Hope some enjoy!  I'm going to try and make some this year if I get the chance.   

DANDELION  TONIC

Pour 1 gallon boiling water over 3 quarts of dandelion blossoms. Let stand 24 hours.  Strain and add 5 pounds light brown sugar, juice and rind of 2 lemons, and 2 oranges.  Let boil 10 minutes.  Strain.  When cool add 1/2 cake of yeast. Put in a crock and let it work.  Bottle and put corks in loose until it stops working.  After it stops working, put a raisin in each bottle and cork tight.
One wine glass full before each meal.

Anna Agnes Maley was a brief but significant political figure in the history of Washington State elections. Not only was she the first woman to run for governor, she was also the most successful vote-getter of all the Socialist ungovernors. Like ungovernor George Boomer before her, she was a journalist who died at a young age. Unlike Boomer, she was a moderate who saw the electoral process as a legitimate and essential form of social evolution. As the Washington State socialist movement splintered, she was marginalized and sent packing by her own party.

The previous Socialist Party candidates had all come to Washington with the Equality colony as their landing point. But by the time Maley arrived, the experiment was over. The rules had changed. The Socialist Party veterans were no longer dazzled by idealistic concepts or utopian visions. Getting beaten up and attacked by intolerant people while campaigning had a way of making them not so enamored of change through the ballot box. And yet 1912 was the highwater mark for the Socialist Party both in Washington State and nationally.

Anna was born Jan. 6, 1872 in Faxon, Sibley County, Minnesota. John and Katherine, her parents, were immigrants from Ireland. The family made their way to Minneapolis, where Anna worked as a stenographer and teacher. She was introduced to socialist theory while a student at the University of Minnesota.

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

See? See? I knew it! See how predictable it is getting? This is my fate. Soon I'll become dogmatic about it. Get it? Dog-matic? Ha.

Haha.

Hahaha!

Bwaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

In fact, I even know what the image will be when these lines finish forming. It will be a dog smoking a cigarette.

And so I continue to record the UMLs. But this time I see very few new numbers. Mostly the same humdrum familiar ones. Which in turn exposes me to myself and how boring and routine my path has become in this wage-slave rut I call "life."

The UMLs in this round: 008, 026, 032, 061, 065, 205, 211, 216, 258, 271, 295, 343, 373, 383, 418, 473, 490, 637, 721, 816, 842, 846, 912, 916, 918, 974, 984.

Many thanks to the person or persons who made the origami cranes and hung them on trees along the boardwalk. They were a lovely addition to my first walk of spring.

Spinning in the wind under each crane is a slip of paper inscribed with a message. This one says, Only by making room for everyone in the world, even our enemies, can the world survive. What ever tomorrow means to you, I wish you all a glorious spring and revival of spirit.

Awhile back there was a discussion on OlyBlog about photographs, namely that some people feel less inclined to submit content because they don't have pictures to accompany the articles. In order to rectify this situation I have created a stock photo pool on flickr to provide photos to accompany articles on OlyBlog.

If you have a camera and would like to add to the pool you need only join the group (and flicker) and start submitting your photographs to it. The group is public and the only stipulation for membership is that anyone creating content for OlyBlog automatically has permission to use any submitted photos with that content.

When submitting photos I cannot recommend highly enough the meticulous tagging of photographs with intuitively searchable terms (e.g. if a picture is of a business then add the name of the business as a tag as well as a more general term like "business"). Right now there is an extremely limited number of photos in the group but as it grows the ability to effectively search through it for a desired subject will determine the value of the database. For those interested in helping with this project but not in taking pictures you too can add tags to individual photographs thereby making the database more searchable as long as you sign up for a flickr account (which is free).

If you do use a photo please make sure you credit the photographer as well as provide a link back to the photo's source online. In my perfect world of creating benefit for everybody I'd like this photo pool to give local photographers exposure and publicity that would otherwise be lacking.

Please feel free to ask any questions and feedback is appreciated.