Oy, Vey Is Mir.....

Sometimes, when I read blogs by people with full, rich lives, I feel steamrollered. Not a good or even valid response, but I have it. Then I read blogs by people with seemingly endless troubles and woes, and I think...yeah...why can't I write about that? These people write about their headaches and blown boilers and truly serious depressions, and they get all kinds of sympathy and replies. When I write about anything personal, especially if it's at all painful, the silence is deafening. I guess I'm not a sympathetic character. Better to stick with being the old curmudgeon. That's at least familiar.

But tonight, riding the bus, I was overwhelmed by the thought of....riding the bus in Washington, DC, of all godforsaken places. And I thought about myself as a 10-year-old fishing with my pals on the west shore of Lake Sallie...how we'd ride our bicycles over the gravel road around the lake and pull off onto this one area with no cottages. It was on a small bluff, with the lake and a slim beach about 10 or 12 feet below. We'd cast our baited hooks and wait....I don't think we ever caught a single fish. But it was FUN...different from our usual excursions with our fathers, who drove us in boats out to the good fishing spots, and where we almost always caught fish. But we didn't have to behave ourselves when we rode over to the west shore of the lake by ourselves. We could say what we wanted and act silly.

Anyway, there I was on the bus tonight...coming home from Safeway with TWO big boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, my favorite cereal these days. And it seemed so far away from where I grew up, and so different, and so isolated. In the beginning of my life, I lived close to rivers and lakes in the Midwest. I had a family--Mom, Dad, John, Bob, Paul, and Gene--though only some of us were left at home. My three oldest brothers were gone fighting WWII. Mom did all the cooking, and my youngest brother, Gene, and I did the dishes on alternate weeks. I can't remember what we had for breakfast at the lake, but in the summer in town, we had Pep flakes with sugar and milk.

Now, tonight, I am an old lady buying my own cereal and going home to share it with Fiona, the landlady's dog. Fiona is nuts about Honey Nut Cheerios, too. I get enormous pleasure hearing her crunch the little o's and smack her doggy lips. I love it when she licks my fingers with her soft little tongue. I'm not supposed to be sharing my food with her--landlady's orders (requests/suggestions/unsubtle hints). The LL says giving her human food turns her OFF her dog food. I have news for the LL. Fiona's been turned off her dog food from day one. In fact, I was reading online about pet owners' experiences feeding small dogs, and I discovered that pretty much to an animal, little dogs HATE the kind of dog food the LL is trying to feed her. It's supposed to be very nutritious, and it's quite expensive, but Fiona won't touch it with a 10-foot pole except when she's desperately hungry. Apparently that event happens in the night when nobody is watching. I've never seen her dig into her dish at other times.

Anyway,...I was sitting there holding my Honey Nut Cheerios in the plastic store bag, and drowning in loneliness. I've never been afraid of loneliness, but sometimes I get so effing tired of hauling it around, that I suddenly feel overwhelmed and very sad--almost to the point of tears. I wish I could write hilariously about this--that is, write about it so it's hilarious, sort of, like Belgian Waffle. She has major miseries, but the way she writes about them cracks me (and dozens of others) up.

So I'm riding the bus thinking "despised as a kid, despised as an adult." Thus, I do lojong practice and send at least my small joy in the cartoon bee on the Honey Nut Cheerios box to everyone else in the world who is also feeling lower than snake shit.

Chicken ala Carte

Thanks to Darlene for sending this today....TGIF!

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

The Heat Is ON!!

The furnace elf came today to turn on the boiler!! It's been doggone cold in here for the past week, especially. The other night, the temp got down to 30 degrees outside. It was warmer than that in here, but i don't think it got much over 55 or so.

I feel something of an expert at judging indoor temperatures, having learned in that great school, experience. My dad's rule, when we lived in Fargo, was to keep the thermostat at 55 degrees at night. When I got tall enough to read the thermostat, I was aghast to see that it was set at 60 degrees during the day! I remember pointing this out to my mother and having her chuckle in response. Dad set it at 60 because we had one of those new-fangled oil furnaces, and oil cost more than coal, which just about everyone else burnt in their furnaces.

We had to go get more oil one night when the oil ran out the day before the scheduled refill. I remember my dad and my brother Gene wading through deep snow that night to pull a 50-gallon oil drum on a toboggan. There was much activity outside as they wrestled the smaller drum into position and, using a big funnel, poured it into the pipe leading to the large tank, but I was not allowed to open the door to watch--that would let out all the "warm" air.

I'm feeling a bit sad, actually. Nothing heats like an old-fashioned steam radiator. They get hotter than blazes and make a room toasty warm. I've backed into the one in the bathroom several times and branded myself with bright red stripes on my backside. Even so, I don't hold it against them. They're wonderful. And they've kept this place warm and cozy for the ten years I've lived here. I hope my next place has steam radiators....

Don't Look!!--UPDATED

Don't eat, either! This arrived today as the lead-off article in the Serious Eats newsletter....

UPDATE: Here's a Wikipedia article on poutine (cited in ronnie's comment). it's not poteen, kay (though that obviously might help)...ha.

Mystery Letter

Periodically, now that I'm not on hiatus any more, I'm going to post selected emails to persons unknown to most of you. It saves wear and tear on my computer keys if I get more mileage out of my typing. Here goes:

You know, you have no need to apologize to anyone, least of all a computer tech. That's how they earn their $$. I toil on here with a stupid dialup connection and am settling for the bare minimum of competence, whereas you are very skillful and artistic with your blog, and I am much impressed.

We do NOT have any heat yet, but we do have a whole condo full of lawyers and other very smart people who are amazed and incensed that we again have MICE!!! They scream, "We had mice LAST YEAR, too!!!" Sweet jaysus.....we have grown so far from living in harmony with nature. Anyway, they are somewhat mollified this evening now that poison has been introduced to the INSIDE of the condo instead of just to the rat boxes outside. I seem to be the only one who is NOT upset by the mice but who IS upset by their bringing that effing poison inside!!! I need to move to my own house, where I can have all the mice i want. Don and I used to feed them when we lived in our first house in Bismarck, and the upstairs apartment was vacant. We'd be sitting downstairs watching TV and eating popcorn, and pretty soon, little mice would creep under the living room door from the hallway. We'd toss a kernel of popcorn or two into the dark corner by the door, and pretty soon one mouse'd be sitting up gnawing away on it. They DO come inside when it gets cold.

Yes, nanowrimo starts THURSDAY of this week. I updated my writer profile today to show that i am 70, not 69, and that i entered and won nanowrimo in 2006. blogger x is on year 5 or 6!!! mercy! and i think she published one of the year's labors herself, sort of. Wot a good idea! Maybe I'll publish that stinker from last year, too. It's mystery novel. maybe i can write one this year that will be even worse!! "Stinker II, the Sequel"

Xtreme English Goes Knuts!!

[I had a long, interesting discussion with Cathy t'other day on whether a pun is a metaphor (she says yes; I say not really, and I do b'lieve I'm right--it's WORD PLAY). Thus, I could not resist making the pun in the title of this post--and wouldn't you know it, it appears the knitters in Dish and Wash Cloth Mania are crazy about punning!]

Anyway, the author of Xtreme English is doing her best to be relevant to her audience, which includes at least two or three very skilled knitters, weavers, and other fabric wranglers. Thus, she is adding a great, handy blog to her list of favorites: Dish and Wash Cloth Mania. The blog, discovered on Ideal Bite, Xtreme's favorite green blog (also among the favorites), is about how to knit your own dishcloths and washcloths!!. There's loads of patterns, too, but I haven't checked it all out yet.

Finally! a knitting blog even I can grasp, out of which I and others similarly disfunctional with knitting needles possibly make something!! I must say, however, that on further investigation, even this looks pretty hard (cf. the bee stitch...tsk...who thinks of these things??)

On vacation

Xtreme English will be on hiatus until October or so. For an interesting read, check out Writers Almanac.

Anon,
XE

Gasohol....

In 1978, the year after we moved to Iowa, some filling stations there began selling gasohol, a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol. Even though it was a tad more expensive than good old gasoline, it sold well. Benefits included less reliance on foreign petroleum, less pollution, and support for Iowa's corn growers.

Wanting to be a good citizen, I tried it in my rotten old car--with the predictable result: hitchhiking to work and leaving my car at the side of the road for Bill, our town mechanic, to pick up later with his tow truck. The reason for the breakdown was that the ethanol in the blend was a champion solvent for engine goop. The loosened goop clogged the fuel line and made driving unpredictable--as when the engine started coughing and then stopped in mid-trip. Proponents of gasohol said that replacing the fuel line filters several times during the first few tankfuls of gasohol would solve that problem. And it did. Plus, If you had a new car, the gasohol was no problem at all. It was just the old cars, of which Iowa was full back in the late 70s, that caused this particular problem.

Fastforward to May 18, 2007....Truthout.org has a troubling article on the effect of the big push for biofuels by Noam Chomsky, first published in the International News on Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Starving the Poor
By Noam Chomsky
The International News

Wednesday 16 May 2007

The chaos that derives from the so-called international order can be painful if you are on the receiving end of the power that determines that order’s structure. Even tortillas come into play in the ungrand scheme of things. Recently, in many regions of Mexico, tortilla prices jumped by more than 50 per cent.

In January, in Mexico City, tens of thousands of workers and farmers rallied in the Zocalo, the city’s central square, to protest the skyrocketing cost of tortillas.

In response, the government of President Felipe Calderon cut a deal with Mexican producers and retailers to limit the price of tortillas and corn flour, very likely a temporary expedient.

In part the price-hike threat to the food staple for Mexican workers and the poor is what we might call the ethanol effect — a consequence of the US stampede to corn-based ethanol as an energy substitute for oil, whose major wellsprings, of course, are in regions that even more grievously defy international order.

In the United States, too, the ethanol effect has raised food prices over a broad range, including other crops, livestock and poultry.

The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn’t direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called “free trade,” a posture that collapses quickly on examination.

It’s not unlike what Britain, a predecessor in world domination, imagined during the latter part of the 19th century, when it embraced free trade, after 150 years of state intervention and violence had helped the nation achieve far greater industrial power than any rival.

The United States has followed much the same pattern. Generally, great powers are willing to enter into some limited degree of free trade when they’re convinced that the economic interests under their protection are going to do well. That has been, and remains, a primary feature of the international order.

The ethanol boom fits the pattern. As discussed by agricultural economists C Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “the biofuel industry has long been dominated not by market forces but by politics and the interests of a few large companies,” in large part Archer Daniels Midland, the major ethanol producer. Ethanol production is feasible thanks to substantial state subsidies and very high tariffs to exclude much cheaper and more efficient sugar-based Brazilian ethanol. In March, during President Bush’s trip to Latin America, the one heralded achievement was a deal with Brazil on joint production of ethanol. But Bush, while spouting free-trade rhetoric for others in the conventional manner, emphasized forcefully that the high tariff to protect US producers would remain, of course along with the many forms of government subsidy for the industry.

Despite the huge, taxpayer-supported agricultural subsidies, the prices of corn — and tortillas — have been climbing rapidly. One factor is that industrial users of imported US corn increasingly purchase cheaper Mexican varieties used for tortillas, raising prices.

The 1994 US-sponsored NAFTA agreement may also play a significant role, one that is likely to increase. An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidised agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.

Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers — a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors of the economy and impelling emigration to the US.

It is, presumably, more than coincidental that President Clinton militarised the Mexican border, previously quite open, in 1994, along with implementation of NAFTA.

The “free trade” regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food towards dependency on US exports. And as the price of corn goes up in the United States, stimulated by corporate power and state intervention, one can anticipate that the price of staples may continue its sharp rise in Mexico.

Increasingly, bio fuels are likely to “starve the poor” around the world, according to Runge and Senauer, as staples are converted to ethanol production for the privileged — cassava in sub-Saharan Africa, to take one ominous example. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are cleared and burned for oil palms destined for bio fuel, and there are threatening environmental effects from input-rich production of corn-based ethanol in the United States as well.

The high price of tortillas and other, crueler vagaries of the international order illustrate the interconnectedness of events, from the Middle East to the Middle West, and the urgency of establishing trade based on true democratic agreements among people, and not interests whose principal hunger is for profit for corporate interests protected and subsidised by the state they largely dominate, whatever the human cost.

The Sierra Club's clean car and global warming expert, Dan Becker, has this to say on the massive federal subsidies going to agribusiness for production of biofuel:

"...Given the billions of dollars of taxpayer money going to prop up ethanol, the money might be better spent elsewhere," he says. "If the American people were given a chance to decide how to spend that money, we'd have a much better environment and would have more energy independence." Many people would rather see money spent on wind and solar power, or on fuel-efficiency efforts, Becker said. "Making all our cars twice as energy efficient would take billions of dollars, but instead we're spending billions of dollars on ethanol."

I'll buy that. If we're going to continue to drive our gas guzzlers and eschew public transportation without regard to how much we and the other residents of this planet wind up paying for food, we won't have solved anything.

This Week....

This past week began with a welcome sight: elm seeds by the bus stop!! Here they are....aren't they cute? Bless 'em! They spell the end of the tree allergy season for me. But depending on what tree you're allergic to, it can go on a bit longer. The pollen piles up like cornmeal on the walks, and you can see that, too. The amber, stringy things belong to the oak, which is the #1 eye-itcher here.



This week's view across the street from the bus stop. The walled garden belongs to Dumbarton House, home of the first fiscal officer of the United States (they hadn't even started to call this person "Secretary of the Treasury"). The red flowers are azaleas, and the blue flowers?? Well, they're not bluebells.

Kramerbooks & Afterwords opens for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. during the week (it's open 24 hours on Fridays and Saturdays), and this week, I brought my camera along.

The waiters prepare your beverage orders in this little cubby created when they made a third level for dining at the back of the bookstore. It's a cozy spot for breakfast, especially if you love books and enjoy their company.




This week ended with Lida telling me about her plans to donate her body to science.

"When I die," she said....and she paused..."When I die, did you get that?"
"Yes, when you die...," I said.
"I'm 86, you know."
"Yes, I know...."
"I hate funerals!" she said. "I never go to them...well, I buried my father and I buried my mother and I buried my cousin, but that's it! I can't abide that stuff.
When my father died, my mother and I went to the funeral director, a fat guy with a big diamond on his pinky, and he started leading us around showing us the caskets. Finally, after about 10 minutes, my mother (oh, she was wonderful), said,
'Listen. You've never laid eyes on me before, and I've never laid eyes on you before, so stop telling me how I'm feeling about my husband! Just show me the cheapest one!'
So he led us way to the back of this big showroom, way to a far corner, where there was this plain little casket.
My mother said, 'Is that a CHILD'S casket??' and yes, it was.
Anyway, we got the cheapest adult casket, and when we left the funeral director's, she said,'That was a terrible experience. Nobody should ever have to go through that.' Then she said to me, 'When I die, I want you to bury me orthodox.'
Of course, we never went to temple or kept kosher or did any of those other things that make you crazy, but my mother said, 'Orthodox is the cheapest, and it's also the most dignified.'
So I thought that when she died, I'd have to go find an orthodox rabbi and say, 'Hello, you don't know me (you've never seen me in your temple), but....'
Wouldn't you know, before she died, I met this wonderful man, and when I was telling him about my mother's wishes, he said, 'I am an orthodox rabbi, but I don't practice. I can't do your mother's funeral, but my brother, who is also an orthodox rabbi, can.'
So when my mother died, these two wonderful men took care of the whole thing. She was wrapped in a white shroud and buried in a plain pine box. It was simple and very dignified.
But I'm not even going to have that. I'm donating my body to science. NO FUNERAL!!"

She looked pleased with herself now that she has arranged her exit from this plane. Then she went on to tell me that a friend once told her, "Lida, you must have been born with a lucky star over your head."

"It's true," she said. "The most wonderful things happen to me."



OK, but not just yet, Lida. Let's not have that last most wonderful thing you've arranged for your life just yet.

Props to An African Grandmother!

GLEANER/STEPHEN MACGILLIVRAY PHO

Hearing/loss posted a tribute this week to an African great-grandmother whose life has affected hers profoundly. Hearing/loss graciously has allowed me to post the tribute here, too. I love learning about women who have lived through exceptional challenges and become an inspiration to others. If you click on the link, you'll see a newspaper article about Mama Alice.

I want to introduce you all to someone who has had a profound influence on me and who is one of the most remarkable people I've ever met:

Great-grandmother's journey takes her to STU convocation

Althought the article gives the impression that it was her classmates who coined her nickname of "Mama" Alice, the name predates her University studies by years; it is what she has been known as ever since she came to Canada. She is in every way the spiritual Grandmother of every employee at the local multicultural association, and indeed the whole multicultural community. We all call her our "African Grandmother".

She has had a difficult life, touched by many hardships; and she is the most gentle, kindly, steadfast soul I've had the privilege of meeting to date in my life. She is compassionate - Husband and I saw her sitting outside the grocery store one day and asked if we could give her a ride home. No, she said, her grandson was coming to get her - but wait! She ran inside the store and found an elderly Russian lady who was a friend of hers and who didn't have a ride home, and we ended up chauffering this complete stranger and her groceries home. Like many times we've been with Mama Alice, the most mundane meetings can become adventures.

Meeting a woman like her teaches you that we are all the authors of much of our own fortune, and that whining is for wimps - change what you have the power to change, and quit your bitching.

The achievement is all hers, and hers alone, but we're all so proud of her.

Book Review, Sort Of....

I confess I’ve had it with being called “an older American,” “an ex-nun,” “hearing impaired/late deafened/hard of hearing,” “a divorcee,” or “a fallen-away Catholic.” I am, of course, all of these things, plus a few other choice labels, but none of them defines me.

Robin Roberts—and forgive me, dedicated sports fans and viewers of “Good Morning America,” but I had never heard of her until I saw her new book, From the Heart: Seven Rules to Live By, lying on the “New Nonfiction” table at B. Dalton’s day before yesterday—(pause for breath) Roberts has an interesting Rule #4: “Never Play the Race, Gender, or Any Other Card.”

She opens that chapter by saying that any time we think we can’t succeed because other people won’t let us, we’ve effectively “rolled a big boulder into our path.” Bingo!

I’ve been wondering why the whole notion of audism, the “ism” of the hour here at Gallaudet, bothers me so much. There are a whole bunch of young people here working hard at finding examples of audism from which they suffer now, have suffered in the past, or will suffer in the future. Audism, to this prevailing way of thinking, happens when hearing people dump on you because you are deaf.

Of course, they do. Hearing people, that is. Dump on us. In many ways. There’s no getting around it. Any time any of us deviates from any expected norm, whether it relates to our hearing status, our age, our race, our gender, our health and ability, our nationality, our religion, or whatever, we start getting those looks. And it doesn’t stop with the looks. Nobody denies that.

Roberts talks in the introduction to her book about her parents, who would never let her say, for example, “I didn’t get that job because I’m black.” Her parents never let any of their children complain about not getting anything they wanted out of school or life because they had been discriminated against. They’d say, “Maybe the other person knew more about the job than you did,” or when her sister, blessed with a beautiful voice, was in a school chorus and was sure, when she wasn’t picked for a special singing group, that it was because she was black, her mother said, “Maybe they wanted a different kind of voice—an alto or a soprano or just someone that fit in better with their plans.” Her parents instilled in them the importance of doing their best in whatever they were doing—at school or at home—and of being gracious, no matter what.

Roberts went on to become the first black woman sportscaster on ESPN—a daunting job for a woman, whatever her race. But she loves sports and then, later, news and is passionate about them. She says she has been in sports broadcasting for many years but never worked a day. She enjoys her job so much it doesn’t feel like work.

For deaf students to spend their precious youthful energy trying to combat audism is tragic. It’s a waste of time. The book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne tells us that whatever you focus on grows. (It doesn't matter if the focus is negative or positive--Want to stay fat? Keep saying "I hate being fat.") Deaf and hard of hearing students need to pour their hearts into learning and growing and having fun. No matter who you are or whatever life has thrown in your path, you can achieve unbelievable things with your life. Just don’t waste your precious minutes on this planet feeling sorry for yourself or bemoaning your victimhood or hating hearing people because they don’t understand. Roberts also tells us in the chapter on Rule #4 to do our best to think well of other people. (Well, I can think of a few people that are a real challenge to think well of, especially on the national scene, but it's good advice.) It's easy enough not to think well of others, at times, but it doesn't do us any good.

Actually, audism works both ways. The Deaf community has been the only place where I’ve ever run into roadblocks on a consistent basis because I am deaf. Why? Because I can talk. They think I’m hearing. And I’m a lousy signer to boot. I don’t fit the norm. Plus I can be a battleaxe of the first water, although I'm pretty much that way whether I'm dealing with hearing or with deaf people. No discrimination here! Equal opportunity to the core!!

I wanted to come to Gallaudet long before I actually did. The hearing person interviewing me for a deaf program (not at Gallaudet) was not impressed with a nonsigning deaf housewife with four small kids, so he rejected my application. Long story short, I got to Gallaudet, all right, but not until 16 years later. By then I could sign a bit, and I'd also acquired a profession that Gallaudet just happened to need at that very moment.

Do I hate the person who rejected me so long ago? Nope. The only thing about him that ever gave me pause is that after I got to Gallaudet, he was there, too. I worked in the office next to his, and his had a fireplace! Audism, pure and simple....

Easter

The Writer's Almanac has this good bit in today's entry:

The word "Easter" comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

I thought of Miles Davis and the egg gatherer in Day to Day Life of a Very Lazy Gardener....

Happy Easter!

Barack and the Big Guy

As the Big Guy said, "He had me at 'Hi, Jimmy'!" The Big Guy was my first crush in 5th grade, when my parents finally gave up and sent me to parochial school--St. Mary's in Fargo, ND. On Valentine's day that year, the biggest card I got was from the Big Guy (it probably was not the biggest card he sent, but I'm talking about what I got).

Big Guy was one of those golden boys all during grade school and high school, too. He was a page in the U.S. Senate, and he wound up with a gorgeous girlfriend from Across the River. They're still married (and she's still gorgeous).

He never forgets his old pals from Fargo. When I arrived back in DC after an edjicational tour in NYC back in the late 90s, I opened my email on 3/14 and discovered a funny Valentine from the Big Guy. Aw, gee....

He's always been a true dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. Thus, he showed up at a reception for Barack Obama in Palm Beach earlier this year and had his picture taken with the Senator.

You go, Big Guy...and you go, too, Senator! I'm committed to John Edwards, but I'll still contribute to your cause.

Can't hardly wait!

For what? Not that dime coke-ly-ear implant nonsense!

Nope! I'm gettin a new CAMERA!!! an the UPS tracker thing says it's on the way right now!

Big whoop....like you don't already have five cameras??

Not like this one! Not that work, anyway....feast yer eyes on this baby:



Hmph....that's just like the one blogginginparis got. Monkey see, monkey do...

You don't hafta be such a sourpuss about everything! Where's ur sense o' adventure?

And by the way, guess who I saw this mornin at Union Station? None other than Vincent in Dupont! If I'd had a functioning camera with me, I coulda taken his picture again, maybe even done a brief interview.

Ain't It the Truth??

* This picture is from the delightful Montana State University news service. The MSU news service story about the life of a sheepherder has nothing to do with this joke, but it's interesting.

[Thanx an a tip o the war bonnet to M'reen, who sent this one tday....]

A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany .

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. . . .

Now give me back my dog."

Fine...Now Move the Government to Peoria

When the kids were small, we lived on a 2-acre spread on the south edge of Bismarck. We had a little horse barn and 1 acre of pasture, which we rented to our friends Walter and Margaret. Walter was a successful insurance salesman who had the old cowboy image down pat. I never saw him without his big hat, string tie, and fancy boots. Margaret worked for one of the state departments up in the Capitol Building Monday through Friday, but after hours and on the weekends, she was a horsewoman and a champion barrel racer. They rode their horses for exercise every night after work, and when their ride was over and the horses were brushed and put into their stalls, Walter often would open the trunk of his big Cadillac and bring out beer for the grownups and watermelon for the kids. The kids were crazy about Walter and Margaret. They were kind and generous and affectionate with them. Katie's first words, spoken one evening when Margaret rode into the yard on her horse Fly, were "Hi, Margaret." None of us had heard her say much of anything--she got what she wanted by pointing and grunting, her shorthand way of communicating with her deaf mom--and when she came out with that, it caused a sensation. And after that, she just kept talking.

One evening, Walter and Margaret stopped by the house after their ride, and we sat on the back porch. Margaret told me that several of their friends in the horse club recently had lost saddles and other gear when their barns and stables had been broken into. She asked if I had noticed any strangers driving slowly past the house, and she wanted me to be aware that the possibility existed for burglary.

I asked Walter if he could recommend a handgun for me. I said that it made me nervous to be home alone with the kids during the week, and I thought maybe I should have a gun handy.

Walter said, "You don't want to kill anybody, do you?" I said no...it would be just to scare an intruder off. And he said, "Well, the only reason to have a gun like that is if you're going to kill somebody, and since you don't want to do that, then don't get a gun."

The end of last week, the Federal Appeals court ruled that the District of Columbia's law forbidding residents to keep handguns in their homes is unconstitutional. The suit was brought by six DC residents who say the law breaks the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which affirms U.S. citizens' right to bear arms. D.C. Major Adrien Fenty said he was "outraged" at the ruling. D.C. police harvested more than 2,000 illegal handguns last year, and Fenty plans to appeal the ruling.

Opponents of D.C.'s handgun laws, the most stringent in the country, say they are mostly ineffective. Handguns are readily available on the street to anyone who wants to avoid the registration provisions, and deaths by handguns made up the majority of homicides last year (137 out of 169 total). Not all of the handguns used in these murders were registered prior to 1976, one of D.C.'s first laws aimed at abating the flood of handguns here: if you are a D.C. resident, unless your handgun was registered prior to 1976, you may not keep it in your home. Silberman, the judge who wrote the majority opinion, noted that the black market for handguns in D.C. is so strong that it effectively means the only people who don't have ready access to handguns are the law-abiding citizens.

That last statement reminds me of all the pickups out in Bismarck. Most pickups had a gun rack in the back window, and many also had a bumper sticker that read "When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns." Good, solid NRA fare for those who envision themselves blasting intruders away from home and hearth. But sensible people, even self-styled cowboys, know better.

I moved to D.C. in 1992. Peggy said, "Oh, Ma...Now I'm going to worry about you!" D.C. at that time had one of the worst images for crime in the U.S. I think it no longer was the "murder capital of America"--I think other cities had taken over that distinction. I was more worried about other things: getting run over by yuppies driving their SUVs and other gas-guzzling monstrosities through the stop sign in front of my house, or getting barked at by any of the ugly dogs kept in the neighborhoods around Gallaudet.

I walked a lot in those days. I sold my last car in 1991 when I was preparing to move eastward, and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Goodbye, gas, insurance, repairs, standing by the side of the road in high heels thumbing a ride when the car broke down. But I digress...

My late friend David lived in Capitol Hill, and I often walked to Union Station from his place after paying him a visit. I'd stop to rest on one of the park benches lining Pennsylvania Avenue where it intersects with North Carolina Ave. There's a little park there, and the benches are shaded from the broiling D.C. summer sun. And as I sat there, I noticed that on Friday afternoons, especially, young men in athletic jerseys and baggy jeans would park their old cars on one of the little side streets on the other side of Pennsylvania. And a steady stream of other young men wearing suits and ties would drive up in their Audis and BMWs, doublepark alongside the other young men, have a few words, shake hands, and then drive off. It didn't take me long to figure out I was seeing a piece of the marketplace in action. The drug marketplace. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, either, to figure out which of the two groups of young men paid the biggest price for this criminal behavior. Hint: It wasn't the guys in the suits and Beemers.

I think that we could clear up the crime and get rid of the handguns in D.C. if we did just one thing: Move the federal government someplace else. The drugs and the handguns would follow.

Walter Reed Hospital, the Hospital of Presidents

On August 25, 2005, the 8 members of the Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC) Commission, under the chairmanship of Anthony Principi, George W. Bush's Secretary of Veterans Affairs, voted unanimously to close Walter Reed Hospital in northwest Washington, D.C.

I mention this to point out that the decline in funding and attention for Walter Reed Hospital is not exactly news.

When I was a teenager, Walter Reed Hospital was where the President, former General Dwight D. Eisenhower, went when he got sick. Walter Reed was the gold standard for military hospitals. Ike finally died there, and so did Generals Black Jack Pershing and Douglas MacArthur. It was a famous hospital with a fine culture of excellent care, and even foreign dignitaries stayed there.

Back in 2005, George W. Bush had this to say about Walter Reed Hospital, which a PBS Newshour story notes he "has visited" (without citing how often*):
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Every time I come to Walter Reed, it confirms that which I know, which is we're providing the very best -- the best care, the best compassion. We're moving these soldiers from the battlefield to hospitals as quickly as we can, so they can begin their rehab.

Walter Reed enjoyed a fine reputation as a rehab hospital over the years. It's known as one of the birthplaces of rehabilitation medicine. That was before the mold, the lice, and the mice took over under the watch of the "supreme commander" currently in the White House.

Kind of reminds you of "Brownie, you're doin a heckova job," doesn't it?

Why this man is still in office is beyond me.


*http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec05/walterreed_8-25.html

Mrs. Gallimore

Nosing around online this a.m. for news about the blizzard in eastern Iowa/southern Minnesota, I of course checked in with the Cedar Rapids Gazette gazetteonline.com, and after I read the storm stories, I of course checked the political coverage of Mike Hlas, one of my favorite sportswriters ever from our Iowa days. (We hired his brother Craig, also a writer, as an editor for my former employer out there, and he's done very well with the company. He now writes reports and travels around the country to present them.) Like Craig, Mike is funny and smart but not a smartass, which is probably why the Gazette also has him covering the campaign trail out there in "A Year in Iowa."

In one column on John McCain's Iowa appearances, he throws in a few of McCain's warmup jokes--
"Two inmates at a state prison are in a chow line. One of them said to the other one 'The food was a lot better in here when you were the governor.'"
AND
"Following Phil Gramm [who introduced McCain to the crowd] sometimes, I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband where on the wedding night he said 'I know what I'm supposed to do, I just don't know how to make it interesting.'"

In another column, Hlas gives light to why the MSM call Barack Obama a rock star--
When Hlas asked one 60-year old Cedar Rapidian what he liked about Obama, the man replied, "Just his charisma. He seems to have good ideas, he's intelligent."
AND
Another person in the crowd said, "He just has that ability to transcend generations, races. Very articulate. He just has that charisma."
AND
"Oh, that 'rock star' stuff? That became far more perceptible after Obama's 'conversation' as he oh, so slowly worked his way out of the gym while signing autographs and getting his picture taken.

"A girl wearing sweatpants that identified her as a member of Kennedy's cross country squad squealed and hopped around after Obama signed her copy of his book 'The Audacity of Hope.'

" 'I touched his hand!' another teenaged girl giddily shouted at a friend. 'I touched his hand, too!' was the reply. 'I'm not gonna wash it!'

"Who knew that advocating better pay for schoolteachers and a withdrawl of U.S. troops from Iraq by March, 2008 got kids so excited?"

Hlas also has something called "the Hlog," a sports blog about...duh...sports in Iowa, specifically Iowa basketball--"No Iowa State men's basketball starter scored more than seven points at Kansas Saturday. Guess who won by 37 points?" And on the Hlog, he has recommended sites, one of which is Mrs. Gallimore's Blog http://mrsgallimoresblog.blogspot.com/

Who is Mrs. Gallimore? She's a junior high teacher in a small town, and she blogs her assignments and instructions for homework, etc., for every school day. Mrs. Gallimore's Blog is subtitled, appropriately, Mrs. Gallimore's Homework Network. There is no way you can leave a comment in this blog, though. No matter how up-to-date they are technologically, teachers are still coming down firmly on the side of NO BACK TALK!!

I think it's a great idea. Wonder if any teachers at the Clerc Center are already doing this???

The good old Iowa ice storm, meanwhile, is scheduled to continue until noon today, after which utility crews will start the 24-hour red-eye labor of cutting down trees that have fallen across the power lines and restoring sagging, ice-burdened lines that have flipped the system simply by touching something. It's not too cold there--34 degrees above right now--so people have been content to stay off the roads and keep their refrigerator and freezer doors shut (not so it doesn't cool the house off, but so the appliances stay cold).

Son Tom in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, lives within walking distance of his job at Gary's Foods, which probably has a generator to keep the store's coolers going. I'll try to get through to his cell phone later today and see how he's doing.

Love Letters

Note the ND sunglasses!!! I am about 35 here, Peggy is probably 10, Donna next to her is a couple years older.

Peggy had a great post on Valentine's Day about the lost art of letter writing. Lots of people bemoan the advent of e-mail as the cause of fewer letters being written, but I think it's not even related. E-mail is its own art form and is alive and well. What has killed letter writing, I think is the CELL PHONE...blahblahblah, yakketyyakkety....You've already said everything that's on your mind, so why take the time to write it, too? Blogging seems to be bringing letter writing back, largely because most blogging communicates over vast distances....the same kind of distance that soldiers and sailors used to experience between themselves and their loved ones.

Just about every word of communication comes to me through my eyes. My phone calls are typed, ditto the TV programs I watch. I've got several suitcases full of letters that I began to write after I lost my hearing. What strikes me now as valuable is what I recorded of my life in those days as a young mother.

Here's a sample:

From me to S., no date:



Gr - [short for Grendel, after Beowulf]
I am taking a bath surrounded by the spoor of small child bathers--soggy towels, broken soap, bubble pipes, Legos in the drain, filthy socks kicked behind the toilet. An image for eternity. At least it shuts out the demise of the green plant. And the cutting-down of 100-year-old cottonwoods to make room for a crane. (Across the street.) You had better get here soon.

My mother is home from Texas and moaning about the quiet, but rather evasive. I think she has a boyfriend somewhere. In Texas, that is. She really needs someone to direct her.

People are getting gloomy about the world. More & more the simple people are really comforting.

Our garden is 1/8 planted with 100 lbs of seed potatoes in. Too cold for anything else, as yet.

Went to May devotions for the 1st time in many years. So few people. Highly emotional, despite the editing out of all purple phrases from hymns to O.L. [Our Lady]. Funny, how the religionizers decry the emotional coldness of modern Americans, and yet perpetrate the felony lest anyone accuse them of sentiment. The same religionizers who rhapsodize over the Search and Cursillo can't bring themselves to sing "Our hearts are on fire." Oh, shit....

The kids are waiting for you. You'd better show up.

Greetings always
from where I live

Mary Ellen

Another letter, dated only "Sunday"

Dear S.,
Lest you misunderstand (not the right word) when your package arrives...it was hatched on Thursday afternoon during a pouring rain--I didn't feel like working--and mailed Thursday night. In other words, long before your letter came yesterday about myths. I have been laughing out loud periodically for a day now. And I'm beginning to be spooked. [I made her a "de-mythologizer," a device I shall explain sometime when you can see a wastebasket, etc.]
...
Quite a week. The path of g.r. [greatest resistance--a convent phrase, as in "take the path of greatest resistance"] was pretty steep, but I gained some ground, despite all the backsliding. As additional therapy I went downtown and bought a few new garments, got the hair cut & curly: the works. Now that Donald has recovered from the shock, he really enjoys the new look. And me, too.

Friday I saw a little boy who had been struck by a car. Terrifying: four squad cars with lights flashing, a mob of fascinated children, and in the center of the street a little fellow covered by a plaid blanket - he with hair the color of barley staw, and pale, and wiping blood from his eye. Both legs broken. Took the long way home - slowly.
Mother: I saw a little boy hit by a car just now.
Children (eagerly): Was he killed??

Yesterday afternoon we went to a buffalo barbeque at United Tribes. Afterward, after a brief nap, we went swimming where Thomas swallowed some water and promptly threw up in the water. I wish you could have seen the sleek teenagers lolling at pool's edge, viewing the whole scene with disgust. I hauled him (protesting) out as the entire pool turned milky murky and left the Youth to cope with the bits of watermelon floating by and the beans, bright and brown, bobbing singly.

Last night the girls and I went to a pow-wow, scheduled for 7 p.m. We arrived at 7:30 feeling guilty (o jeez) for being late. However, by Indian time we were three hours early. When we left at 10:30 it was just starting to roll. The girls spent the three-hour wait tripping back & forth to the concession stand with an Indian friend--arms around each other, faces anointed with orange pop, lips spewing peanut shells. And Mother sat on the bleachers and grooved with the evening. Sky like pearlescent plastic, wind in the microphone like thunder, an old brown dog rolling in the wood shavings spread out on the dance floor to protect elegant white moccasins fitting like skin. The beauty was overwhelming, and ancient: chant and drums, new flesh - boys bobbing, men swaying, happy women with divine serenity moving, moving. Dignity and unity and community. It was a hell of a lot better than going to church. The girls joined in for two dances. Over the microphone the Indian version of Little Big Horn handed down by the speaker's grandmother. Thus: the white brothers started the fight on the way home (cowards, but no fools) by shooting an Indian in the back. And Custer was not scalped (true) because the Indians respected him (false) but because he committed suicide, as did most of the other white brothers. That is, he was no trophy since he had not fought.

So, you see, all is not as it seems, and yet the Moment survives, is now, and ever shall be.

In hope,
Mary Ellen

Happy Nirvana Day

Well, I missed Valentine's Day this year by several miles. My brother Bob sent his usual delightful homemade Valentine greeting. I even got another Valentine's Day e-card from Jimmy Feeney, on whom I had a crush in 5th grade. Jimmy is of course married to his lovely and accomplished high school sweetheart, Sandy, and sends these cards out of the goodness of his big heart. Needless to say, Jimmy (and everyone else in my acquaintance) did not get a card from me.

So here's a greeting for February 15, 2007: Nirvana Day. Nirvana Day is the day when Buddhists, especially Tibetan Buddhists, celebrate Buddha's final achievement of complete Nirvana (Paranirvana).

This is a quotation from the Nirvana Sutra:

" ... if you perceive things truly, you will become free from attachment, separated from them, you will indeed be liberated. I have well crossed the watery waste of existence. I abide in bliss, having transcended suffering, therefore I am devoid of unending desire, I have eliminated attachment and gained Liberation [moksha]. There is no old age, sickness or death for me, my life is forever without end. I proceed burning bright like a flame. You must not think that I shall cease to exist. Consider the Tathagata [i.e. Buddha] to be like [Mount] Sumeru: though I shall pass into Nirvana here [i.e. physically die], that supreme bliss is my true nature [dharmata]." (Tibetan version)

I wouldn't know much about this. I am still struggling to BE HERE NOW. There used to be a great shop in Dupont Circle just off P Street near the Georgetown border. It had a t-shirt I coveted:

"Everything I've ever tried to give up has claw marks all over it."