This Makes No Sense At All

This tattered, yellowed newspaper clipping has been my possession for many years, but it's been several years since I made scones. Today it seemed a good task to share with seven year old granddaughter, so searched for the recipe, and searched, and searched. We are always clipping and saving recipes, and somehow the scone recipe had vanished, displaced by some untried upstart. Susan fortunately is more persistent than I and managed to uncover it. 15 minutes of flurry with gd, measuring, sifting, squeezing butter & flour, and success once more. The recipe came from the Oakland Tribune Oct 23, 1991, courtesy of Marcy Turner, originally from the Fisher Flouring Mills 1933 Fisher Cookbook. Makes 8 2 1/2 cups flour 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons butter (original was 1 tbsp lard, one butter - I sometimes use 3 butter) 1/2 cup raisins 3/4 cup milk Sift all dry ingredients Work butter into the dry ingredients with your...

It's been a long time since we've subscribed to the Oakland Tribune, and I had forgotten the adventures with customer service. A promotion came in the mail a couple of weeks ago that seemed so good that we decided to try the Trib again. This was 52 weeks of the print edition for $49.95. I filled out and submitted the order online www.bayareanewsgroup.info/ DMOT0909 on Oct 10 and expected to see the paper within 7 days. Nothing had arrived by Sunday the 18th, so I go online and search for the subscriber services form. That is not easy. Oakland Tribune is one of multiple newspapers owned by ANG newspapers, which is now Bay Area Newspapers. It's never clear which ownership layer does what. I google for oakland tribune customer service. At the very top of the page is a link to Home Delivery - clicking that just brings up a general ang page. Finally I go to help at the bottom of the page and that gives me a choice of New Subscription or Manage your subscriptions online, which...

I have been watching with dismay as our local newspapers consolidate and/or vanish, local news disappearing with each change. I am seeing all too many last columns from favorite columnists. One of the hiking blogs I follow is Tom Mangan's Two Heel Drive , a local newspaperman, he gives some insider's views of the industry. His travails have prompted some thoughts of my own. Our local papers are the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. At one time we subscribed to both, but the Tribune stopped coming months ago, and their customer service - entirely online and devoid of human contact of course, says we are not subscribers. ok, my favorite columnist there, Brenda Payton, was gone, so we said forget the Tribune, the Chronicle will be enough. Now the Trib sends us a renewal notice?! Anyway, our budget is getting a little tight, and the Chron is now more than $30 per month, and the Trib is $24 per year, so we are thinking of switching just to the Trib, even though w...