It’s simple: forget the Ayn Rand books. Her hateful, selfish, praise of the sociopath is not the inspiration we need. Turn instead to Charles Dickens and his “A Christmas Carol.” It’s a short work and focuses on the one character, Scrooge, so it’s easy to follow. Read it and try not to cry when Scrooge visits the Christmas dinner at the Cratchits. Dickens is not recommending rampant government-driven socialism: quite the contrary. He’s reminding us all that there is something greater than money and power. There is a reason we have a soul, a conscience, and a heart.

Those who shout the loudest that private charity should help the poor must be the most charitable themselves. It is a calamity of our day that, instead of the charitable institutions that Dickens admired in his day, America is famous for its billionaires that grind the faces of the poor.

Well, that doesn’t matter: even the poorest among us can be charitable. So let’s resolve to be more charitable: the Christmas season draws closer to us, and the spirit of the season beckons to us all.

Here’s the blueprint: A Christmas Carol. Read it and may it make you resolve to keep Christmas better than any man around!

“Ask the Missionaries! They Can Help You! And before you change the channel, let me just say that maybe – just maybe – this is something you need to see. There are words of peace and joy in this presentation, and a beautiful story of how faith can be rewarded.

Elder Shane N. Bowen said some things recently that cause no controversy, uproar, or outrage. In fact, quite the opposite: they are words of peace, joy, and strength. They are about the loss of a child, his own son, and the feelings that arise naturally out of love and the feelings that can come through remembering the purity of God’s love.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my own son that died before he turned three. I miss Jarom deeply and lovingly. I know I will see him again, and I know that what Elder Bowen says is true. If you want to know how I know what he says is true, you can read the talk delivered prior to his at the LDS Conference to learn more of the power and role of the Holy Ghost.

These words mean many, many things to me. They are a part of my spiritual bedrock, the foundation I wish to build upon. It’s not that I read these and suddenly knew a peace that had escaped me for many years. It’s that I read these and felt the peace I have felt for eleven years as I turn to God for comfort. With these things in mind, life is beautiful. Life is always beautiful.

I remember seeing this video when it first came out. I am so glad it’s available again. While I can put it up here and say, “For those interested in what Mitt Romney believes, here’s a link…”, I really am posting the link because it’s what I believe and this is a message of joy and peace. Yes, it’s long, but there are also shorter chapters available (under titles such as “Special Witnesses of Christ, Part 4” and the like…) and these messages should not be missed. Maybe you might want to miss them, and maybe your day becomes all the better for hearing them. For me, they are greater than gold or silver.

Full video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srYKbh4ASuw

When I travel, I don’t feel comfortable spending a large amount of money on meals. I love eating good things, but, to me, the price of the meal is part of the presentation and enjoyment of the dinner. That means I seek out great flavors at low costs. If there’s a $3000-per-gram ingredient that’s out of this world, I’ll never know about it except in legend.

I’ve been to places that offered very little in the way of affordable flavor and I’ve been to places where the locals put out impressive spreads. Not every culture or region shares the same attitude about food. That’s why, for example, Mexico’s cuisine is a UNESCO “intangible cultural heritage of humanity” and Russian cuisine isn’t. It’s not that Russian food is bad or objectionable in any way: it’s that Russians don’t have the same approach to eating that Mexicans do.

And before any Russians out there start plotting my demise for dismissing their national palate, let me defend my view of things. I consider Russian art and music to have few equals in the world. The Russian armies’ feats in World War Two were matchless. The Russian spirit is tough, indomitable, and forged in iron. The region simply hasn’t been blessed with a cornucopia of ingredients, that’s all. It’s cold there, so the growing season is short. That makes food more scarce than in tropical regions. The Russians also never developed a taste for spices, so their cuisine has more to do with subtle, muted flavors and interesting textures. And while I can’t get very excited about my next blini, I’m positively mad about Russian chocolates. If I was to write a book about chocolate, I’d be discussing instead how Chinese chocolate doesn’t stack up to the Mexican stuff and be saving the Russians for special praise later on.

You know what… one day, I’ll write about great chocolates of the world. Russia gets a big mention in that, guaranteed.
Right now, though, it’s about the food.

I’ve got a theory about the great cuisines of the world. While every region has a dish or two that can be pretty amazing, for a cuisine to truly stand out, it needs a large range of dishes that, time and again, in the hands of different preparers, cannot fail to deliver enjoyment. When I think of the differences between Mexican food and Russian food, I have to take into account the geography. I mentioned the cold and short growing season in Russia. Now consider the year-round bounty of Mexico. Add to that the fact that a huge range of fruits and vegetables will flourish in the warmth of Mexico that are simply impossible to grow in places where it freezes – like Russia. Face it, Russia is not known for its mangoes, pineapples, or papayas. If someone tried to sell you a crate of Russian bananas, you would greet the offer with disbelief.

Those fruits are exotic in colder places, but are common enough in warmer climates to be ground, pulped, and prepared in bulk sufficient to make them available as ingredients in everyday dishes. The same goes for spices. Warm places grow ’em like nobody’s business: they use ’em the same way. Colder places place such a premium on them that they will use a “th” where their warmer cousins toss in an apostrophe. Historically, the spices were harder to get to the colder places, so the people there either did without them or used them sparingly. Many is the time that I’ve looked at my pepper grinder, loaded with black peppercorns, and fantasized about traveling back in time to Europe to sell those very peppercorns for a massive fortune… and then use that fortune to sail somewhere warm, where I could enjoy food with big, bold flavors for the rest of my temporally-shifted life.

The other factor in these warmer places that makes their cooking something special has to be the warmness itself. Look, where it’s cold, there’s always an excuse to fire up the oven to keep the house warm. Want to warm up a pot of oats? Sure! No problem! You get the wood and I’ll rattle those pots and pans!

Try the same scenario where it’s sweltering. Oats? Seriously? You want oats? In this heat? Just oats? If those guys are going to actually cook something and make this place any hotter, it better be good. So how about instead of a bucket of warm oats, what say we whip up some lasagna? Or Szechuan chicken? Or tacos al pastor? Maybe some chicken tikka masala? Falafel, perhaps?

Right now, I’m thinking you’re drooling a bit more than when I discussed the boiled grains. That’s a sign of a great cuisine. Those places had plenty of stuff to eat, with an embarrassment of varietal riches, but it was so blasted hot in those places that when they made something to eat, it had to be amazing, or it simply wasn’t worth the rise in temperature. Those are the crucibles from which the great cuisines of the world emerged.

For all the people that complain about how the existing LOTR movies left things out or got things wrong, you should be clamoring for a Bollywood version of the epic series. First off, they’d make twelve films, three hours apiece, and keep everything in there. Second, the music wouldn’t put everyone to sleep. Sorry, Enya, but your tunes were the Snoozerville Trolley. A.R. Rahman would blow everyone away with his Bollywood LOTR score. Plus, dance numbers. Finally, audiences would really, really cry their eyes out at the sad parts. In the current films, Boromir dying is noble, but we move on. When Denethor goes up in smoke, it’s kind of a relief. Bollywood, though, would make us cry and we’d love it.

So… how about the casting?

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OnePotChef’s fudge recipe is easy, quick, and delicious. Since I’m in the US, our goods aren’t necessarily the same size as his Aussie kit, but it’s simple to keep the ratio of chocolate to condensed milk at 1:1 and to use about half a stick of butter to get the necessary 50g he specifies. It all melts nicely in the microwave, a good stir gets the liquids to mix, and just be sure you have a spot cleared in the fridge to let the stuff cool down.

Yes, such a person exists. During the Berlin Airlift, Gail Halvorsen took it upon himself to drop chocolate bars and gum on kids that watched the planes land at Tempelhof. I think that’s totally cool. His action inspired others to think of the kids and to donate their rations of chocolate and gum for the kids of West Berlin.

More than that, Halvorsen’s actions showed what can be done if we think of things greater than profits: freedom and compassion. We all are capable of volunteering and donating and visiting and encouraging. When I see what is wrong in the world, it is in people that have forgotten the most important things we can do. To remind them, it is not enough to say what needs to be done. Actions will show the way to what is better.

Gail Halvorsen did a great thing. Never mind the names of dictators or other monsters in our history books: in a better world, it is the names of people like Halvorsen that we will remember – not because we have to learn them, but because we want to learn them.

So here’s a link to a wonderful documentary of Col. Halvorsen and his inspiring actions. It’s an hour well worth spending, and it sure as heck beats listening to the recent waves of hot air blasting from the left and the right. This one arrives cool and refreshing, straight down the middle. Inspiring Lives: Gail Halvorsen

I’m a believer, a big fan, and very, very pleased with my shipment of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. They’re made humanely and sustainably and the company shares its profits with its workers and the poor in a huge way. This is what a corporation should be like: not one obsessed with getting unholy dollars of revenue, but rather filled with a purpose to make an excellent product and to use the profits to benefit the world.

I saw two documentaries recently: one on Dr. Bronner’s and one on Monsanto. Dr. Bronner’s people used their knowledge of chemistry to produce things that are safe and clean, in safe and clean ways. Monsanto has done things to poison the world’s food supply – genes from their corn have gotten into peasant corn stocks in central Mexico, leaving those crops vulnerable to pests, diseases, and weeds unless those peasants buy Monsanto’s chemicals to sustain their crops. The farmers in Mexico have no choice in the matter: Monsanto’s genes made their way through wind-borne pollen. Monsanto is poisoning the world food supply, and that is but one example of it.

Dr. Bronner’s people know we have one world and that we are all one. I love reading the labels because so much of what is on them is true. I don’t go along with all of it, but I’m right there with him when he says we are all together in this and that we have a moral duty in our lives.

I believe in an afterlife, but I’m not sure exactly how it’s organized. I imagine vast halls filled with comfy chairs for the good and the just, where they get to sit and chat with each other and have a wonderful time. Then, there will be school cafeteria tables, complete with hard, backless, immovable stools for all the Nazis, teevee preachers, conservative talk radio hosts with drug habits, crooked politicians, and other “all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly, horrible people” as Arlo Guthrie described the “Group W Bench” in his classic, Alice’s Restaurant.

Which reminds me. I should write something about Alice’s Restaurant. I’ll do that in another article.

So who has to sit at the Nazi table? Monsanto’s executives, because they were just following orders from shareholders, CEOs, and scared men that thought money or power would save their souls.

Who gets to hang out in the comfy chairs with the nice people? Dr. Bronner and the good folks at his soap factory. They were following orders of a different sort, the kinds of orders that we all need to be following.

Time to wash up!