Ceasefire Colorado's McCarron and the "normalization" of guns. Make informed choices on your State Board of Ed candidates. My working recipe for canned tomato sauce.
Ceasefire Colorado's McCarron and the "normalization" of guns.
Last Sunday I put up a post (linked first below) busting the myth that "good guys with guns" are not effective in curtailing or stopping violence.
As a related content in that piece, I mentioned the words of Ceasefire Colorado's (a grantee of the CDPHE Office of Gun Violence Prevention) Eileen McCarron, her concerns that having some staff armed in schools would further the "normalization of guns".
See the second link below for the source of that quote, the RMPBS story re-copied here, for convenience.
I said in that newsletter that I was curious to flesh out this quote and that I would follow up if I got a response to my questions from Colorado Ceasefire.
I did, so I wanted to share.
My question to the media spokesman at CO Ceasefire is in screenshot 1 attached.
His response is in screenshot 2 attached.
I will leave it to you to read the email and the response and come to your own conclusions about what Ms. McCarron meant and/or didn't.
There are some important points to make, however, by way of counterpoint to commonly-heard lines from advocates of gun control.
1. Re. the "we are gun owners too" type arguments, don't take the bait. When you consider arguments, the valid thing to consider is not the demographics or group memberships of the person making the claim. Consider their arguments on the merits of the argument.
2. Re. FASTER, this is a voluntary program that is difficult to pass. It's not 100% clear in the email if it's Colorado Ceasefire's position that we are asking/forcing random teachers to be armed, but I can tell you with 100% clarity that FASTER is something you sign up for and must qualify for.
3. Re. the statement that CO Ceasefire wants to limit access to those that "own, store, and use them responsibly" and this being a common-sense position that majority agree with, I don't doubt this is the case. What reasonable human would advocate against those things. I'm not sure if here they reference a particular survey or poll or just their intuition, but the devil is (as he always is) in the details. What EXACTLY are the definitions and tangible meanings of those type of "good words" statements above? When you discuss gun control (when you discuss any policy), drive the discussion down to details.
That's where we really see the meanings of "normalization" are.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/good-guys-with-guns-busting-the-gun?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rmpbs.org%2Fblogs%2Fnews%2Fcolorado-teachers-gun-training%3Ffbclid%3DIwY2xjawFg5LhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSSCCUgHTY_VxDq277qUbwvDwWlGaLKxZr0sOKMymPzxKGWtLCHZAdzu9A_aem_d5ndsaI85DoytHvzuVBCnQ&sa=D&source=calendar&usd=2&usg=AOvVaw0zUI8YUyu50j5nxaesdmIh
Make informed choices on your State Board of Education candidates.
Are you concerned about the direction schools are going in? Maybe this concern is about what's being taught, maybe it's about parental rights, maybe it's about funding, whatever your concern is or concerns are, you should pay attention to the candidates for our state board of education.
This board makes a lot of the large-scale decisions on your school and the members are independently elected (something becoming sadly more and more rare here in Colorado).
Take advantage of this opportunity to elect people that hold the kinds of views you agree with.
Colorado Politics has done a wonderful piece of work in helping you on this by talking in-depth with the various candidates and I wanted to share the fruits of their efforts with you by way of helping you get a sense of the candidates' values.
The links come hard and fast in this post, so let's go through them.
Link 1 is an overview of the candidates and the seats. Read through this list first (it's why it's linked first). This will help you see which if any of the candidates you'll be voting for.
Link 2 is the candidates' responses (or not, some of the candidates didn't answer apparently) to CO Politics' survey.
Link 3 is the candidates' positions on school funding
Link 4 is their position on parental rights and pronouns, etc.
Link 5 is their take on cell phones in the classroom. I have to be honest that I'm not so sure there's a lot to be gleaned here. In the sense that this article would give you a sense for how the candidates see classrooms and schools, okay. In the sense that there would be a policy about them decided by the Board of Ed? Not so sure that'd happen. Cell phones and the classroom are a trendy topic right now though so for what it's worth...
Tomato sauce -- my working recipe.
Well, it's that time of the week again. Time for something fun and not related to politics.
Last couple years I've planted San Marzano tomatoes. In the previous year, I tried canning them as whole peeled tomatoes, thinking that was the most versatile way to can: I can cut for diced, squeeze them in what Julia Child called "my impeccably clean hands" for crushed, etc.
I blanched and shocked the tomatoes to peel and then literally stuffed them into jars (raw packed). The result, whether I pressure canned or water bath canned, was limp dishrags floating at the top of a bunch of straw colored liquid. Not exactly what I had in mind--watery and tasteless.
This year, I said I would do differently. I decided to go ahead and process the crop into sauce. In researching it I happened upon a trick which will (if you didn't already know it) change your life.
Freeze your tomatoes.* Unorthodox, but for sauce-making, believe me you will love it.
Freezing tomatoes takes the time pressure off canning. They're happy to be in the freezer waiting for you to get the time to work, not the other way 'round.
Freezing also makes them ridiculously easy to peel. I filled a bowl with warm water, dunked them in, let them float for about 15 seconds, and then cut a cross on the blossom end. A quick squeeze at the stem end and they popped right out of their skins! No more boiling water and ice baths.
16 pounds of frozen San Marzanos (the amount for the current version of my working recipe calls for -- see the link below if you'd like to look it over) just about filled my 11 quart stockpot. See the attached picture.
When they had thawed and simmered for 20 minutes, they were down to about 7 quarts. Zipping in the blender and straining out the seeds and bits of core got me down to about 6.5 quarts (see the second attached picture with the sauce moved to my 7 quart dutch oven.**
Some sweated veg, some herbs, and about 3 hours of gentle simmering made me 5.5 pints of rich, tasty, and smooth sauce, suitable for pasta, meatball subs (a favorite), and pizza with a couple minor additions.
The reduction in volume was fascinating to me. 16 pounds of tomatoes ended up as 5.5 pints of sauce. No wonder the previous year's results were disappointing. That's a lot of water removed.
If you decide to follow suit and try my recipe, note that you don't HAVE to can it. You can just as well portion and freeze. If you do can, please be careful! Note that this recipe is not acidified and thus cannot be safely preserved with water bath canning. YOU MUST use a pressure canner, following all the guides for safe preservation.
In the end this was a ton of work. I scheduled it for a day when I'd be home all day doing other chores, so it wasn't bad. I am looking forward to popping open a can at various points in the winter and tasting the sun that went into growing my herbs and tomatoes. Might be tired now, but it'll be worth it then.
That's it for this week. I hope you have a good end to your Friday and see you back at it on Sunday!
*Note: this will only work for tomatoes you will make into sauce or paste. Freezing will not allow you to use the tomatoes in any way where you want them whole; when they thaw they will turn to mush like any frozen fruit.
**Making sauce means driving off water from the tomato sauce, lots of water. This is much faster in a vessel with a bigger surface area. I often use a skillet for things like boiled cider for that reason. Moving to my dutch oven meant more surface area than the stockpot.