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| Michaelann Land |
| Michaelann Land is the political and personal blog of a longtime community activist in Springfield Massachusetts. It tracks homelessness, poverty and environmental news in Western Mass and elsewhere, with random bursts of poetry and humor. |
| Language: English |
| RSS Feeds for this Blog |
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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 363 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 372169 |
| Visitors Out: 1323 |
| Total Visitors Out: 1323 |
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| Where are Springfuield's falcons? |
| 2008-05-10 08:03:01 |
The republican reported this morning that the nesting pair of peregrine falcons, a familiar site in Springfield for the last 19 years, don't seem to be around this spring. Usually, they next on on a specially-build platform on the 21st floor on Monach Place, although they moved to the Memorial Bridge twice.Peregrines had become endangered because of the use of the pesticide DDT-- the same pesticide responsible for the decline of the bald eagle-- but after it was banned on the last day of 1972, the population rebounded. You can find peregrines on every major land mass in the world except New Zealand.Come home, falcons!Atom
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| Does this make sense? Canadian Gov't pays farmers to kill 150,000 pigs |
| 2008-05-09 18:39:26 |
The pork industry is on the verge of collapse in Canada and so the government will be paying $50 million to kill off 150,000 pigs. Each farmer who wants to participate must kill off an entire breeding barn of pigs and agree not to restock the barn for three years. About 25% of the meat will go to food banks; none will enter the market.Besides the rising price of feed, new rules from the U.S. which will require "Country of Origin" labeling is reducing the demand for Canadian pork from American companies.Farmers are encouraged to send their iigs to euthanizing centers, although nothing prevents the pigs from being killed on the farm. Article at Canadian Press.How about if the government helps these farmers transition to crops that will always be needed, that helps the environment by reducing methane, and that doesn't require the taking of a life?Atom
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| Bees to have their own movie |
| 2008-05-09 10:00:14 |
Bees are finally getting their own movie! Well, actually, we've had "Killer Bees," "The Savage Bees" and "The Deadly Bees," but nothing about the disappearance of bees until now.I've been meaning to get to an update on bees and I still will, but in the meantime, I found out from the Organic Consumers Association that a movie is nearly completed that focuses on why bees are disappearing and what effect it will have on world food production. You can watch the movie's trailer here:Photo: two bees in a pumpkin flower, Chris HigginsAtom
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| Fences both protect and destroy animal habitat |
| 2008-05-08 19:48:09 |
More than 50 years have passed since the end of the Korean War and the establishment of a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. In those 50 years an abundance of plants, bird and animals have thrived in a strip of land only 150 miles long and two and a half miles wide. 97% of the land is now covered by forest and prairie.Making themselves at home in the DMZ are Asian black bears, spotted seals, lynx, and the rare red-crowned and white-naped cranes, to name a few. Some believe the Siberian tiger has returned to the land where no human live.In spite of years of separation, a North-South reconciliation seems inevitable. Two rail lines and two highways have been rebuilt across the DMZ. South Korea's Ministry of the Environment says that w...
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| How Massachusetts are you? |
| 2008-05-08 15:10:42 |
Take this little quiz over at GoToQuiz and find out how Massachusetts you are. Not too many questions yet, but the author plans to expand. If you have good ideas for additional questions, you can leave them in the Comments section.Sample questions:Do you know what a packie is? A beater car A young camper The local liquor store Sure, and I can tell you which ones sell nightcrawlers too! Who is "Whitey" and why is he so famous? A well-known Irish pub owner in Southie who has twelve kids A well-known firefighter from Worcester that grew up with Denis Leary Former Boston mafioso and on the FBI's 10-Most-Wanted since '95 Brother of former UMass President Billy BulgerAtom
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| Councilor Tim Rooke doesn't get ward representation |
| 2008-05-08 07:28:53 |
The Civil Rights and Race Relations Committee met again this afternoon to discuss plans for implementing ward representation. I must say it was a thought-provoking meeting. Each department head that had been charged with assessing potential changes in their departments gave a report. Mike Plaisance over at the Republican will probably give more details but for me two issues remained key. The first is resolving the situation with the School Committee, three of whose members were elected for four year terms but who can only serve two years in order for ward representation to be implemented.. The second issue, and one that will play out over time, is the role of neighborhood councils and civic associations in a system with ward representation.Cou...
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| Poor people kicked out of session on poor people |
| 2008-05-07 22:38:14 |
Well, if this isn't typical. Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario was elected partly on his party's platform of reducing poverty by 25% in five years, but now that he is starting the process of "getting firsthand feedback" (his words) apparently that doesn't include getting any input from the people actually living in poverty.Today poor people protested the invitation-only poverty session. Some of the protesters had their mouth shut with tape with the word "silence' written on the tape. Infoshop has a good story about people's struggle to be heard..I must say, however, the Premier's 25% reduction on poverty sounds a whole lot better than what is promoted in cities around the country including Springfield-- and some states have their own plan, also; Massa...
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| Starling Saga: please don't fall out of your nest! |
| 2008-05-07 21:43:39 |
Well, the starlings have refurbished the nest under the eaves of the building where I work and yesterday morning I found two-thirds of an empty pale blue egg. When I got home I saw another empty blue egg under the house's eaves that hadn't been there in the morning. I had this image of a starling calendar: mate on April's first Wednesday, finish building nest, lay eggs, hatch babies-- on different days but simultaneously across the city.Does a bird's offspring inherit the nest of the parents? Where I used to live, there was a pair of starlings under the eaves for twenty years!-- four or five generation's worth, as it turns out; a starling in the wild lives from five to seven years, although domesticated starlings can make it into their teens.Last year the baby starling at work fell out ...
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| Homeless, Tired of foreclosures, Reclaim Vacant Government Homes |
| 2008-05-07 14:14:44 |
I have a link to these folks -- the Nashville Homeless Power Project-- on my blog, and when I got this email today, asking for help publicizing what they're up to, I was happy to oblige.Contact: Jeannie Alexander, 615-799--8108 Homeless, Tired of foreclosures, Reclaim Vacant Government Homes The Nashville Homeless Power Project led a march of poor and homeless families for housing, Wednesday which culminated with the takeover of vacant HUD homes. The march began at 1:00 p.m. in front of the Metro Court House then proceeded to Dickerson Road, an area that has been recently rezoned for luxury development. The homeless group is co...
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| Iraq: making it out alive but not for long |
| 2008-05-06 19:03:00 |
The war in Iraq may be off the radar screen for many of us, but not for U.S. military personnel and their families.In the month of April, 51 servicepeople died in Iraq, the highest number since last September. April injury numbers aren't out yet, and we know the military bigwigs do the best they can to obscure the real numbers, but documented physical injuries, serious enough to cause evacuation from Iraq, stand at at 29,395. Emotional injuries accompany the physical also, but you don't have to be bleeding on the outside to be in a world of trouble and pain.Suicide is the final symptom of emotional distress, and apparently the Department of Veterans Affairs and its Secretary James Peake have been deliberately underplaying just how high veterans' suicide ra...
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| Gas tax holiday a slick piece of propaganda |
| 2008-05-06 08:36:24 |
Looks like we're getting better at seeing through election-year propaganda. A CBS News/New York Times poll released yesterday said 49% of those polled thought the holiday a bad idea, 45% thought the tax a good idea, with 4% undecided.Today's Boston Globe reports that SUV sales for April alone fell more than 32%, while sale of small cars increased 16%.Seems like the high gas prices are forcing us to do what we should do, anyway: drive less, conserve what we have, and use public transportation. Has the tide turned about gas-guzzling cars, or will we go right back to our old ways if-- a very BIG if-- gas prices go down?Atom
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| Is the sun my enemy? |
| 2008-05-06 07:06:33 |
OK, I know severe sunburns are bad for you, especially if you get them as a kid-- it increases your risk of melanoma as an adult. And if you want the skin of a thirty year old when you're sixty, by all means avoid the sun. But otherwise, why is it again that I'm supposed to think the sun is my enemy? I've never really bought it.Last month the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology came out with a report saying there were no health benefits in drinking eight glasses of water a day. Hmm...and yet:Up to 60 percent of the human body is waterThe brain is composed of 70 percent waterthe lungs are nearly 90 percent water.83 percent of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature. Each day humans must re...
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| Edwards bookstore to close |
| 2008-05-05 13:38:40 |
The news is not entirely unexpected, but Edwards Bookstore in Tower Square, Springfield, will be closing on May 16. The last of the area's independent bookstores will be gone, victim of the mega-bookstores like Barnes & Noble and online sellers like Amazon.com.I wonder, sometimes, what my life would have been like without Springfield bookstores.All through high school, I would spend at least three late afternoons a week in Johnson's Secondhand Bookstore, browsing for hours and getting great bargains for a dime. So many of my lifelong interests were shaped sitting on a stool in those narrow isles-- religion, philosophy, history, science, nature-- and, as I think about it, from books ten to sixty years old! I memorized all the bones in the human bod...
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| Ward representation: will the city have made any progress? |
| 2008-05-05 08:15:31 |
The Civil Rights and Race Relations Committee will be meeting again on Wednesday, May 7, 4:30 at the City Council office to figure out how to implement ward representation.. This is a just about when Chair Jose Tosado said the next meeting would take place-- six to eight weeks from the first meeting, which was March 12.The key item on the agenda, from my point of view, is how elections for School Committee members will play out. When the ward rep bill was placed in the city's ballot last November, it turned out that the City Council had failed to think through what would happen to the staggered terms of those three School Committee members who were elected last fall. Although they're supposed to serve four year ter...
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| Poverty News from the Southern Hemisphere |
| 2008-05-04 08:50:09 |
An opinion piece in The Australian by the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union is asking labor unions to rethink their migrant labor policies in the face of a shortage of at least 100,000 workers this year.Recently the Asian Development Bank assessed that at least one-quarter of the people in the Pacific have insufficient incomes to meet their basic needs. Today in the East Timorese capital of Dili 58 per cent of young people are out of work; one-third of the population of the strife-torn Solomons capital Honiara live in poverty; and more than half the population of Australia's former colony of Papua New Guinea live below the basic needs poverty line.Previous migrant worker schemes have suppressed wages of Australian workers. (Sound fam...
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| May Round-Up of News from the Homeless Blogs |
| 2008-05-03 17:10:21 |
When I started this blog, I did a fairly exhaustive hunt for blogs by and/or primarily about homeless people. I found a good number though not as many as I'd hoped, and put them on my blogroll. That was almost a year ago.Since then, five or six blogs have disappeared or become inactive. If a blog owner hasn't written in five months, I figure they're gone. Two blogs about New Orleans homeless haven't been updated since February, when the injunction prohibiting the destruction of public housing was denied and the tent city that had grown up across from City Hall was forced to dismantle. Clearly, these blogs are linked with the state of organizing. I'm hoping they and the organizing recover.Many bloggers seem to be taking a moment to think deeply about...
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| NAFTA to blame for rise in illegal immigration |
| 2008-05-01 14:48:06 |
Remember those activity books we had when we were kids where you'd have to connect the dots for the picture to take shape? If we connected the dots named NAFTA, illegal immigration, globalization, recession, job loss, environmental degradation and corporate greed, what would the picture look like? We're living in that picture but we have barely begun to connect the forces affecting us.In 1995 2.5 million Mexicans were in the country illegally; by 2006, another 8 million had crossed the border. A major part of the blame has to go to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Why? Because more and more Mexicans can no longer make a living in Mexico!NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-busi...
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| Couldn't help myself |
| 2008-04-30 19:55:12 |
Sorry....couldn't help myself....I have to post this picture of a mother otter and her baby...from Radikal Photos. (Thanks, Cute Overload!)Atom
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| No soup kitchen? They'll never know what hit them |
| 2008-04-30 10:46:03 |
Four of us from Arise-- Lamont, Liz, Don James and I-- went down to the Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen during supper tonight to talk to folks about the possible scaling back or maybe even closing of the soup kitchen. Liz had flyered at the noontime meal so folks knew we were coming, and that we were encouraging anyone who wanted to speak out about why the soup kitchen (and the food pantry) are so important to them to do so.Some time this week-- maybe even tomorrow-- the Massachusetts Legislature will vote on an amendment to provide funding for the parent organization, Open Pantry Community Services. The amendment will be bundled in with dozens of others, and what will actually happen feels more like a crap shoot. I wrote...
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| The Sack |
| 2008-04-29 22:15:42 |
Mula came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, “All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack.” “Too bad,” said Mula, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man’s hands and ran down the road with it. Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mula quickly ran around the bend and placed the man’s sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it. When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, “My sack! I thought I’d lost you!” Watching through the bushes, Mula chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to make someone happy!”
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| Mistaken order of hard lemonade cases state to remove 7 year old boy |
| 2008-04-29 21:32:16 |
Boing Boing turned me on to a great site today called Don't Tase Me, Bro!-- a blog on the state of civil liberties and personal freedom. Today's post is the story of a University of Michigan professor who took his 7 year old son to a baseball game and bought him a lemonade-- a Mike's hard lemonade, as it turns out. Dad had never heard of it and didn't know there was alcohol in it. A security guard saw it and turned him in to Child Protective Services, who promtly took possession of his son. Check it out.Atom
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| Poetry contest - I got honorable mention |
| 2008-04-29 07:00:46 |
Every now and then something happens which brings different pieces of my life together. A couple of months ago I went to the Springfield Library to hear poet Martin Espada read-- always a treat-- and while I was there I found out that the library was having a poetry contest for Western Mass. poets. Without much thought or expectation, I picked a poem and sent it in. Lo and behold, I got honorable mention; yesterday the poets read their chosen works to a small band of other poets and friends at the library..I was honored to get some kind and encouraging words from Magdelena Gomez, a poet whose work I admire very much. I was relieved also that people seemed to think the poem was better than I thought it was.It's been ye...
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| Winter shelters close, homeless encampments grow |
| 2008-04-27 22:23:36 |
"The Amherst, MA Survival Center is starting to get more calls as emergency shelters are closing. People need tents," the email began. "Do you have one hanging around that a homeless person can use until they get on their feet? Please... we only have 2 left and the phone is ringing off the hook!!!"Thus begins the annual ritual of closing winter-only shelters, not only in Massachusetts but around the country. For the most part, homeless people won't be moving from the shelters to housing, although Springfield, MA's homeless coordinator says 7 of the 12 people in the overflow shelter do have housing waiting for them. Elsewhere in the state, Northampton's Cot Shelter will close on April 30. There are already 50 to 90 p...
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| Needle Exchange |
| 2008-04-26 18:23:39 |
Posting the story about David Hoose's law firm and how he defended Arise when we were raided got me thinking about needle exchange.Before 2006, when pharmacy sale of syringes was legalized in Massachusetts-- one of only four states to still prohibit such sales-- IV drug users' only legal route to needles was through one of the state's four sanctioned NEX programs. Arise and others, such as Springfield's Department of Health and Human Services, tried and failed to get a similar program in Springfield-- a long and frustrating story. .Although the four Massachusetts needle exchange programs still exist, much of the political controversy-- and organizing!-- has died away. I checked several websites, including the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts, and t...
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| Springfield loses major law firm |
| 2008-04-26 12:27:23 |
After twenty years at their 1145 Main St., Springfield address, the law firm of of Sasson, Turnbull and Hoose is moving its main practice to Amherst. They say they plan to maintain a satellite office at their old address, but it won't be the same.Although the firm is "full service," they are probably best known for their work in civil rights and criminal law, taking many cases with unpopular criminal defendants. Somebody has to do it, right? (Some of you would say no.)David Hoose represented me after Arise was raided and Tory Field and I were charged with possession of hypodermic needles. He will always have my gratitude.The firm's move is yet another loss for Springfield.Nonprofit agrees to DA's termsSaturday, Octob...
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| Atheist soldier takes on the military |
| 2008-04-26 11:42:48 |
No, he doesn't go around trying to convince other soldiers that God doesn't exist and no, he doesn't throw his disbelief in other soldiers' faces. Spc. Jeremy Hall just wants not to be harassed for his atheist beliefs.Hall has filed a lawsuit which includes Secretary of Defense Robert gates as one of the defendants. He says that the Christian religion is pushed on soldiers and that he has been passed over for promotion because superior officers believe that he would be unable to bond with those under him unless he believes in God.You can read more about it at the Topeka Capital Journal. Hall is based at Fort Riley, Kansas.Atom
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| Brazil's homeless and landless unite |
| 2008-04-26 10:50:01 |
Homeless is a word we know all too well here in the U.S. But landless? Do people have a right to land? Seems to fly in the face of our deep-seated belief in the right to private property.Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, is the largest social movement in Latin America. The MST interprets the Brazilian Constitution as allowing for the occupation and expropriation of unproductive land. Sometimes the Brazilian court agrees with MST and sometimes it doesn't. MST members occupy the land and begin subsistence farming.Recently the MST has been working with the Movement of the Roofless -- Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto-- which has been organizing takeovers of abandoned buil...
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| Wasted no more: Florida restaurants can give away food |
| 2008-04-26 08:21:07 |
We've all thought of this: why do restaurants have to throw out all their prepared food at the end of the day? Why can't they just give it away to shelters and meal programs? Then we answer our own question: because they don't want to get sued. (Guess food taken from dumpsters is lawsuit-proof because it was thrown away.)These same thoughts went through the mind of 12 year old Jack Davis after eating out at a Tallahassee restaurant last year. His dad is a lawyer and they drafted a bill exempting restaurants and other eateries from any liability associated with their food. There's more at the Miami Herald.Colleges also throw out a tremendous amount of good food from dining halls. Sounds like a good project for a campus student group. Tip from the 13th ...
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| Springfield's Open Pantry needs help now |
| 2008-04-25 08:52:38 |
To be blunt: Open Pantry Community Services is in trouble and may not be able to avoid deep cuts in essential services. It's not hopeless but it's pretty bad, and what's bad for the Open Pantry is bad for the poor and homeless people in this city.Last year the Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen prepared over a hundred thousand meals for people in need of food and friendship, lunch and supper, seven days a week. When staff and guests were discussing which of the two meals should be cut if it came to that, the answer was the lunch meal-- because a lot of children eat supper there with their parents.Last year the Open Pantry provided groceries for more than 27,000 people, half of them children. Now the pantry may have to cut back days they're open from four to two.Last year 1,200 homeless peo...
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| Earth from the Landsat Satellite - Himalayas |
| 2008-04-24 05:45:55 |
Soaring, snow-capped peaks and ridges of the eastern Himalayas Mountains create an irregular white-on-red patchwork between major rivers in southwestern China. The Himalayas are made up of three parallel mountain ranges that together extend more than 2900 kilometers. Our Earth as Art - NASAAtom
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| Rice rationing in Springfield? |
| 2008-04-23 18:36:28 |
This morning I was going to write about the sudden surge in rice prices as speculators take advantage of food insecurity (sort of like war profiteering, as far as I'm concerned) but I ran out of time. I'd also saved an article about the potential for rice rationing in the U.S. which I hadn't had time to read thoroughly.On my way home from work I stopped at the Food Zone on Belmont Ave. for milk and dog food and sure enough! The twenty pound bags of rice were labeled "Limit 2 bags."A Costco in California is limiting customers' purchases of rice to one bag each. Flour and cooking oil are also being rationed in some parts of the U.S.Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that food shortages in the U.S. are imminent (although I could be wrong!) but we have certa...
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| Meeting Saturday on Holyoke trash transfer station |
| 2008-04-22 22:43:53 |
Holyoke City Councilor Diosdado Lopez and other community activists are calling for a public meeting this Saturday to figure out what to do about the proposed solid waste transfer station. last Tuesday, the City Council voted to require a special permit to build such a station. But that leaves many unanswered questions for activists.People aren't against the station per se-- Councilor Lopez says Holyoke is willing to take responsibility for its share of solid waste, and maybe more than that. (Springfield's recycling center serves 78 communities.) At this particular location, however, trucks bringing trash would run through a low-income neighborhood where asthma rates are already high. Treated trash would leave the pla...
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| Plant a tree with Stumble Upon |
| 2008-04-22 22:24:49 |
Do you have the Stumble Upon toolbar?If you don't, you should have. With Stumble Upon, you indicate your interests and when you hit the Stumble button, you're sent a page from a website or blog that matches your interest. Who has time to randomly search the Web for interesting sites anymore?Anyway, if you do have the toolbar, or get it anytime before May 2, the first page you see will be from Stumble Upon. If you click a 'thumbs up" for the page, Stumble Upon will plant a tree with the National Forest Foundation.How easy is that?Atom
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| Tokyo homeless encampment |
| 2008-04-22 20:25:13 |
"being homeless in Tokyo is different than being homeless in other countries of the world... " from Cliostaad, a site that talks about Toyko's homeless population and some of the shelters they built for themselves Site owners also show a polycarbonate house they designed for short-term visitors to Japan, where housing is extremely scarce. Atom
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| GM crops yield less, not more, food |
| 2008-04-21 21:10:24 |
For the last three years the University of Kansas has been studying genetically modified soybean crops. Professor Barney Gorden in the agronomy department started the study because some farmers in the region who were using genetically modified soybeans said their crop yields were down. So Gorden grew a Monsanto GM version in one field and regular soybeans in another. The GM modified field produced 70 bushels to the 77 bushels produced by the non-modified field-- a 10% difference!It turned out that the GM crops needed more manganese, and something about the GM Monsanto seeds-- modified to resist Monsanto's own Roundup weedkiller-- prevented the mineral's uptake. The crops recovered when extra manganese was added, but still, the yield only equaled, not e...
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| Who is David Jessie? |
| 2008-04-21 07:31:55 |
Who is David Jessie and why is the Memorial Bridge his home?Mr. Jessie was injured by an Amtrak train on Sunday and taken to the hospital with "non-life threatening" injuries to his arm. Springfield, MA police listed his address as the Memorial Bridge.Did he not like the praying at Springfield Rescue Mission? Or was he unable to comply with the No Drinking rule?Is he banned at Worthington St. Shelter? Or not able to handle the noise, lack of privacy and so he chose to sleep out?What I do know is that six months from now, the weather will be chilly and rainy and the promised new shelter with expanded capacity at Worthington St. still will not be built! The ground remains unbroken. People will still be sleeping out in dangerous situations.If anyone knows Mr. Jessie, or if Mr. Jessie get
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| Land of 10,000 homeless |
| 2008-04-20 15:09:39 |
Check out Voices of the Streets, a website of artistic activism, providing a space for the disadvantaged to share their stories, presents the stories of Minnesota's homeless...music, video, art and suggestions about what each of us can do to end homelessness.The site says, "Mainstream media seldom asks for the opinion of those adversely affected by homelessness, poverty, discrimination, racism, or other serious and persistent societal problems." This is so true. The providers want to solve problems for us, not with us.Atom
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| Auto site talks about biofuels |
| 2008-04-19 19:04:24 |
Wow-- here's a blog called Kicking Tires that, among other things, is blogging about biofuels, and how one tank of gas equals 528 pounds of corn-- enough to feed a person for a year, and suggesting that the U.S. change its policy on biofuels. You can research cars, write a review of your own car, find out about recalls, buy and sell-- in other words, a regular car site but writing about hunger and the environment.. Hope for the world?Atom
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| Bay State Gas: using less will cost you more |
| 2008-04-19 12:52:28 |
In one of the more ridiculous rationalizations I've seen recently, Bay State Gas Co. says that consumers have used 7% less gas ever since Hurricane Katrina-- so it wants an increase in rates. Well, we use less gas because it costs more. So let me get this straight: it costs more so we use less so it costs more?Profit, of course, is always the bottom line. Bay State Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Indiana-based NISource, and it's true their profits were down a teeny bit from last year: "NiSource's consolidated operating earnings (non-GAAP) for 2007 were $997.9 million, compared to $1,002.0 million in 2006. Schedules 1 and 2 of this news release contain a reconciliation of net operating earnings and operating earnings to GAAP." NiSourceApparently Bay...
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| How to make perfect rice |
| 2008-04-19 10:58:39 |
Start with a heavy pan. I have two WWII vintage cast aluminum pans; cast iron is also good.The proportion is always one cup of rice to two cups of water (except arborio, which is a whole other story).Purists say not to rinse, but I find that most commercial white rice is better if rinsed until the water is nearly clear. Drain well, or it will throw off your water proportions.Put rice, cold water and 1/2 teaspoon salt in your pan and turn the heat up to high. When the water comes to a boil, stir once if you absolutely must and then cover the pan reduce the heat as low as you can with gas or two settings above Warm on an electric stove.Depending on the rice, (white, brown, short long) cook for 20 to 30 minutes and try not to take the cover off more than you...
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