Announcers suggest Truex ran the most dominating race ever. He led 392 laps of a 400-lap race. He led 588 miles of a 600-mile race. Wow! So thrilling. Amazing. Coca-Cola 600. Amazing to see all the iPhones come out to document the victory.
So:
my ham bone/bean soup came out perfectly (okay, not quite perfect; needs a bit more chili); first time try
From ArgusMedia: Harold Hamm has announced a deal to sell Bakken crude oil to South Korea. Some data points:
Harold Hamm, CEO of CLR
Donald Trump's energy advisor
unclear whether deal has been finalized
CLR already partners with South Korea's SK Group on gas production in Oklahoma
there is no westbound crude oil pipeline across the mountains (my hunch: Gulf Coast, and then through the Panama Canal; see RBN Energy)
transportation costs? South Korea offers refiners special incentives to import crude from sources other
than in the Middle East in an effort to diversify its crude slate
Regular readers can probably figure out what Harold Hamm's plans are.
From page 160 and following, from chapter thirteen, "Syrian Enclaves," from The Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota:
The Williams County Syrian community was not the first of its kind in North Dakota, nor was it the largest in total numbers, but it can be classed as the most enduring and self-conscious of all such groups. To this day, an ethnic celebration rarely takes place without Lebanese representation in Williston, the area's major city.
Wonder of Williston, the remarkably complete history of Williams County, tells the story of some, but not all, of the area's first Syrian settlers. According to their family accounts, in 1903 David Kalil, Alex Aboud, Joe Albert, and Abraham Abdo arrived to take up free land. One long-time Williston resident says that David Kalil was working out of Duluth as a peddler. Traveling through, he looked over the Williston area in the later part of the 1890s and subsequently returned to take up a homestead.
The date, 1903, coincides very well with naturalization records ... the list of citizenship applicants reveals a number of things that make the Williams County Syrians unique:
the rapidity with which such a great number of newcomers sought the status of full-fledged Americans. They filed first papers almost immediately as soon as they reached the Williams County region. This hardly fits the "get rich and return home" generalization found in publications concerning other parts of the nation;
the presence of such a sizeable number of women, eight out of the total twenty-one. Indeed, several of the women appear to be wives who applied at the same time as their husbands. Again, this does not fit the standard first arrival expectations;
without exception, the 1903 applicants in Williams County were Christian; and,
the most famous of all Lebanese North Dakota religious leaders, the pastor of St George's Church near Rubgy, Fr. Seraphim Roumie is on the list of applicants.
The list also included "William Eattol," a surname that would be changed slightly later on and would be a very, very familiar name in Williams County when I was growing up.
Nothing about the Bakken in this post; purely a personal post for the granddaughters. If you came here for the Bakken, scroll down or check out the sidebar at the right.
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Yes, she did this all by herself.
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Memorial Day Cooking
Update
May 30, 2016: Today, Memorial Day, I biked to HEB's Central Market in Southlake, an upscale "foodie" market. Ham imported from France: $14.98/lb. The 10-lb ham below would have cost about $150. I guess pork from France is really, really flavorful.
Original Post
I went to our grocery store early this morning to get a newspaper for May. I walked to the back of the store to see what the butcher was up to. He took me to his specials he had just placed in the display case. He was particularly proud of a 10-pound spiral ham for 99 cents/pound, telling me if I did not grab it then, it would be "gone" in half an hour.
For the archives: a ham like this would normally be about $30 in this particular grocery store and upwards of $50+ at specialty shops.
It was the only one. I took it home, cut it up to freeze. From the 10-lb 10 ounce spiral ham with bone, I "recovered" 8 pounds 2 ounces.
I then took the meat/bone that was left and made bean/ham soup. I had never done this before but always wanted to try it.
Basic recipe but other vegetables, herbs can be added:
And so, all the work is done, the soup is simmering for the next eight hours, and I'm watching the Indy 500, reading The Syrian-Lebanese In North Dakota (previously discussed), and, catching up on a bit of blogging.
June 9, 2016: The state of Maine's PUC released a report suggesting that more natural gas pipelines are not economically worthwhile. is reporting: The Portland (Maine) Press Herald is reporting:
The staff of the Maine Public Utilities Commission concluded
Wednesday that the state’s electricity and gas customers won’t benefit
from a plan to spend up to $75 million a year to help expand natural gas
pipeline capacity in New England.
The conclusion of a long-awaited report
stemming from 2013 legislation was welcomed by clean-energy advocates,
who are pushing renewable energy over fossil fuels in order to fight
climate change. It was denounced by businesses that use a lot of
electricity and natural gas and are desperate to lower their operating
costs.
The PUC staff concluded that low oil and gas prices, new pipelines
under construction or being permitted, and other factors could temper
winter price spikes in wholesale natural gas without ratepayers getting
involved.
The report said, in part: “The record in this proceeding does not
support a finding that (a pipeline contract) is reasonably likely to
provide net benefits for Maine electricity and natural gas consumers
under a sufficiently broad spectrum of future scenarios. Moreover,
regional market conditions, rule changes and other events suggest that
the price and volatility concerns that led to the (2013 law) may be
addressed without (a contract).”
And so it goes. We'll see how it all works out.
Original Post
CAVE dwellers kill the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project which would have brought northeast natural gas to New England. With the loss of that source of natural gas, the local natural gas utility had no choice but to suspend new natural gas hook-ups; they couldn't guarantee enough natural gas if they didn't have additional natural gas.
Having killed the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline, now those same folks want the local utility to lift the moratorium on new hook-ups. I can't make this stuff up.
The Recorder has the story here but additional googling will provide a more complete story. My understanding is that the Massachusetts Senate president demanding that the moratorium be lifted is among the most liberal in the state and would have been with the group to kill the pipeline.
I may have the story wrong, but that's how I read it.
More than 3,000 MW of new, natural gas-fired generating capacity is
either under construction in New England or will be soon, but some of
the gas pipeline projects that would ease long-standing constraints into
and through the six-state region have hit rough patches. Kinder Morgan
in mid-April suspended plans for its Northeast Energy Direct project, a
“greenfield” pipeline across Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire,
and a few days later the state of New York denied the co-developers of
the already-delayed Constitution Pipeline—a key link between the
Marcellus and New England--a needed water quality permit.
The fates of
some other major projects in the Northeast are uncertain too. Today, we
provide an update on pipelines in the land of Yankees and Red Sox.
We’ve written often about gas pipeline constraints to and through New
England, a region with less than one-third the area of Texas but nearly
15 million people, the vast majority of whom believe that Fenway Park
is heaven on earth.
New England has been adding a lot of new gas-fired generating capacity,
but only modest enhancements have been made to the gas pipeline network
that serves the region.
In the unusually cold winter of 2013-14, the lack of sufficient
pipeline capacity to meet demand during periods of very high demand sent
natural gas prices soaring as local distribution companies (LDCs) with
firm transportation contracts took most of the gas and owners of many
gas-fired power plants either scrambled for deliverable, high-priced gas
or switched to firing their units with fuel oil.
The good folks in western Massachusetts and, for that matter, all of New England might want to read how their comrades in Venezuela are faring. This is from The New York Times published today:
CARACAS,
Venezuela — The courts? Closed most days. The bureau to start a
business? Same thing. The public defender’s office? That’s been
converted into a food bank for government employees.
Step by step, Venezuela has been shutting down.
This country has long been accustomed to painful shortages, even of basic foods. But Venezuela keeps drifting further into uncharted territory.
In
recent weeks, the government has taken what may be one of the most
desperate measures ever by a country to save electricity: A shutdown of
many of its offices for all but two half-days each week.
But that is only the start of the country’s woes. Electricity and water are being rationed, and huge areas of the country have spent months with little of either.
Many
people cannot make international calls from their phones because of a
dispute between the government and phone companies over currency
regulations and rates.
Coca-Cola
Femsa, the Mexican company that bottles Coke in the country, has even
said it was halting production of sugary soft drinks because it was
running out of sugar.
Last
week, protests turned violent in parts of the country where
demonstrators demanded empty supermarkets be resupplied. And on Friday,
the government said it would continue its truncated workweek for an
additional 15 days.
Wait till they run out of beer.
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War Stories
Not being reported much in mainstream media right now, but we should be getting reports of unbelievable war atrocities and horror stories in the next 72 hours or so as the Fallujah story plays out. 50,000 non-combatants being used as human shields by ISIS.
Meanwhile, the president is golfing this weekend, based on video being show on local television stations.
As his former SecState would say: what does it matter?
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A Note for the Granddaughters
Life could not be much better.
Our older daughter, happily married, and living and loving "let's keep Portland weird." Two conservatives -- his idol is John Wayne -- living in the most liberal city in the union.
Our older daughter is in north Texas watching our middle granddaughter play "club-level" soccer. She is in fourth grade. My wife is up there watching them.
Our son-in-law is in Austin, TX, with our older granddaughter, where the latter is in a statewide two-day water polo tournament. She is 13 years old and playing on the high school team.
Meanwhile, I'm with Sophia. Sophia, not quite two years old, is washing dishes. She is easily entertained and the easiest two-year-old I've ever seen to take care of. Let her play in the water at the sink and she can occupy herself for "hours" on end. Right now, she's on the sofa with me waiting for the NBA finals to begin, game 6, OKC Thunder vs Golden State.
She has her raisins and ice water; I have my chips and Coke, and we are just chillin'.
