Found this lovely cartoon over at the Guardian:
Put me in mind of this cartoon, seen decades ago and lost, but re-found again thanks to the miracle of the internet:
Time heals a multitude of sins…
Author Archives: The Old Wolf
Borscht
Borscht
The Hotel Utah, now only a memory, was famous for its borscht.
CHEF GIRARD’S HOTEL UTAH BORSCHT
Ingredients
4 cups beet juice
3 1/2 cups chicken or beef broth plus 1/2 cup
Juice of 1 lemon
Sugar to taste
Salt to taste
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup sour cream
1 or 2 egg yolks
Sour cream
Chopped parsley
Hard-cooked eggs, diced
Lemon wedges
Procedure
- Bring beet juice and 31/2 cups broth to boil.
- Stir in the lemon juice, sugar and salt.
- Combine the remaining 1/2 cup broth and cornstarch until smooth.
- Stir into soup. Cook and stir until thickened.
- Combine sour cream and egg yolks.
- Gradually stir 1 cup of the hot beet juice mixture into egg mixture.
- Then, stirring constantly, slowly add warmed eggs back to hot liquid.
- Heat without boiling. Strain.
Serve hot or cold.
Garnish with sour cream, parsley and eggs. Serve with lemon wedges.
Makes 8 servings.
The Hotel Utah Sky Room
ASSUMPTION ABBEY BORSCHT
The cooks at Assumption Abbey in Richardton, ND make a borscht that is to die for. I know, for I’ve had it.
Ingredients
1/2 lb. ground bison (optional)
2 cup chopped fresh beets
1 cup chopped celery (optional)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped onions
2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 (14 1/2 oz.) cans beef broth (I used 1 can beef and 1 can vegetable, just because)
1 cup shredded cabbage
1 Tablespoon butter or margarine
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
sour cream or regular cream (optional)
Procedure
- In a saucepan, bring beets, carrots, onion, water and salt to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
- If you’re using the bison in this soup, brown the meat in a frying pan; add the browned meat, with all the juices, to the saucepan. (If you’re substituting ground beef instead of bison, you may want to render off the fat first.)
- Add broth, cabbage and butter; simmer (uncovered) for 15 minutes.
- Just before serving, stir in lemon juice.
- Top each serving with a dollop of sour cream if desired; or may be served with cream to add to taste.
Makes 8 servings.
For perfection, serve with hot buttered scones and honey.
World’s Fair, 1939
Boulevard
Reflecting pool
League of Nations building
The Trylon and Perisphere
Avenue
All photos ©1939-2012 Courtney Rogers Draper and his assigns, all rights reserved
In Memoriam
There are insufficient words to express the depth of my sorrow for the loss of 27 innocent lives in our very own Dunblane. Although it seems impossible, my hope and prayer is that peace will somehow find the loved ones of those whose time came far too soon.
Sydney: Railway Square, 1935
In the 1920’s Sydney boasted one of the world’s largest tram fleets. By 1961 they were gone. A common story around the Western world.
George Street decorated for the Commonwealth Celebrations in January 1901.
The Old Wolf has Spoken
The tallest rock climbing wall in the world
You are looking at Excalibur, the world’s tallest rock climbing wall, erected in Groningen, Netherlands. Climbing to the top would only be slightly harder than pronouncing “Groningen” correctly. I take one look at this thing and all I can think is “kill me now.”
No, I get woozy just looking at these pictures. Kinda like that video of radio tower climbers.
Some people have cojones of solid rock!
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Christmas in Little Italy
Looking south on Mulberry Street between Broome and Grand Street – Little Italy, Manhattan, New York City.
Italians know how to celebrate Christmas.
Rome, Piazza Navona at Christmastime. Photo by Gina Lollobrigida, from her book “Italia Mia“.
Il Vecchio Lupo ha parlato.
Christmas in Québec
Quartier Le Petit Champlain, Québec. (Click image for larger size). This almost has a Dickensian feel to it. Absolutely beautiful.
In Memory of Hydrox
Despite the pervasive misconception that the now-defunct Sunshine Hydrox cookies were a cheap Oreo knock-off, they were the original sandwich cookie which came out in 1908, four years before Oreos did in 1912. Apparently they just didn’t do well against the Nabisco juggernaut, and also a lot of people were put off by the name, which sounded more like a bleach than a cookie.
I miss them.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The “Gifting” Ponzi Scheme
Somehow the previous owners of my home got themselves on a sucker list and regularly get mail from people trying to recruit them into various disreputable money-making schemes. I present one here for your edification.
(Links to full-resolution images are included below each picture.)
(I’ve redacted the names of people on the list, because unlike “Sir Lad,” the owner and operator of this Ponzi scheme, they are victims whether they know it or not.)
There’s not much to say about scams of this nature other than do the math, and you’ll see that any such program is unsustainable and depends on a constant influx of new victims and an unsupportable number of people at the bottom. Once again, the success of Sir Lad – the person at the top – is predicated on the failure of thousands of people at the bottom. It’s interesting to note that he has added an additional layer of profit to this scheme – even though he’s no longer on the list of “gift recipients,” as the “monitor” he skims $5.00 or $6.00 from every victim. Notice how the wording of the letter targets the elderly and people in economic distress, those who can least afford to lose what precious resources they have.
I have taken a sample section from an excellent educational website entitled Cash Gifting Watchdog – I recommend this as a must-read for people who want to protect themselves and their loved ones from losing their money to disreputable con-men.
Why do cash gifting programs eventually fail?
If members fail at marketing the programs to an ever-widening base of new members, then the pool of money being “gifted” among the existing members will dry up.
Cash gifting clubs promote themselves at invitation only gatherings similar to Tupperware parties, except that no product is being sold.
All those invited are there because an existing member of the program thinks they have money available to participate and will risk giving it to a complete stranger for the chance to have several complete strangers the same amount of money to them, multiplying their money (again, it’s never called an “investment”).
The “presenters” at cash gifting program gatherings give chalkboard or Power Point presentations which invariably end up with an image of a pyramid, showing how each member will make his or her way from the base to the top, where they will get the big payoff.
The money contributed by an incoming member goes to the top of the pyramid immediately, while the penniless member sits at the base of the pyramid until enough other members join to completely pay off the member at the top and move everyone else up a notch. Once a member is paid off, he or she is free to move on, but for a club to keep working, the money given to that member will have to be replaced from somewhere.
If, for example, the promised payout of a cash gifting club is $20,000, and the gift required is $2,500, only eight new members must be recruited to pay off one old member.
But what happens when a club reaches 100 members? If each of them is to get the full $20,000, for a total of $2,000,000, then 800 people must join. If each of them is to be paid, 6,400 must join. With each new level, the numbers grow more unrealistic.
For this example club, with its relatively low gifting and payout levels of $2,500 and $20,000, to continue for only two cycles after it gets its 100th member, 51,200 members must join.
Many clubs count on their paid off members to keep returning. Even if they all do, it is mathematically impossible for a cash gifting club to survive without an exponentially increasing membership base.
When the pool of new members dries up, so do the cash gifts, and any members who joined too late are out of luck – not to mention money.
Please be alert and aware. Programs like this are doomed to failure for all but those who begin them or happen to be the fortunate one or two at the very top of a new scheme. They are also dishonest, mean, and illegal in the extreme, but skirt the law by various means and tactics and thus are very hard to shut down.
Protect yourselves and your loved ones, particularly the elderly who are the most susceptible to such cons [1]
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Notes
[1] This is a bilingual pun, if you happen to speak French.
Playing in the World Game 
