Posted on 01/19/2005 9:51:40 AM PST by Mo1
Harumph...long time to eat brekky..lol. ;) heh heh heh
Noon I think, Lib, but don't count too much on me.
I am still so mad over the Condi thing. Will they show those idiots stopping her from being confirmed today?
Wow! Them are purdy pics.
OoooooooooooH! I like that one, Gran!
I went to an Austin filmmakers networking meeting last night, and a local producer/writer ordered me to audition for her project tonight. I get all the audition notices in e-mail, but don't go to many because I'm a big chicken. The last two meetings I attended, I was scolded by directors who had just finished casting new projects for not sending in my headshot, so this time I was caught the night before auditions and I guess I ought to go.
The role she wants me for is an over-the-top flamboyant psychic. I deleted the e-mail because I just didn't see myself as the "type" -- I picture psychics as dark women with black hair and Ms Cleo phoney accents, but she wants someone pale and ethereal. Okay, I can do pale.
It's a cute short comedy film. Angela's won awards with her previous works and they get seen by all the other filmmakers and sent to festivals.
Eat slow and savor the .......
Go for it! Your photo shows high spirits and the devil in your eyes certainly fits the flamboyant bill.
And to think, we knew you when!!
Where did you slip away too yesterday........
.....Westy.....
All girls can stand to pee.
Aussie girls just don't get their legs wet.
So9
who could pee farthest ???
OMG ... LOL!!
NOT my fault.
I thought you have said at times you were a wild one in your youth, nothing ever like this????LOL
.....Westy.....
Nope .. I can't claim that fame .. LOL
.....Westy.....
Back in the days of 'catch & release' you could tie the young lad to a chair but had to let him go eventually, and you needed a permit I hear.
At least that's what I was told.
Along with going to school in the snow two miles on foot uphill both ways, and having to wrap barbed wire around one's feet for traction on the ice...
Florida growers abandon 60 million pounds of tomatoes on the vine
CATHERINE WILSON
Associated Press
HOMESTEAD, Fla. - A fall tomato shortage has turned into a glut that Florida growers say has forced them to abandon 60 million pounds on the vine in the last two weeks, prompting pledges of help Tuesday from the state.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson flew down from Tallahassee to see the problem for himself, meet with growers and announce a national marketing campaign intended to jump start demand for a product priced as high as $3.99 a pound since early November. Growers are getting 12 cents a pound.
"This is by far the worst I've ever seen," said 20-year grower Kern Carpenter, who hosted Bronson. He has 330 acres of tomatoes waiting to see their next harvesting crew.
The combination of grudgingly slow retail price declines following the shortage and rock-bottom prices paid to growers since Thanksgiving have left tons of fresh tomatoes unpicked from this farm community south of Miami to the Tampa Bay area. Growers have no nearby canneries to turn to.
"This is like a wake without a scheduled date for the burial," former grower Luis Rodriguez, Florida Farmers Inc.'s trade adviser, said as he stood beside a field full of tomatoes but no pickers. "The consumer is getting gouged, and the farmer is leaving his crop in the field."
Supermarket shoppers have turned away from the sticker shock, and outlets from luxury resorts to fast-food restaurants are still telling customers that they're out of tomatoes, farm officials say. The glut has idled an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 farmworkers plus hundreds of packinghouse employees in Florida, which normally supplies 80 percent of the winter tomato crop.
"I was amazed," Bronson exclaimed, holding up a hefty clump of ripening tomatoes weighing about 5 pounds. "We want to break this market loose, let people across the country know."
His department's marketing division is rolling out a program called Storming Across America, a name playing in part on last year's hurricane season. After the skies cleared, the tomato market still looked bad because of a nagging pest in Mexico and a bruised California harvest.
"In our world, it either sells or smells. It smells pretty bad right now," said Nelson Mongiovi, the state's agriculture marketing director. "We're not walking in with a messianic solution, but we do have some ideas."
The state is offering incentives to retailers to put tomatoes in their printed circulars, a surefire sales booster. The logic is that supermarket sales will clear the supply pipeline and allow harvesting to resume.
Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie, which operates 1,070 grocery stores in Florida and 11 other states, hasn't heard about the marketing push but will be offering large fresh tomatoes for 79 cents a pound in fliers going out Wednesday, said company spokeswoman Kathy Lussier.
Florida growers have voluntarily raised the bar on tomato quality heading to market to give some growers a chance, and an arctic chill touching South Florida is acting as a natural refrigerator to retard ripening. But competition is about to resume from Mexican growers.
Wholesalers are paying $4 to $5 per 25-pound box, but growers must pay $4 a box to pick and pack their crop and have a break-even price of $8 a box.
"Now that we are coming in with some volume, the demand has gone to nothing," said Paul DiMare, a grower and packer since the early 1960s. "We never picked tomatoes below $5 (a box) in all the years I've been here."
Sometimes I think somethings should be done by profit sharing than we would have no waste!
I think farming should not be still in the stone ages where it is almost like slave labor, because this is a back breaking work and many dies young and don't get to enjoy life....!
The middle man get all of the gravy and others take a back seat!
May be after so many years of service and low pay one is able to get an opportunity towards education, be it a vocation or whatever gifts God has given that servant!
In other words after a certain age still youthful one is given funds to improve their lot in life!
We have so many that are poor or wayward this could be an out to get out of proverty and still enjoy life with one health still in tact!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.