he was their quarry, for he remained hidden in front of them the rest of the day.

Over the next three days, the cougar remained elusive and started running for its life. The only time they saw or heard it, it was out of range of their guns. They were losing it.

On the fourth night they heard it roar off in the distance. Roy could have sworn that it was laughing at him.

Days turned into weeks and after two of them , with no longer any tracks to go by, they had to admit that this laughing mountain lion had eluded them. They headed back to the ranch. The four day ride was silent except for Nellie Belle's backfires (which happened just rythmically enough that it sounded like laughter; which didn't lighten Roy's mood).

When Roy and Pat returned to the ranch, Dale cooked them a wonderful meal and consoled them as best she could. Roy was still beside himself, but he had a grudging admiration for the mountain lion that had out smarted him over the couple of weeks.

They were sitting on the porch watching the sunset over the mountain, There was a movement on the hill to the south of the house. It looked like a mountain lion!

Dale, her eye on the hill, tapped Roy on the shoulder and sang, ♪ ♫"Pardon me Roy, ♪ is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?"♫ ♪

A Rant That's Been Building

To start this off, let me say that I have health insurance through the company that I work for. I don’t have to worry about being fined or imprisoned for violating the Massachusetts Mandatory Healthcare law. I pay much more for it than I did a few years ago, and the level of coverage has been reduced, but it is still workable for my circumstances. On to the rant:

After years of “mandated” health care insurance, I still don’t understand how the state can tell me that I have to spend my money on health insurance.

The legal basis for auto insurance is the state can revoke my privilege to register and drive my car if I don’t buy auto insurance. This is because driving a car is a privilege, not a right.

To make that work for health insurance there would have to be a corresponding privilege to revoke if I refuse to buy health insurance. What is that privilege?

Under this system, if there is not a privilege to be exercised, healthcare becomes a de facto right. If healthcare is a right, then it is the government’s responsibility to provide it. They may assess taxes to fund this responsibility, but that is not the same as requiring people to spend their own money in the market place.

The government of the Commonwealth needs to decide if healthcare is a privilege or a right. If they decide that it is a privilege, they must stop mandating that people buy insurance. If it is a right, they need to get ready for the opposition; create the bureaucracy to administer healthcare; and assess taxes to pay for it. It may get them voted out of office if their constituency disagrees with it, but that is in the calculus of being an elected representative of the people.

I will be a member of the opposition to this, but if they feel it is the right thing to do, they should stand up for their beliefs.

How I spend my money, or not, is a right that must not be curtailed by the government.

Tiramisu

In Italian, it means: pick me up; or pull me up. Originally a semifreddo dessert made from ladyfinger biscuits, cocoa, mascarpone cheese, Marsala wine, eggs, sugar and espresso coffee. (Semifreddo is Italian for "half cold" and in culinary terms it refers to any of various chilled or partially frozen desserts.) Within the last few years, I’ve seen tiramisu recipes that don’t completely fit this definition (i.e., they are made with other than espresso and chocolate).

Pat and I were on a business trip in the spring of 2007 in New York. Pat had a touch of the flu, but we were exploring the town of Fishkill as best we could. At a little Italian restaurant called Locanda, they were serving Lemoncello Tiramisu. We had to leave quickly so we didn’t get to try any, but it intrigued me to the point that I decided to develop our own recipe.

Some of the ground rules were: 1) It had to be refreshing. 2) It needed to be identifiable as a tiramisu (i.e., semifreddo using mascarpone and ladyfingers). 3) Non alcolholic so that the grandkids could try it too.

First problem: what can give a rich lemon flavor with out the alcohol in lemocello? The juice from four fresh lemons, the zest of a half of a lemon, and 1/3 of a cup of granulated sugar were mixed with an 8 ounce container of the mascarpone. While researching tiramisu, I saw that an egg yoke was often added to the cheese mixtures to help it set better, so one was added to the mixture.

The result was promising, but if a double batch or a triple batch was to be made, juicing the lemons would be a lot of work. Using frozen lemonade mix would also remove the work of dissolving the sugar. Batches were made using varying amounts of lemonade concentrate. When added to the mascarpone with the lemon zest and an egg yolk, it was virtually indistinguishable from the fresh lemon juice and sugar version.

Similar experimentation was done to find a good mixture to soak the ladyfingers. The result is below

LEMON TIRAMISU

INGREDIENTS: 8 oz of mascarpone cheese; 8 – 10 lady fingers; 6 oz can of frozen lemonade concentrate; 1 egg yolk; ½ pint of whipping cream; 1 tsp. vanilla extract; ¼ C. of confectioner’s sugar; zest of 1 lemon.

FILLING: Allow the lemonade concentrate to thaw out; then mix the mascarpone with ½ of the can of lemonade concentrate, ½ of the lemon zest and the egg yolk until it is smooth and consistent.

RECIPE: Line a plastic container (a 3 - 4” square that’s 1 ½ - 2” deep works the best) with wax paper. Neatly fold the wax paper at the corners. Mix the left over lemonade concentrate with ½ can of water. Dip the lady fingers in the lemonade mixture and line the bottom of the container (should be 4 or 5). Add ½ of the filling and dip the rest of the lady fingers and layer them. Add the rest of the filling and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (overnight is better).

Mix the whipping cream, vanilla and confectioner’s sugar together and whip until the mixture holds a peak. Carefully invert the container on to a serving plate and remove the wax paper. Evenly cover with the whipped cream, and garnish with the rest of the lemon zest. Slice and serve.

VARIATIONS: Double the ingredients and make in a loaf pan (the picture is a double batch); or, for a further touch of Italy, dip the lady fingers in a mixture of 1 teaspoon of the lemonade concentrate, 4 teaspoons of water, and 4 tablespoons of Lemoncello Liqueur.

NUMBER OF SERVINGS: 6 to 8

PREPARATION TIME: 30 minutes plus setting.

This is a refreshing summer dessert that lives up to its name.

I just saw a recipe for a strawberry tiramisu. The strawberries in the garden are nicely ripe and very fresh, so I’ll have to try this next.

Isn't it odd what you remember

"I started out as a child" (to steal a line from Bill Cosby) and then rapidly progressed to a major pain in the butt. Seriously, my first recollection is of being stood up on the counter of the store in Rollersville, Ohio. The store was one of those old-fashioned general stores with the gas pump out in front and a huge National cash register on an old wooden counter.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s really a memory. Maybe thinking about it over the years has enhanced a feeling into a fully developed memory. I don't remember the house in Rollersville that we lived in. My older brother and sisters went to school in the schoolhouse and used to point it out when we drove by it in later years. It’s frustrating that so many memories that helped shape me seem to have faded into the background.

Early memories are of rented farm houses and plowed fields. Polegard's house, outside of Bradner, Ohio was the first (the spelling may be wrong, but phonetically it was "POLE GUARD" or "POLE GART"). My older brother and sisters taught my younger brother and me checkers and rummy in this house. Our parents liked the farm and, for a while, they had horses.

Somewhere, there is a picture of my sisters, Chris and Doe, and my little brother, Mike, on the front porch, with me looking out of the screen door, just being barely visible due to the glare of the screen. We also sat for pictures in the front yard. Dressed in striped shirt and a stupid looking Tyrolean hat with the feather in the band, I was holding on to Mike. Not much more than three and Mike was still an infant

My older brother Tom, and my cousins, Donnie and Larry climbed ten to fifteen feet up into some poplar trees (actually big shrubs) that my dad was cutting down. Their weight was perfect to bring the trees down slowly (and in the right direction) and it looked like they were having a ball.

Watching Dad repair the Studebaker Eagle. For some reason, he took the hood off. It really looked cool as he drove it down to the gas station without the hood. He traded it for a forty-nine Ford that was in much better condition and I remember going for the first family drive in that car. We lived at the Polegard’s place for about a year.

Next was the Steinhardt's farm, with the individual hog houses (no hogs, just the houses). The houses were cool because they were just about the right size for three and four year old kids. The older kids were allowed to go in the barn, but we only had the hog houses. It all stopped after some one (I think it was Mike) was climbing on the hog house roof and was injured – stitches were needed. We had to stay in the house yard and weren’t allowed in the barnyard.

The memories are more developed and feel more real: My older brother and sisters catching the school bus in front of the house (to go to the Rollersville school).

Watching TV - especially Combat!, Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy, and The Virginian.

Mike and I played trucks in the backyard . For some reason that I can’t recall, we called ourselves "Ed and Mack".

Dad burned a huge pile of brush on the edge of the field next to the house. There were a lot of bushes and a fair amount of poison ivy. Doris reacted to it after walking through the smoke.

Tom had a bow and arrow and was always looking to shoot birds or rodents. It was after dinner and just about dusk, my dad came in the house and told my mom to follow him out to the garage, I wondered what was up and followed them. In the half-light of dusk, there was Tom (in full stalking stance with his arrow drawn back), Chris peered round Tom, and Doris peered around Chris and Mike brought up the rear. They were after some thing that had just run into the garage. Dad stopped them before they followed the skunk. Dad always delighted in telling that story - he always said that maybe he should have let Tom find out the hard way that you don't mess around with skunks.

My mom had a quarter acre vegetable garden at Steinhardt’s. We didn’t have much money, but we had radishes, carrots, leaf lettuce, fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, fresh cucumbers, fried green tomatoes and bread and butter pickles.

My grandma (my dad's mom) came to stay with us. It was very interesting when the hearing aid salesman came and made a putty cast of her ear so that they could make an ear piece that fit tightly into her ear. It was fascinating for a four year old. She seemed much nicer after she got her hearing aid and could talk to everyone without them shouting at her.

Exotic Animals

A collector was going through an exotic animal show. There were dwarf emus that were only 14” high, giant Madagascar hissing cock roaches at four to six inches, llamas, pigmy wallabies, duckbilled platypi and all sorts of strange species.

The collector had come to this particular show because it was rumored that a dealer there was selling an animal that was the most exotic in the world, a rarie. He found the dealer and was able to secure a juvenile member of the species.

The animal looked like a yellow, fuzzy, round ball, with feet on the bottom. It stood 18’ from the top of its head to the tips of its feet; and his impossibly black eyes shone from underneath a thick down-like covering. The animal immediately took a liking to its new owner and cuddled against him whenever it could.

The collector took his new pet home to Boise, Idaho. Not much was known about this creature, so the collector started keeping a journal of the vital statistics of the rarie, whom he now called Leon.

Leon went everywhere with the man. He liked to play fetch with oyster and conch shells. Leon’s favorite food was smoked escargot, stewed in butter and garlic. He could eat thirty or forty pounds in a sitting.

Leon’s owner started trying to shop the book about raries around to various publishing houses, hoping to bring in some money to subsidize Leon’s ever growing palate and size. Leon ate all of the caviar in the local gourmet shop, eschewing the local roe for the imported fare from the Caspian Sea.

And Leon grew; and as it grew, it ate more and more. And it grew at an alarming rate. The size of the creature was such that Leon could no longer cuddle against the collector – the collector had to cuddle with the rarie.

The amount of food consumed was straining the collector's budget and no one wanted a book about a creature that would literally eat them out of house and home.

Finally, in a state of desperation, he took the animal in a dump truck to the edge of a gigantic cliff in the Snake River Canyon with the idea that he would drop it over the edge. Leon was just too big to be put down at the Humane Society; and drastic action had to be taken. Just as the collector was getting set to roll it out of the truck, Leon popped open an eye and looked at him and asked, "Whatcha gonna do now?" The collector explained how he could no longer afford the upkeep, and that dropping it over the cliff would be the most humane way to get rid of such an expensive liability. The animal looked over the edge and with a tear in its eye, it said, .... "It's a long way to tip a rarie."

From time to time I hope to add several more "groaners" that I have heard over the years to the blog. Phyllis Finecy put this on the Dorsett Meeting place in MYFAMILY.com. I added some obfuscation and changed it slightly, but thanks Phyllis. And I thought I'd lost my sense of humor....