Latest news with #Parsley
The Sun
14-06-2025
- General
- The Sun
Four ways to grow your own herbs and save buying at the supermarket
SUMMER is the perfect thyme to rustle up light dishes packed with fresh herbs. Coriander, parsley and biggest seller basil are all in demand this season, so you might want to grow your own. Here's how to keep them in mint condition. 7 TOP OF THE POTS: Bought potted herbs will likely need a health reboot. As soon as you get them home, replant them in a bigger container. Add some good quality compost. If you have some specifically for vegetables, that's even better. Gently loosen the roots before planting so they have space to flourish. SAGE ADVICE: When deciding where to place your potted herbs so they thrive, it's wise to pick a semi-sunny spot. They may not have been grown in natural sunlight, so putting them on a hot south-facing sill may be too much. Find somewhere that gets sun, but isn't too much of a hotspot. Avoid draughts or radiators, and don't group them too close together. They need space to grow. It's best to place those from a supermarket on a saucer or shallow dish and water when it runs dry. The best-selling fresh herb, basil, should only be watered in the morning so it can dry out overnight. You should prune your herbs or use them regularly as this encourages them to grow. FREEZY DOES IT: Freezing your herbs will mean you can use them for months to come. Wash and dry them, then freeze the stems and leaves in a freezer bag. Alternatively, snip the washed herbs into an ice cube tray before topping with water or oil. Then freeze. You could also mix cut herbs and room-temperature butter. Freeze in an ice cube tray, then use in your cooking or to top meat, fish or vegetables. All prices on page correct at time of going to press. Deals and offers subject to availability. Deal of the day MAKE a last minute dash for dad with the Levi's cotton loose fit shirt, down from £51 to £25 at John Lewis. Cheap treat 7 FOR stylish sunnies on a budget, try these £6 pink tortoiseshell cats eye sunglasses from Peacocks. Top swap THIS lemon A3 print, above, £23 from Dunelm, will add zing to your walls. But the one below, £8 for A3 from George at Asda, is also a zesty addition to any home. Shop & save ENJOY a tipple with Tails Passion Fruit Martini cocktail, down from £15.10 to £12.50 at Sainsbury's with a Nectar card, for a four-serve bottle. Hot right now IT'S the last day to get half-price fillet steak at Morrisons meat counter – down from £11.34 to £5.67 for an 8oz steak. PLAY NOW TO WIN £200 7 JOIN thousands of readers taking part in The Sun Raffle. Every month we're giving away £100 to 250 lucky readers - whether you're saving up or just in need of some extra cash, The Sun could have you covered. Every Sun Savers code entered equals one Raffle ticket.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top Texas donor slams Speaker Burrows, House members after legislative setbacks
The Houston Chronicle is part of an initiative with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Leaders for Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the biggest donor in Texas politics, say they have a simple strategy when trying to persuade state lawmakers: 'We never make enemies,' President Lee Parsley said in late April. 'We only make friends.' But now that the Texas legislative session has concluded without lawmakers passing any of the group's three high priority bills, TLR is taking a decidedly different tact. In a blistering letter to members, Parsley called out by name the lawmakers he said stifled TLR's agenda and all but promised to take them on in primary campaigns next March. He laid much of the blame on House Speaker Dustin Burrows' shoulders. [Houston megadonor Dick Weekley and his group Texans for Lawsuit Reform are losing in the Legislature after 30 years of wins] The group's political action committee 'must redouble our efforts to elect strong, ethical, legislators who value a civil justice system that has integrity,' Parsley wrote in his letter to the group's members last week. Its signature priority, Senate Bill 30 – an effort to rein in medical costs in personal injury lawsuits – died after the House and Senate passed vastly different versions of the bill and could not reconcile the differences. 'I think it's fair to say we may look at backing some primary challengers,' Parsley said. 'We'll take a good look at what happened toward the end of session and decide how to engage politically, but the people who did not support TLR's bill fully are certainly people who will be a focus for us.' The legislative strikeout on these civil justice bills marks a low point for TLR, which won massive rewrites of the Texas civil justice code in the 1990s and early 2000s, spending millions to elect like-minded lawmakers and lobby them to pass the legislation. At its height, the group – led by Houston's most prolific political donor, the homebuilder Richard Weekley – was largely seen as synonymous with the Texas Republican Party, positioning itself as the political voice of the state's business community. The group's political action committee remains the top political spender in the state, spending $21.2 million on legislative races in 2024. The tone of its letter suggests the group could be on a warpath in the March primary elections. Instead of protecting incumbents, TLR could begin targeting members who bucked the group's wishes. 'It did feel a little strange because TLR has basically gotten everything they wanted for a long time now, and the one time it seems like they didn't, it feels like they're throwing a tantrum about it,' said Andrew Cates, a Democratic legislative lawyer and former lobbyist in Austin. 'Everybody else would have been licking their wounds and hanging back and trying to make nice.' TLR's letter alleged Burrows placed skeptical lawmakers on the key committees charged with shepherding SB30. It also called out state Rep. Marc LaHood, R-San Antonio, the main holdout on the House committee that forced significant revisions to the legislation; and state Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who helped win passage of an amendment that TLR said made the bill 'ineffective.' It named more than a dozen other Republican members as well, several of whom defeated TLR-backed candidates in last year's GOP primaries. Cates said the group's criticism of Burrows was notable, since lobbying groups rarely take those kinds of disputes public. Burrows has been endorsed by President Donald Trump for another term, and speakers have broad power to block legislation in future sessions. 'The political capital is going to be really wasted if you come at him and miss,' Cates said. When asked if TLR would support a primary candidate against the speaker, Parsley paused and said, 'Not ready to comment on that.' Other lawmakers responded to the accusations with barbs of their own. 'Simply put, TLR lies,' LaHood wrote in a response on X. Little said in an interview, 'Obviously, they were upset with the outcome and looking for people to blame or attack, but I'll just say on my part, I forgive them and I'm not offended by any of it. I understand that their policy agenda failed.' Burrows' office did not respond to requests for comment. But Little said TLR's claim that Burrows led the effort to tank the legislation is 'not true in any way.' This year, TLR pushed three bills: SB30, which advanced the farthest but was significantly watered down as the session wore on; SB39, which dealt with civil liability for trucking companies; and SB779, which would crack down on 'public nuisance' lawsuits that cities and counties sometimes file against companies on behalf of the public. SB30 started off ambitious. The original draft, passed quickly by the Senate, would have required appellate courts to reduce or review large jury verdicts, capped medical costs by tying them to what Medicare pays out for services and combined several different lines of action for plaintiffs into one newly defined category of 'mental anguish.' One by one, each of those measures were cut. Still, even the watered-down version of SB30 did not have enough votes to get out of the House Committee on Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence, said state Rep. Joe Moody, one of five Democrats on the 11-member committee. The bill looked like it would languish in the committee without a vote. In its letter, TLR blamed Burrows for the committee rosters, saying his selections made it more difficult to pass the legislation. But Moody said it was Burrows who revived the bill, wanting to ensure that at least some portion of TLR's agenda made it to the House floor. On May 20, Burrows urged the committee members to renew discussions on SB30 and come up with a version that they could agree on, Moody recalled. What resulted was a 12-hour negotiation that Little was also asked to join, though he was not a member of the committee. The outcome of that meeting was a stripped-down bill that mainly would do one thing: require judges to automatically admit certain benchmarks to establish reasonable medical charges. The bill passed through the committee, with Moody and LaHood in support. TLR's letter also blasted LaHood's performance on the committee, saying it was concerned from the start that he 'was not philosophically aligned with the business community, and we were right.' It accused LaHood of fleeing the committee meeting to avoid having to vote on TLR's other two bills, meaning 'both bills would die in committee.' 'I did not 'flee' the JCJN committee room after SB30 was voted out,' LaHood wrote in response, saying his opposition to those bills was clear. 'As the Chairman knew, I left to lay out a bill in another committee. Afterward, I returned, and we continued to vote out more bills… I do not run from a fight or a tough vote.' LaHood said he was 'appalled by the breadth of what TLR was attempting to codify into law,' and he said 'TLR's ham-fisted attempt to shirk responsibility for their poorly drafted, poorly conceived bills' impugned his character along with Burrows, Little and the entire House chamber. State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, who chaired the committee, put out a statement clarifying the committee meeting. He said he knew LaHood's position, which meant the bills did not have the votes to pass, and decided to shelf the bills. 'That was my decision and my decision alone,' Leach said. Committee records back up that account. They show that LaHood temporarily left the meeting and that, in his absence, two other bills failed because they did not get a majority vote, but after LaHood returned, Leach called them up for a vote again – and both passed. The other lawmaker to draw TLR's ire was Little. After the revised version of SB30 advanced to the House floor, TLR suffered one final defeat. Moody and Little were concerned about making evidence automatically admissible, since that requirement is rare in Texas law. On the floor, they introduced an amendment that would allow judges to exercise some discretion about whether to admit the evidence. For example, they would be able to consider whether the evidence was relevant to their specific case. TLR described it as a 'gutting amendment.' The group accused Little of reversing course after negotiating the bill that passed the committee. The bill 'would be killed by' Little, Parsley wrote. Moody and Little both said that was not true; they had made it clear the issue was not totally resolved during those negotiations, both lawmakers said. Little said he supported the change out of 'loyalty to the law and the application of the rules of evidence.' The House passed the amendment on a razor thin margin, 72-70, gutting the bill in TLR's eyes. Little said the vote showed that the House probably did not have the votes to pass the bill without the amendment. 'There was still one chance to save the bill,' Parsley wrote, referring to the conference committee charged with reconciling differences in the House and Senate versions. But Burrows put Little on the committee as the swing vote, ensuring the amendment would remain, he said. The House lawmakers refused to cut the amendment, and the bill died. Two days after lawmakers adjourned, TLR sent out its strongly worded letter. If TLR decides to go after the 17 GOP lawmakers who supported the amendment, it could open a new rift among House Republicans. That cohort is coming off a grueling 2024 primary season fought over issues like Gov. Greg Abbott's school voucher plan and Attorney General Ken Paxton's impeachment. TLR invested $14 million in the primary cycle last year, but it was on the losing side of many of those campaigns, spending roughly $6 million to back incumbents in races they lost. Among the large freshman bloc that swept into office in those campaigns, 10 cast votes against TLR by backing Moody's amendment. Those candidates had already defeated TLR's money in one primary and may have been less beholden to them than those in the past. LaHood and Little were among them. TLR gave $320,000 to Little's opponent, Kronda Thimesch, and $99,500 to former state Rep. Steve Allison, who lost to LaHood. The political action committee, however, gave money to LaHood for his general election campaign. The group's single biggest beneficiary during the primary campaign was Jeff Bauknight, doling out nearly $1 million to back his campaign for a house seat in Victoria. He lost to state Rep. AJ Louderback, R-Victoria – who voted for Moody's amendment. State Reps. Andy Hopper, Shelley Luther, Brent Money, Mike Olcott, Katrina Pierson and Wes Virdell all were namechecked in TLR's letter of what it called a 'bad session.' Each beat TLR-backed candidates in their primary campaigns last year. Others listed by TLR included veteran members who TLR has supported in the past. TLR's losses last primary season may portend trouble in trying to target members who opposed them this year. But the group still has a massive war chest of $26.8 million, according to campaign finance records. It usually reports raising about $6 million after a legislative session wraps up. It will have to disclose how much more money it has raised this year in July. 'We understand the realities of Texas politics. I think that what we're doing is the right thing.' Parsley said. 'If the litigation environment remains the same for a long period of time, they will all realize that we were right about this all along, and they will wish they'd paid more attention to us.' Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Indianapolis Star
29-05-2025
- General
- Indianapolis Star
Indy neighborhood lacked a public park - so residents got together and made their own
The 317 Project tells stories of life in all of Indianapolis' vibrant neighborhoods – 317 words at a time. A couple of years ago, if Kristen Tjaden wanted to go to a park, she'd have to choose between driving there or crossing a dangerous intersection. Tjaden, chair of engagement for the South Village Neighborhood Association, said her neighborhood didn't have an outdoor space of its own. What it did have, though, was an abandoned patch of land backing up to the banks of Pleasant Run Creek. Longtime residents like Gene Parsley recalled there had once been a paved walking trail, and a pedestrian bridge crossing the water. Parsley, now a co-chair of the neighborhood association, remembered plucking crawdads from the same creek as a child. Over the years, though, it had become a dumping ground. "We have this natural resource in the middle of an urban neighborhood that is underutilized," recalled Laura Piercefield, also a neighborhood association co-chair. The group applied for a grant from the city, pitching a garden designed to let people gather and learn about the native ecosystem. They were awarded $10,000 to convert the once-forgotten acre into an inviting, peaceful space. Today, native wildflowers bloom around the large rocks that serve as benches. Red-winged blackbirds call to each other across the water. Visitors include people but also owls, herons and foxes. There's no specific name — it's just "the garden." Maintenance remains a group effort. Piercefield marks invasive species with weed dye and Parsley pulls them out. Volunteers are welcome. The group hopes to put in signs describing the native flora and fauna to make the garden as educational as it is sensory. Tjaden now has a safe place to walk with her big dog, and Parsley has a place to enjoy the sun and listen to the water. Piercefield said the garden offers a way for people to learn and connect without sitting in front of a screen. "I've met neighbors — every single time — that are people that I have never known," Piercefield said.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Dylan said: teach me that!' Martin Carthy on six decades of Scarborough Fair – and his new solo album
Martin Carthy has returned to Scarborough Fair. It's been 60 years since he first recorded the song on his self-titled debut album, and famously taught it (or tried to teach it) to both Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, when they came to watch the young guitar hero playing in the London folk clubs. Dylan transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, while Simon turned it into Scarborough Fair/Canticle, a hit single for Simon & Garfunkel and the opening track on their 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Carthy's new version is on Transform Me Then into a Fish, his first solo album in 21 years, released on his 84th birthday today. It now has sitar backing from Sheema Mukherjee, giving it a mysterious, spooky edge. 'That's the kind of a song it is. Try not to be scared of it,' said Carthy, whose sleeve notes when he first recorded the song provided a reminder that parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme were herbs traditionally associated with death. 'It finds a home among the weird, oddball songs. I was interested in what Sheema could do with it, and she responded as a wonderful musician will respond …' He is sitting at his kitchen table in the house in which he has lived for the past 37 years, in Robin Hood's Bay on the Yorkshire coast, just half an hour's drive north of Scarborough. It looks like an over-cluttered museum, with every space on the floor, walls or shelves packed with musical instruments, cassettes, pictures, posters and a street sign from Hull, where his wife, the late Norma Waterson, grew up. He now shares the home with their daughter, the folksinger and fiddle-player Eliza Carthy, her two children, and a cat. He says he has always loved the lyrics of folk songs as much as the melodies, and as he discusses the new album, he delights in telling stories, often illustrated with bursts of song, about the bands and musicians he has played with. Eliza brings in tea, chipping in about lyrics and song titles. The new album started out as a 60th anniversary tribute to his 1965 solo debut, but didn't quite work out that way. A handful of songs have been dropped, and three new ones added. But eight originals remain, including Scarborough Fair. He remembers exactly where he first heard it – at the Troubadour folk club in Earl's Court, in 1960, where it was sung by Jacqueline McDonald (of the Spinners fame) who told her audience that she had learned it from a new song book, The Singing Island, by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Carthy rushed out to buy it and thought: 'That's a nice tune – and of course it was, because Ewan wrote [this version of] it! He would always improve a tune.' Carthy composed his own arrangement for the song, and was singing it while playing with the Thamesiders at the King & Queen pub, near Goodge Street, when he 'found myself looking into Dylan's face – I had heard about him from Sing Out magazine'. Dylan was there with his legendary manager Albert Grossman, 'a folk fan who loved fishing and whaling songs and could sing the pants off anyone, though he never sang in public'. Dylan said he loved Scarborough Fair, and begged Carthy to 'teach me that, teach me that'. A few days later he came to watch Carthy playing solo at the Troubadour, and began visiting the house where he was living on Haverstock Hill, near Belsize Park tube. The first visit has become a folk legend. It was during the bitterly cold winter of 1962-3, and one of Carthy's friends had found an old piano abandoned outside Chalk Farm tube and pushed it up the hill to the house. Carthy started chopping it up with a sword he had been given as a Christmas present, so he could feed it into a wood-burning stove – to Dylan's fury. 'I got the sword and Bob came and stood in front of me and said 'you can't do that, man, it's a musical instrument!' 'It's a piece of junk', I said, and swung a couple of times. Bob was looking up at me and said 'could I try?' – and he battered it … it's all true!' Dylan failed to master Scarborough Fair. 'He wanted to do it with a flat pick though he's a perfectly good finger-style player,' says Carthy. 'He got the giggles all the time and it made him laugh.' So when Dylan later transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, did he mind? 'We just swapped songs all the time,' says Carthy. 'That's what people did.' Carthy was less pleased when Paul Simon did not credit him for his arrangement on Simon and Garfunkel's version, Scarborough Fair/Canticle. But all is now forgiven, with Carthy saying: 'It was grossly unfair [of me] because it wasn't a pinch in any way … it was written as a tribute because he is clever enough to do that.'' They made up by singing the song together on stage at Hammersmith Apollo in October 2000: 'He was doing a tour. He said, 'Really – you want to do that?' It was important, so I could lay it to rest and never have to sing that song again!' He eventually changed his mind about returning to the song, he said, because 'I was gifted a lovely version!' In 2014 he was invited to sing on a TV drama, Remember Me, set in Scarborough and starring Michael Palin. When he went to the recording, he was presented with a very different version of Scarborough Fair, 'collected by Cecil Sharpe, from Goathland – a village near here on the moors'. That's the one he recorded for the new album and now sings live 'but I haven't got it quite right yet …' Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Other songs of course have stories attached, too. He tells how he sang High Germany back in 1963 and thought he had remembered the words correctly until he checked the English Folk Music Journal and found that for some verses 'the words were nothing like mine – I was highly impressed I had invented this stuff'. He still sings his version. As for his own original version of the Ewan MacColl song Springhill Mine Disaster, The Ballad of Springhill, he says that MacColl, a folk purist, 'hated what I did, because I was playing guitar – a foreign body!' On the new version, Carthy is backed only by Eliza's fiddle and demonstrates his new singing voice. 'I lost a lot in the lower registers and found something else – and I like it.' Eliza's fiddle also provides the new setting for Ye Mariners All, 'one of those lovely nonsense songs.' The suitably surreal album cover for Transform Me Then into a Fish shows Martin at the breakfast table in the middle of the ocean, holding his fork like a crazed Neptune. Carthy has always been adventurous. After recording that landmark album in 1965 he worked with fiddler Dave Swarbrick. When Swarbrick joined Fairport Convention in 1969 – an invitation also extended to Carthy, 'twice!' – Carthy joined Steeleye Span instead, playing electric guitar, very loudly, saying 'do you want me to turn it down to 'lounge' – it's supposed to be loud!' After marrying Norma in 1972 he joined the glorious vocal group the Watersons. 'I thought eventually someone would teach me to sing, and Norma did,' he says. He went on to be involved in many different projects, including solo work, playing in duos with Swarbrick and with John Kirkpatrick and Eliza, and in groups including Waterson: Carthy (in which he was joined by Norma and Eliza), the brass-backed Brass Monkey, and the gloriously experimental the Imagined Village, which reworked traditional songs for a multicultural Britain, and featured a large cast that included Simon Emmerson, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Mukherjee. 'I loved it,' says Carthy. 'That huge band was so exciting. Sheema seized everything we tossed at her and she encouraged me to take risks.' With the Imagined Village, he recorded a powerful new treatment of the traditional My Son John in 2010, with sitar backing and updated to the Afghan war era with Carthy's new lyrics: 'Up come John and he's got no legs, he's got carbon fibre blades instead.' He startled his followers even more by re-working Slade's Cum on Feel the Noize: 'Because I'm a big fan of Noddy [Holder]. What a singer!' He's just home from a US tour with Eliza, with shows to celebrate the new album involving both Eliza and Sheema starting on 12 June – while next year promises the return of a new version of the Imagined Village. Carthy may be 84, but he's not slowing down. Transform Me Then into a Fish is out today on Hem Hem Records
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Yahoo
Judge denies new judge for suspect in murdered moms case
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — One of the suspects charged in the deaths of Jilian Kelley and Veronica Butler of Hugoton has lost his bid to get a new judge assigned to the case. Tad Cullum's attorney filed a motion for Judge Jon Parsley to recuse himself because Parsley represented fellow defendant Tifany Adams in an unrelated case. The attorney claims that raises questions about the judge's ability to be impartial. On Wednesday, Parsley denied the motion. He said that the representation of Adams in a marriage dissolution case was wrapped up in 2011, and Cullum was not involved in that case. Kansas woman charged with filing false unemployment claims 'The bare fact of the representation of a co-defendant for a brief period almost 15 years ago does not establish even the appearance of impropriety,' Parsley wrote. 'This Court does not know Tad Bert Cullum, does not have any bias or prejudice against him, and will treat said Defendant with the same dignity and respect as any other defendant, and will decide all issues in a way that follows the law of the State of Oklahoma.' Cullum's next court date is May 14. Co-defendants Adams and Paul Grice were also supposed to appear in court on Wednesday, but their dates were pushed back. Oklahoma court records show the other two suspects, Cole and Cora Twombly, will also be in court in May. The victims, Butler and Kelley, disappeared in March 2024 while they were going to pick up Butler's children in Oklahoma. Their bodies were found buried in a freezer last April. An autopsy revealed that both women had been stabbed to death. For more Kansas news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news by downloading our mobile app and signing up for our news email alerts. Sign up for our Storm Track 3 Weather app by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
