At my house: Hign winds, tree down, power line down

 

The above photo was taken from my front door way, you can see my arbor and the PG&E crew working during the storm. The crew is brave and the winds were as high as 80 MPH.

The photo above shows the power line that our neighbor's huge tree knocked off of the power pole when half of the tree crashed to the ground. On the left you can see the power line is still attached to my house but lying on the ground. This happened Tuesday March 21 at 1 p.m. I felt and heard the crash, it sounded like a bomb. The rest of their tree was in danger of falling onto the electric pole where the transformer was and PG&E acted quickly, and on Wednesday before 8 a.m. were at work cutting the top of the tree away from the pole. PG&E workmen installed a new transformer and I had power back by 5 p.m. and later that day a tree crew cut the tree to the ground. I rated PG&E as 10 out of 10, in the midst of this widespread storm with damage and floods throughout our county they accomplished all this for me and my neighbors.  

It is very stressful to be without power even for the 32 hours I experienced it. Today I am throwing out food from the freezer and refrigerator and of course saving what can be saved of the food. My friend in the nearby redwood forests is out of power for five days now. It is worse for her because her house is all electric. I have a gas water heater, gas heat and a gas stove top. They all work fine without electricity. So I don't complain too much!

This photo shows my neighbor's house and their tall old tree, my house is on the right. If you look closely you can see a giant part of the tree on the ground on the other neighbor's driveway. Sad to say but this dangerous situation of a falling tree knocking live power lines from the pole could have been avoided. I talked to the owner of that house a week ago and she said she asked permission from the city to remove the tree and they said no. Apparently it is a protected heritage tree. I should say was as it is gone now. The neighbor on the other side whose house was slightly damaged said he may sue the owner of the tree property and then that owner may sue the city. Storm damage, what a mess. I am celebrating having my power back on. I hope all of you are safe and well.

Roald Dahl's Books Censored, words removed: mothers and fathers, ugly, fat and more

Yes you read my blog post title right. Earlier this year "Go get your mothers and fathers" was changed in Roald Dahl's books to "Go get your parents." There is no way to sugar coat the recent censorship of Roald Dahl's children's books. His books have delighted readers worldwide with sales of 300,000,000 books. Titles include "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matilda", "James and the Giant Peach" and "The Witches." I have two co-authored books published and it is outrageous to imagine future generations going through my books and making hundreds of changes. We authors put a lot of work into each word and thought in our books. When Dahl wrote "Rudyard Kipling" in one of his children's books, that is meaningful. It is doubly outrageous to do that after an author's death.

 

Puffin Books, his publisher, have called in sensitivity readers, i.e. a cute/sly way of saying censors. Thank goodness many public figures including Salman Rushdie and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are speaking out against the censorship. I read Netflix bought the rights to his books so they are involved in this

This year the publishers made hundreds of censorship changes in Dahl's books, including removing "mothers and fathers" and changing that to "parents", and to describe Augustus Gloop the censors removed the word "fat" and changed it to "enormous."  "Cloud-men" was changed to "Cloud-people" and to describe witches "Old hags" changed to "Old crows".  A mention of Rudyard Kipling was removed and John Steinbeck substituted. What! Thus far the changes are only in the English language versions, the French publisher says they have no plans to make those changes. They did not say they never will, but at least they have no plans to do so.

Salman Rushdie tweeted "Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed." PM Sunak spoke against the Dahl censorship and said "It is important to preserve works of fiction and to not air brush them."

I imagine that people who approve of this censorship would want all of these offending words removed from ALL children's books, no point in just censoring one author. Replacing Rudyard Kipling with John Steinbeck is tampering with what Dahl wrote and is literary vandalism. I am a librarian, published author and freedom lover so this topic is dear to me. What think ye? 

In sum, keep your hands off my words! And all author's words. 

Bounce and Peanut Coconut Sauce

Above are two photos I took of Mr. Bounce this month. The second one is of him waking up in the morning after sleeping on my bed. He also has three of his own beds.

I bought some Peanut Coconut sauce and will appreciate your ideas on how to use it. I plan to use it as a dipping sauce for spring rolls, raw Chinese sugar peas, carrots and celery. Probably I will put it on the boneless skinless chicken thighs I bake from time to time. Have a great week friends. 

 P.S. In the comments Chatty Crone asked what breeds Bounce is. He was found as a stray and I adopted him from a shelter, and we agree he is a lot Chihuahua and part Corgi and part Wiener dog. Then we used a new iPhone camera where you point at something and ask what is this? The camera says he is a ChiWeinieCorgi. And 100% love, except for big dogs who he barks at.