OK. the trump card the proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why FAR more warm summer plants can tolerate cool summers, than cool summer plants can tolerate warm summers...is glacial refugia. Let's compare the East Coast to the Pacific Coast. In the last Ice Age, the glaciers came about as far south as central Pennsylvania. The currently warm summer areas in the mid-Atlantic and upper South would obviously have had much, much cooler summers, in addition to colder winters. On the Pacific coast, they only went as far south as roughly the WA/OR border. The climate of a place like San Francisco no doubt got a bit colder, but not much. At worst, it might have gotten as cool as Seattle. But guess what...both places have cool summers now. It didn't make a difference if San Francisco had slightly cooler summers, they already are cool - the plants did not require any adaptation! OTOH, the plants of the Southeast had to adapt to much cooler summers. Hence the reason most Southeastern shrubs will grow just fine in the UK, assuming the winters aren't too cold, but very few shrubs from the world's maritime climates can grow in the Southeastern USA. There's no reason to think there would be ancestral/inactive genes in those plants to tolerate warm summers, because they never had to tolerate them. OTOH, warm summer climate plants have had to tolerate cooler summers during glacial periods. This post was edited by davidrt28 on Fri, Nov 30, 12 at 19:55

Psoriasis on the hands. Lost some teeth over time but the plastic ones fill the gaps but I am not an Adonnis. Weight/height proportionate. Well-educated and civil. Law-abiding and various tests over the years for various jobs; from high-level to low, some requiring the long version of the MMPI and a follow-up interview by a PhD clinical psychologist (required of all applicants who passes several multi-hour written tests. I passed them all and in more than one was the highest-ranking candidate. Ample training in interpersonal relationships and possessing extremely high emotional maturity levels YET.... I do not do well when approaching single females at social functions. I am mid-50s. In some manner, I "scare" the females. Admittedly, I have a more-than-normal physique that, in the past, allowed me to cross picket lines and lecture five grown males regarding their anti-social behavior and how it would be to their advantage to settle down and behave civilly. They stood there and politely listened without interrupting. I felt compelled to mention all the above to assist ye Ladies in, perhaps, comprehending one man's view and, maybe, understand your own thought process. I do not attempt to impress when socializing but I AM unable to behave/think at a level too much below what is my natural state. Sure, my body is showing the effects of decades of hard living when various job requirements took their toll upon the body. And time is not always kind to all yet I am far from totally physically repugnant. Ladies, "Alpha Male" is a very subjective term that is interpreted in so MANY ways. I am not going to attempt to define it from my viewpoint. I CAN, perhaps, partially explain it by stating that over the years, from my late teens onwards, I have been asked numerous times if I was a law enforcement person (LEO)... even when longer hair, beards, etc. was normal and that was the "look" I had. Well, I NEVER attempted to come across as a cop and other than being a shore patrolman in the toughest meanest most dangerous ports in the Orient I was never a LEO. Seems to me so many of today's wimmenfolks want or desire an emasculated male. The skinny, wimpy "politically correct" possessor of physical perfection. "He's too forward!!" "He scares me!!!" (Yes, I have heard that and I am the guy who stepped and stopped the abduction from the females apartment at 2AM by the idiotic male while ALL the other males retreated). At various local gatherings where I had NO physical desire for ANY of the females present the females I approached civilly and "properly" left those events early. I was rebuffed or ignored. Oh well. No loss. Just something to think about. Admittedly, I AM in an area where the majority of residents are, in general, possessing minimal educational attainments and possessors of what I label a "hillbilly" style of acculturation; this area being the western outpost of earlier Scotch-Irish Appalachian-based migration. Doubt this lengthy diatribe assists thee but it IS a conveyor of ideas, thoughts, observations, etc. Oh...dancing? Never did care for it and with the present defective feet unable to dance except, perhaps, at a very slow shuffle.

I can't say that any books as a whole haunt me, but there are parts of some that sure do. In Catherine Marshall's Christy, the title character visited a hillwoman whose baby died because it was "liver-growed." She used the folk remedy of pulling the baby's legs behind its back so that the feet touched the back of its head. I've never understood what "liver-growed" meant, but I imagined something like an intestinal obstruction so the agony the baby must have felt -- inflicted by its own misguided, ignorant mother -- just rips my heart. In Elizabeth Metzger Howard's Before the Sun Goes Down a little boy about two years old, the son of the town prostitute, died of a congenital lung disease. His grave had no headstone until a couple of the town's boys from well-to-do families stole one from the monument maker and placed it at the grave; then they painted it white and wrote over the paint: Cal/God's Own Little Angel. But when it rained the paint washed away. Actually, that's just one of several parts of that book that have stayed with me for about forty-five years. Then there's Bonnie Blue Butler's death and Rhett not allowing her to be buried until Melanie talks him into it. Apparently, anything to do with a child's death in a story will be what I remember, whether I want to or not. I guess that's haunting.

@Carl Arnold, welcome to the cooking forum! And if you really are a person trying to join in, and not trying to drive traffic to some outside website (why I mentioned no link, but sometimes there's a post that's sort of on topic, and the link comes later), you really are very welcome. As Sherry said, we have problems with bots. Your post was overwritten—very beautifully—for this kind of message board. Your follow up was more normal in tone, but unfortunately the new AI is capable of it all. That said, while we do run to older females in traditional families, we try not to exclude our younger, male, non-binary, non-traditional, unique and diverse posters, and it's right to call us out when we fail in that. Your point about cooking roles being more dependent on individual skills than gender is on topic, and an important POV, no matter how many of us have experienced the calcified classic gender roles in the title of the post. I bought a little table top barbecue last year, and have a littler freestanding one that's cute, but harder to use, and generally too small. I'm not really into outdoor cooking, and don't live in a climate where it's necessary. My little barbecues make my menfolk snicker. They have big and bigger gas grills to cook on...but really only for outdoor parties. I don't get the point (it not being an outdoor kitchen for all cooking in too hot and humid for indoors weather). I think barbecues should burn charcoal and aromatic wood chips to be worth the bother. I use a chimney starter. Barbecues are bad for the air quality, however, so mine are minimally used. The ”outdoors” cooking for us is not a gender thing determined by cultural norms, just a combination of attitudes and druthers that fall that way, informed by weather and circumstance.