Power of the blog

About four years ago I blogged about my Fornasetti plates. That entry gets quite a few hits. The link to a gift shop no longer works. Somehow, Alice, the friend who gave them to us as a house warming gift in 1965, found the entry and has e-mailed. How nice to hear from her. Bill died about four years ago, but we remember many happy times with them in Champaign-Urbana, IL. Here's the face I was blogging about--Julia by Piero Fornasetti.

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Please disobey our laws

It's not only our administration that is suggesting this to illegal immigrants. Our church governments, usually made up of people who don't reflect those of us in the pew, are saying it too:

You’re driving into a major city taking in all the sights and sounds. It looks like any other major metropolitan area when suddenly you see a large sign suspended above the highway. It monstrous letters it say, "Please make every effort to ignore our laws!" You're taken back for a moment as you continue your drive into the city. Certainly they can’t mean that – but soon you find they do. Everyone you encounter is doing whatever they desire and totally ignoring all laws. Stop signs mean nothing, speed limits are ignored and people take whatever they want from local merchants without paying. You have found yourself in the city of Evangelical Lutherans. Cue theme music and closing credits.

The above scenario is no more bizarre than what happened at the recently concluded annual General Conference of the Evangelical Lutherans Church of America. On the closing day of the Conference a resolution was passed by 538-431 vote pleading with the leadership of the denomination to ignore their own church law. Oh, and this was immediately following passing another resolution upholding their church law. Confused? Welcome to the Lutheran Twilight Zone!" Bob Burney

We only need to look at history to see how this will end. Either the liberals will take over, inch by inch, vote by vote,* or the conservatives will pull out (taking most of the money**) and form another synod with other disaffected congregations or synods. ELCA is losing members and money with this fight that's been going on for eight years.

Then among those who believe marriage is God's plan for one man and one woman and that pastors should not be openly living-in-sin whether straight or gay, there are ordained women pastors in ELCA. Well, the guy-group (mostly straight, but also some gays) is still smarting over losing that battle years ago (women have been ordained in some Lutheran churches for over 50 years), so it's raising its ugly head again and that will split the conservatives. How many protestant "fellowships/ congregations/ denominations" are there? 30,000? I'm not sure this is what Martin Luther or John Calvin or Menno Simons had in mind, but there it is--testimony to the whole world that where two or three are gathered in His Name, there will be a fight over the dress code or baptism or music and a new denomination will be born.

*This was a back door, political maneuver brought up at the last minute at the Chicago Assembly, with the press alerted and waiting in the halls to report the outcome and spin it.

**ELCA national office still shows our congregation (UALC) supporting them. However, our "benevolence payments" of $662,618 goes directly to the Southern Ohio Synod, and not to the national office. It's been that way for four years. These funds, and an additional $400,000 for other mission work, do not pass through national's office. This is another way to "spin" support for non-biblical viewpoints.

Who will the Democrats go after next?

The best quote: "I strongly urge President Bush to nominate a new attorney general who will respect our laws and restore the integrity of the office." — Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. He's never met a law yet that he respected because they aren't written for his kind. They hounded Ashcroft and bayed at Gonzales. They don't fool me. They just don't have anything else to do. What scares me is the "tit for tat" [retaliation] that will go on if the Democrats elect the next president. The Republicans just might get some backbone. Scary, isn't it, that our elected officials will spend all their time combing through e-mails and old phone records, attempting to catch each other in misstatements.

The end of summer

Technically, it's not over, but we came back to Columbus today. This morning I walked along the lakefront to take a few pictures. . . and then the batteries died.





Then back to the cottage to pack up. Sigh.

Monday Memories--Thank you, Indy Barb

Last week we received a DVD with photos of my husband's class reunion prepared by Indy Barb the reunion committee. My, oh my! What a lot of work they put in on that! At least I think it was her [she says in the comments it wasn't]. By the time the disc got to my hands, it was out of the envelope. Just adding all the names to the photos must have been a huge task. Reunions are only as successful as the committees, and we both graduated with people who are willing to work hard at it. Not only did it have the reunion photos (3 days--a dinner, an alumni gathering on the campus, and a picnic), but she'd also scanned a large part of the important class photos from the yearbook. We have the '57 yearbook, but many people have lost theirs over the years, so I know they will be thrilled.

BMOC. A class officer. I think I might have been too, however, his high school was larger than my town.



My husband on the far right--credit says they were having a mock political campaign. Looks like it was Ike and Adlai.

My husband always knew he'd be an architect, and Tech was certainly the place to go! Here he is (on the left) with one of his models. I remember this one well. It used to travel around with us from apartment to apartment when we were first married incorporated into a table.

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I wish I watched more TV

Then I would sit in a chair and do nifty exercises with little weights for my upper arms. Yesterday I went to the antique show here at Lakeside. I was bending over to examine an "antique" that I know was from the 1960s, and I glanced down at my bent right arm. The flesh from my front upper arm had sort of fallen in little ripples into the crook of my elbow! So I immediately straightened up. But I must have hit my hand, because today I have a huge black bruise about the size of a silver dollar on the back of my right hand, just like Dad used to get--but he was old! Then this morning after church we were watching the DVD of my husband's class reunion (Arsenal Technical High School, Indianapolis, which I will write about tomorrow). There weren't many pictures of us, but they did catch us on the dance floor, and Oh, I thought we just looked so super, but photos don't lie. We had the same turkey wattles as everyone else.

I'm not sure TV will help my neck, but it's worth a try.

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Are Democrats stupid?

No, but they know the American people, and they may be right. If something doesn't work, we just keep doing it, or electing it hoping for better luck next time. The Democratic candidates for president are on the road to New Orleans, the most corrupt, the most patronage puffed, the most crime ridden city and the most bamboozled by the Democratic party (as of August 2005--Katrina Hurricane) in the United States. It will be another attempt to lay this at the feet of President Bush, which is so absurd I do wish the man would step on them with his big cowboy boots and just lay it all out about whose responsibility it was that the city was sitting on leaking levees controlled by parish boards, that its public housing was filled with poor blacks with no hope, that its government health care was the pits, that the streets were swarming with criminals and that the Mayor and the Governor never did a thing to evacuate those projects even with all the warnings they had, letting the buses drown in the flooding and the criminals take over while they evacuated their cabinets and family members.

But here comes another black, Democratic savior for the Democrat racists in NOLA--Barack Yo'mama Obama

The Gulf Coast restoration, Mr. Obama said, has been weighed down by red tape that has kept billions of dollars from reaching Louisiana communities. As president, he said, he would streamline the bureaucracy, strengthen law enforcement to curb a rise in crime and immediately close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in order to restore wetlands to protect against storms.

Mr. Obama also said that he would seek to lessen the influence of politics in the Federal Emergency Management Agency by giving its director a fixed term, similar to the structure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FEMA director would serve a six-year term, under Mr. Obama’s plan, and report directly to the president.

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and several presidential hopefuls are scheduled to arrive in Louisiana this week to highlight how New Orleans has — and has not — recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Democrats have sought to use the city as an example of what they believe was among the Bush administration’s greatest domestic failures. Jeff Zeleny, NYT, Aug. 26, 2007 Jeff, how'd you keep a straight face writing this drivel?

Over a million volunteers from every state in the nation and every imaginable religious group have headed to NOLA in the last two years to pull it out of the mud. I'm guessing they've done more than all the federal FEMA dollars and reelected-Nagin nonsense combined. And I think that is under reported.

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Visiting some new links

Sometime soon, when updating my template I'll be adding Lady Light, The Sandusky Library Archives, and Rev. Jesse Peterson. Rev. Peterson has a column in Worldnet Daily and writes on issues important to African Americans, families, and particularly fathers. He's a Conservative. Recently he wrote about evil using the analogy of the movie Grizzly Man, where the man who loved grizzlies is finally killed by them, because that's just what wild animals do.

"Not surprising, of course. Be as nice as you want; at the end of the day, grizzlies are grizzlies – wild animals that will kill you when it suits them.

Evil is the same way. No one needs to provoke Kennedy, Dean, Reid, or the NAACP. They serve the side of destruction. That's just what they do.

No matter what you do, no matter how nice you try to be, no matter how genuinely you try to have a dialogue, no matter how much money you give, evil will never cease to be evil. Liberals, black and white, will attack conservative white Republicans as racists regardless. Ask Bill Bennett.

Or ask President Bush. He's invested more government money in black America than Bill Clinton. He's put more black Americans in prominent leadership positions than Bill Clinton. He's been a fine moral example, unlike Bill Clinton. It doesn't matter. Evil people love Bill Clinton because he is one of them. Those who oppose President Bush hate him because he's good. They will forever oppose him for this reason. Just recently, Congressman Charles Rangel called President Bush the modern-day "Bull" Connor." Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

Here’s a great library blog from Sandusky, Ohio--the history of the area written by the library’s archivist. We are close to Sandusky when we are at our summer home on Lake Erie, so I’ll be visiting Sandusky History frequently. According to the blog The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center has a collection of about 10,000 photographic images documenting many facets of the history of Sandusky, Erie County, the Lake Erie islands, and the Firelands region. The blog has a lively writing style and includes scans of many of these photographs as well as items from the newspapers. Like many public libraries, it began as a subscription, private organization for a literary club and was supported by a women’s group before it became a public, tax supported institution:

"The public library in Sandusky can trace its roots back to 1825 (only seven years after Sandusky was founded), when a subscription library was created, called the Portland Library. F.D. Parish, one of the city's first lawyers, was the first librarian, with about 300 books under his care. This organization was succeeded around 1840 by the Sandusky Lyceum, a literary study society; the Lyceum was in turn replaced by the Philomathesian Society in 1845. In 1855, the Young Men's Library Association took over the role of public library for Sandusky, until 1870, when the Library Association of Sandusky was founded. This organization was commonly known as the "Ladies' Library Association," because the membership of its board was composed entirely of women of the community. In 1886 the Library Building Fund Association was created to raise funds for the construction of a library building. In 1895, the Library was incorporated and became the first free public library in the community." From the first entry.

Lady Light Blog will be a new link probably listed in my Faithful bloggers group. Most in that list are Christians, but she's a Jew and the title of her blog is Tikkun Olam. She writes about her faith and Israeli politics, throws in a little humor and some good photos. Enjoy!

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Zit-geist: what's your favorite teen movie?

I probably won't be seeing the latest teen coming-of-age movie, Superbad, although it's not getting bad reviews. Raunchy. I can't find the title of my favorite teen movie, because I've only seen parts of it on TV, never the beginning or the ending. From the clothing, I'd guess it was made 1950-52. The plot: new teacher comes to town, rents a room, falls for young dude with hot car. When school starts she finds out the guy is a high school student. Anyone know the title? Is it on DVD?

Here's some of my favorites:

The old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney films from the 30s and 40s are fun to watch--they were always putting on a show

Any of the moon-June-croon musicals of the 1950s

Rebel without a cause (1955)

The graduate (1967)--Benjamin's a bit beyond teen years, but close. Katherine Ross was so pretty--she's my age.

American Graffiti (1973) This can bring tears to the eyes of a 50s grad

Grease (1978) Not as good as the 50s, but cute

Karate Kid (1984) Macchio and Morita--great team

Breakfast club (1985) Trying to figure out my kids!

Back to the future (1985) Loved it; much better than the sequels

Pretty in Pink (1986) Molly had a great career, didn't she?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)--always think of my kids cutting school

Sister Act (1992) Yikes, 15 years ago--OK, not strictly a teen movie, but takes place in a school. Whoopi and Maggie, what a team

Shattered Hearts (1998)--Made for TV. Star athlete and top student, both college bound, fall in love. He is struck down by cancer. Very sad.

Almost famous (2001)--main character is a teenager who follows a rock band

4085

What I want for my birthday

I stopped at the gift shop in Lakeside this morning to take a photo of a ring. I'm showing it to dear husband, or DH, as some of you call yours. That isn't my hand--I'm taking the photo. Now I've shown it to him, and I hope the rest is history. I don't wear much jewelry and this isn't my birthstone, but I thought this would be nice with the occasional dressy outfit. Plus, it's a size 5--just calling my ring finger's name. What do you think?

4084

Civil War Week at Lakeside

I'd planned to blog about some of the great lectures and musical programs this week at Lakeside that feature the U.S. Civil War, however, Tell Toledo has done such a good job, I'll just refer you there. I will add that the power point failed for Randall Buchman's talk on Mr. Lincoln's 11 train trips through Ohio (last one was the funeral train), so he did the whole thing without visuals. But you know what? When a guy is as good as this retired professor, it didn't make a bit of difference. We could see everything he described!

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Who wants to be a millionaire?

Rev. Jacob Frank Schulman and his wife Alice invested 25% of their income each year (married in 1954). He died in 2006 at 78 with an estate of over $20,000,000. Over the years they have been donors to various Unitarian causes, a branch of Christianity to which he converted in the 1950s. The story was in the WSJ today.

From his obituary: "Dr. Schulman was born March 26, 1927 in Nashville, Tennessee. He had an outstanding academic life with degrees from the following institutions: B.A. - University of Oklahoma; S.T.B. - Harvard University; D.Min. and D.D. - Meadville Lombard Theological School; M.A., D.Phil.,B.D. - University of Oxford.

Mr. Schulman was ordained in the Unitarian ministry in 1954 at the Arlington Street Church, Boston, Massachusetts. He served many congregations: Arlington Street Church, Boston; First Unitarian Church, Worcester, Mass.; First Unitarian Church, Youngstown, Ohio; Emerson Unitarian Church, Houston, Texas; Unitarian Church of Horsham, West Sussex, England; and Huntsville Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in
Texas. His last position before retirement was as Chaplain and Dean and Fellow in Theology at the Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. Mr. Schulman was also named Minister Emeritus at Emerson Unitarian Church of Houston and at All Souls Church Unitarian Universalist, The Woodlands, Texas.

Frank Schulman was a prolific writer of books, pamphlets, and articles on topics from "Blasphemous and Wicked: The Unitarian Struggle for Equality, 1813-1844" (1997) to the pamphlet he edited, "Ralph Waldo Emerson Speaks." In addition, he was a sought-after lecturer, delivering the Berry Street Lecture (1981); the Minns Lecture (1982); and the Billings Lecture (1983). Mr. Schulman also served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean War."

However, if you're not interested in the pay of a minister and scholar, you might also consider sending your 18 year old to a state school instead of a private, or ivy-league college, and investing the difference each year in the stock market for the long haul. Your student will probably come out of this decision at age 50 or 60 thanking you and piling flowers on your grave. Plus s/he won't have that huge debt at graduation.

Thursday Thirteen--How I spent my summer

We have a summer home on Lake Erie in Lakeside, Ohio, a Chautauqua community established in 1873, which offers many activities and learning experiences. Here’s a few of the things I did this summer, but not all at Lakeside.

1. Reunions in Indiana and Illinois: Attended the 50th class reunions of Arsenal Technical High School (Indianapolis) class of 1957 and Mt. Morris High School (Illinois) class of 1957, seeing many friends and some former faculty. Had great family get-togethers with my siblings, their children, my parents’ siblings, my husband’s siblings and their children.

With 2 of my nieces
2. Science and social science: Attended several geology lectures by Charles Herdendorf (OSU) about the Great Lakes and sunken ships. They were so interesting I wished I’d taken a geology science elective instead of chemistry. Also attended lectures on Asia (Korea and Taiwan) by Eugene Swanger, always fascinating. Civil War lectures this week were detailed and informative on Lincoln and battles of the war.

3. Endured three laptop failures, losing all information when the software was reloaded. I had to blog from the hotel lobby a few mornings. I've reloaded for the 3rd time, and I'm NOT updating some of the available software, including MS thinking that may be the problem.

4. Enjoyed two ferry trips to Put-in-Bay, once to visit friends who have a cottage there and tour the island, and then with my husband’s sister Debbie and her husband John from California. New visitors' center is wonderful. Great restaurants.

5. Enjoyed lots of early morning cups of coffee at Coffee and Cream where I watch the news channel and read the papers, planning my blogs, and chat with other vacationers and residents. I see lots of daddies on early a.m. duty with kiddoes in the p.j.'s.

6. Helped some of my neighbors rescue feral kittens, finding a home for one of them. Saving the world, one kitten at a time.


7. Writing: Took a writing class with Patricia Mote at the Rhein Center for the Living Arts.

8. Art: Attended a watercolor workshop one evening, but another class I’d signed up for was cancelled. Attended two lectures with Rustin Levenson, an art preservationist and restorer. Purchased a painting by Robert Moyer from the Lakeside Art Show. My husband has sold 7 of his paintings and many prints, which will help finance the trip to Ireland in the fall. Toured the Ohio Supreme Court Building and State House to see the art (in Columbus). The Court building was a WPA project and has murals, mosaics, decorative plaster, bas-relief sculpture and bronze ornaments and a very interesting law library open to the public.

9. Food: Maintained my winter weight loss despite the constant temptations of Lakeside’s business district--delis, ice cream shops, fresh do-nuts, and Abigail’s Tea Room. Tried a delicious blueberry dessert I saw in the Plain Dealer--twice. Also yummy visits to Schmidt’s, Salvi’s and Rusty Bucket in Columbus with friends and family.

10. Movies: "Amazing Grace" and "Away from Her." Julie Christie is still beautiful. However, because it is about Alzheimer's, it's a bit of a downer. Lakeside has the only movie theater in this county.

11. Read: A book of short stories by Alice Munro, one was the story on which the movie "Away from Her" was based. Also listened to two audio books on my walks, and read numerous journals and blogs. From my own bookshelves I loaned 2 novels. Borrowed a book on Canada travel for a future trip, and brought along 2 on Ireland which I haven't opened.

12. Walked: not quite the 250 miles I want to do before September 3, but I’ve got a few days left to do some more. I think I've done about 150.

13. Attended some fabulous programs at Hoover Auditorium and other Lakeside spots, including Phil Dirt and the Dozers, Mike Albert the Big-E, Chapter Six, Verb Ballet, Banu Gibson, "Whose line is it anyway?" Gaelic Storm, Johnny Knorr (dance band with dancing), 8 performances by the Lakeside symphony, Mary Wilson, Brasilia, and The Dodworth Saxhorn Band. There will be a few more programs next week but we'll be back in Columbus.

Well, that about ties it up for the summer. Family, friends, great programming, good food, and of course, many sunsets, a lot of rain (although we haven't flooded yet in this area), church on the lakefront, and blogging.

Check out other TT-ers at the Thursday Thirteen Hub.

Poetry Thursday

I can't find that I posted this poem which I wrote in July 2003. It is based on two incidents 57 years apart.

Pet in the Road at 163 and 269
July 27, 2003

You are sleeping tucked away in bed
when I see your pet.
You are dreaming of the beach
as I pass at 6 a.m.

You didn't see her slip out the door
for that one last chase.
You realize she is missing
when no friend is waiting.

You hide your face and hot tears
when the stranger stops to help.
You turn to your big sisters,
but they are all crying too.

You will keep her in your heart
though your arms are empty now.
You will weep years later
as you pass a pet in the road.

You just never know

I've learned a lot about food allergies reading Janeen's blog who has children with food allergies. You'll be surprised by what's in your wine that could cause an allergic reaction.

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Balancing work and children

It’s not something you usually see a homeschooler/blogger writing about--it seems to be a conflict that employed mothers have. But Sherry, who writes a wonderful book review blog says:

"I have this theory that it’s important for children to see you doing something you love —for me that’s reading and blogging— at least some of the time. Not that I read and blog just to show my children how important those activities are, but I think for them to develop a love for reading, they need to see me reading. Engineer Husband loves science and math, so as they see him doing science and math, they begin to enjoy those subjects, too."

As much as I respect her book reviews, I’ve just got to disagree a little bit. As reported here before, some children will never enjoy reading, and will not grow up to be readers, and particularly will not grow up to be library users, even if they do read books. My children always saw me reading, I read to them, and I taught them to read, and I took them to the library to check out their own books, and they always received books as gifts for birthdays and Christmas, and for no reason at all. Phffft. One doesn’t read at all and hated school; the other loved school and will only read books in hard cover that she personally has purchased and only by a select group of authors.

Here’s my take:

Far sighted children are less likely than near sighted to be engaged readers, even with glasses for correct vision

Athletic children are less likely to chose a good book to entertain themselves

Children who are intuitive and sensitive and love a crowd to charm, are less likely to hang out in libraries or hit the books after school

If your son is a stud muffin, he's much less likely to be a reader than if he's a geek.

Children are born either readers or non-readers, in my opinion. You can stifle it, discourage it, make it difficult for them to get books; their friends can tease them, or exclude them for reading, but if they are readers and derive pleasure from it, they will find a way--billboards, cereal boxes, instructions on games, crawlers on movie screens. The non-readers--well, you can lead them to the library and load them up, but you can’t make them like it. Neither of my adult children have library cards.

This mother's advice: read to your children because you like the story or pictures, and it is good cuddle time. There are other things more important than reading.

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Soldier-moms have work-family conflicts

Now isn't that a big surprise! Women in the Air Force who have served in war zones have a work-family conflict that might be related to PTSD. Weren't the feminists warned this might be the case back in the 70s when they were still insisting there should be were no gender distinctions and differences? Story here. The study was presented at the American Psychological Association annual meeting in San Francisco this month, but I don't see that it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so be advised.

The Againstocrats--a review

You'll find the complete review of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to remake Democratic politics by Matt Bai, reviewed by Fred Siegal in City Journal. After exposing the fleshy pink underside of the power hungry billionaires and Moveonskis, he gets to bloggers. My personal favorite:

The bloggers, for their part, are as emotionally stunted as the billionaires, but as inhabitants of "a fantasy game inflected world," far less literate: "The Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm." Bai adds: "One of the hallmarks of the netroots culture was a complete disconnect from history—meaning basically anything that happened before 1998." Unlike the radicals of the 1960s, who knew something of the anti-Stalinism that had preceded them but dismissed its significance for their time, the bloggers take pride in their ignorance. In the eyes of the bloggers, "the more history you knew," explains Bai, "the more bogged down and less relevant you were likely to be."

But if they were short on learning and thinking, they were long on "profanity, hyperbole, and conspiracy theories." America, the bloggers believe, yearns to be governed by Deanlike Democrats, but is thwarted by so-called moderates willing to compromise with the Republican foe. Like sixties radicals, the bloggers see moderates as the real enemy, but unlike them, they have no positive ideology. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the influential Daily Kos blog, insists, "I'm not ideological at all, I’m just all about [Democrats'] winning."

You'll not find a more interesting or well-written on-line journal than City Journal. Summer 2007 issue now available.

Monday Memories--Mamas and Papas

Enjoy. John Phillips and his daughter MacKenzie and 2 other drop outs from other groups sang here at Lakeside maybe 10-15 years ago. I think they may have been called the New Mamas and Papas. I have one of their LPs--left behind by a tenant who ran out on her rent ca. 1966.

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Sugar: the new oil

Have you seen that new TV show CANE being advertised where the voiceover proclaims that "Sugar is the new oil?" Here's what's happening in Brazil with sugar as a biofuel. As seen at this Dept. of Commerce website.

• Brazil is the largest sugar cane producer (425.7 million tons produced in 2006/07 harvest).

• Brazil is also the world's biggest ethanol exporter (3.5 billion liters exported in 2006 or US$ 1.6 billion). The United States is the largest buyer of Brazilian ethanol when both direct and indirect exports are considered. The U.S. Government’s Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) exempts imports from the Caribbean from payment of $0.54 per gallon import tariffs, encouraging Brazilian alcohol exports to that region. As a result, recorded exports to destination such as El Salvador, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Costa Rica are generally destined for the U.S. market; however, exports tend to occur, for limited periods, when gas prices spike in the United States.

• World’s leader in ethanol production (Brazil has 351 producers who generate an output of 18 billion liters/year. About 15 billion liters are destined for internal Brazilian consumption and around three billion are exported.)

• The sugar-alcohol sector’s annual revenue is about US$20 billion (2006).

• 86 new ethanol projects should result in investments of US$17 B (US$14 B in new plants and US$ 3 B in existing plant expansions).

• 80% of flex fuel cars (filled with either alcohol or gasoline, or a mixture of both). In 2006, 1.4 million flex fuel cars were sold in the Brazilian market.

• Alcohol production average cost in Brazil: US$ 1.06/gallon (excludes freight and taxes)

• Petrobras’ large distribution and logistics network in Brazil has always played a key role to boost the ethanol program. The company is investing US$340 million through 2011 to expand its export ethanol infrastructure.

• Petrobras is Brazil’s largest ethanol buyer through its BR Distribuidora subsidiary.

• Petrobras is building ten micro ethanol refineries adopting a family production model. Petrobras is also partnering with Japanese Mitsui to build 40 plants to export ethanol to Japan.

The United States and Brazil are exploring ways to partner on developing second-generation biofuels.

Opportunities may exist in the future for US companies in the biomass to liquids (BTL) and lignocelulose arenas.

Just a thought. Burning sugar sure makes me hot. I wonder what it does for the environment?