I Am Not A Cook, Either.....

The "local" Trader Joe's--it's still in the city limits, but it takes at least 45 minutes to get there--has labels like these on the ready-made items.  All you have to do is take them home and either eat them after you walk in the door or heat them first. 

Recent Pictures.....(getting sick of war, etc.)

Green leaves!  I love this plant....it's some kind of ornamental, but the green is VERY bright!

 

Soup, soup, beautiful soup....soup of the hour, soup of the day!  (well, yesterday).  Used all the veggies on hand except a big bunch of kale, which is still very fresh.  Love making soup to clear out the fridge.

Can you believe this is the BOY SCOUT monument in DC?  a woman, a young boy, and a naked man??  Much puzzling over this one. 

What Are John McCain, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama Thinking?? They're Not....

Here's Juan Cole today:

Some excerpts:

President Obama’s plan to bomb Syria with cruise missiles will do nothing to hasten the end of the conflict. Instead, it will likely prolong it.
It should be remembered that the US couldn’t end the Iraqi civil war despite having over 100,000 boots on the ground in that country. It is highly unlikely that Washington can end this one from 30,000 feet.

Fed up with the supposed support for U.S. intervention?  Consider this:

By striking Syria, Obama has all but guaranteed that a negotiated solution becomes impossible for years to come. In the absence of serious negotiations, the civil war will continue and likely get worse. The US should give serious thought to what the likely actual (as opposed to ideal) reaction in Syria will be to the landing of a few cruise missiles. The anti-regime elements will celebrate, convinced that it will all be over quickly if the US gets involved. The last thing they will want will be to negotiate with the regime.

 Remember what the Quakers say:  "War is not the answer!"

Yes and yes!

Here's Digby's wonderful view on today's events....

Just a note to say that while I'm glad the president has decided to get congressional authorization --- it is a necessary concession to democratic principles --- it does not change my calculus about the wisdom of bombing Syria. I've thought a lot about this since the war with Iraq, when I made arguments repeatedly about "norms" and just war theory and constitutional requirements and the necessity of UN approval.  And I realized later that it was all a dodge on a certain level.  Yes, international norms are important as are our adherence to treaties and constitutional obligations.  But they don't trump the fact that it is unwise to take certain actions even if all those conditions are met. I do not think it makes sense to bomb Syria on the merits, regardless of who approves it.  I think the US is needlessly running into a buzzsaw and may very likely make things worse. In my view, the correct approach for the US is energetic diplomacy with an eye toward pulling Russia and China away from their positions and getting the other Middle Eastern countries to put pressure on Assad. We have become dependent on the idea that bombing and killing is the only way to affect change despite the evidence that it doesn't work any better than using other approaches. The US has a lot of power and influence aside from an ability to launch cruise missiles.  I think we've gotten tremendously uncreative. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thoughts for the Day...

1.  Went to the MLK anniversary event on the Mall yesterday--no big TV screens available for the crowd in back.  Thanks, Republicans, for cutting funding for anything that benefits the people as opposed to the rich. 

2.  Got this on Twitter from @AJEnglish this a.m.: http://aje.me/1dSI1DR "Obama is closer to Nixon than MLK"?  O has outdone RMN in prosecuting leakers.

3.  War is stupid in addition to all the other evils it is.  

The Chelsea and Larry Show....

Let's leave our distraction du jour, Chelsea Manning, for a moment to live her brave life and read some more about the world financial situation.  I want to find out just WHY OH WHY our preznit is so big on Larry Summers.  Can you figure that one out?  Not me.  It's like we voted for one person and got someone else.  Someone very different.

There's a great post on Greg Palast's VICE that sheds some light on this.  One of my favorite blogs is Juan Cole's Informed Comment, and he leads off today's post by asking "Is the US Government the Managing Committee of the Pirate Banks?"

Pirate Banks?

Managing Committee??

Larry Summers, for pete's sake??

Free Bradley Manning! (And More....) (And More Yet!)

Three years of torture* is enough punishment.  Why are we being so vindictive toward him?  The real scoundrels of the Iraq war are walking around free, smiling, acting like big shots.  Manning has helped us see the real cost of this war.  For once, the NYT and I agree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/opinion/bradley-mannings-sentence-is-excessive.html

Addendum:  http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/36925.html

 Cole's last paragraph:

Manning was tortured for nearly a year*, and that should have been sentence enough. Without him, we might not even know about the Panopticon of total suveillance in which we are living. Manning helped spark a new civil rights movement. He deserves Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize in a way the president does not.  [Italics mine]

*Well, depends on what you consider torture.  

The following paragraph is from The Nation in an article by Chase Madar. 

Update, 8/22/2013: Yesterday, Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Today, Chelsea Elizabeth Manning announced through her lawyer that she will live the rest of her life as a woman, and we have amended our comment from yesterday in conformity with who she is. Chelsea Manning will most likely be imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, which like all other US military prisons and many civilian ones, does not provide hormone therapy or gender transition surgery to transgender prisoners. These policies should be reversed immediately.

 God love ya, Chelsea!  You're one hell of a brave woman, a true American heroine.

Anyone Else Wonder What's Going On??

Juan Cole has a wonderful column on the "10 easy steps" to creating a dictatorship.  I fear we in the US are going down the wrong path with our obsession with "security."  Freedom these days seems to
scare more people than captivity. 

Meanwhile, I learned from Facebook last night that my oldest child and her husband have taken another diving vacation.  Guess where?  Egypt!  Now I know that Sharm El Sheikh (one of their favorite diving venues) is not Cairo, but still....Nothing slows that woman down, however.  She adores diving, is a registered diving instructor in Scotland, and she has loved diving in the Red Sea especially. 

Be safe, dear Peggy and Henry. 

Thanks, Eydie!

Singer Eydie Gorme died two days ago.  Her first big hit, "Blame It on the Bossa Nova" came out in 1963, the year I lost my hearing.  Nice to be able to listen to this on YouTube.  Interesting to me that Gorme grew up speaking Spanish as a Sephardic Jew in the Bronx.  She was a cousin of Neil Sedaka.

   

Curious about what the bossa nova looks like as a dance, I went back to youtube and found this cute bossa nova line dance.  Looks like fun!!

From the Right-Hand Column.....

Earlier this summer I copied and pasted some advice on writing by Sarah Schulman on the "Thoughts for th' Day" on XE's home page.  I love Sarah Schulman's writing, and she is one of the kindest people I know.   She spoke at a conference in Montreal recently about how change is made.  She opened her remarks by saying, "Just change is made on the governmental level in the same way that it is made on a personal level.  Just change is made when all affected parties are taken into account. Injustice is by definition unilateral."  Her talk emphasized communication, among many other things.  Schulman believes in communication, so I want to reemphasize the Thought for th' Day. 

Today's lesson in writing class: Other people are real. Ask people for their experiences, there are always more sides to a story than you realize, don't condemn, be compassionate. If someone makes a mistake, forgive. Understand. Be decent. Don't denounce. Be able to apologize and forgive. When offered a chance to communicate take it. All this is necessary to be a good writer. You don't have the right to punish. Care. Shift your position, listen. Negotiate. Negotiate. Negotiate. Reach out. Talk. Share.
--Sarah Schulman

That's a tall order these days.  Many of us are so ready to condemn (poisonous)* people like Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or that blonde woman....what's her name?....Ann Coulter.  And Republicans in the House of Representatives seem to want to destroy American society, not just wipe out Obamacare or Obama's administration/legacy, period.

I don't know what's going on here, other than great turmoil. Clearly we need to talk.

*oops

WashPost.....

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.  Or, as the WaPo has it today, "After decades of presiding over The Washington Post, the Graham family quietly and quickly maneuvered a deal with Jeff Bezos to give the newspaper what they believe is its best shot at success."  Whew.  I'm so relieved to learn the Graham family was behind this, not Bezos.  THEY offered their paper to HIM.  He didn't go begging to buy it, he just agreed to take it off their hands before they lose their shirts*.  And for billionaire Bezos, isn't $250 million something like chump change?  It'll still take about 60 days for the check to clear the bank, but we're sure it will.

We on the outskirts of the village are happy to learn that "nothing will change."  Katherine Graham's granddaughter (the one who came up with the idea of having important people PAY THEM to eat dinner at their house so as to, um....what?) will still be the publisher, and Charles Krauthammer will still be around on Fridays to give us his right-wing views (notice they announced this on Monday). 

*stuffed

Gracias a la Vida....

This is one of my favorite songs, composed by the Chilean poet and singer, Violetta Parra.  The singer is Mercedes Sosa, a native of Argentina.  Parra's famous song has become one of Sosa's signature offerings.  I think of this song when I am very happy.  I'm usually happy, but sometimes my heart is full.  Today was one of those days.  Welcome home, chica!

English Lyrics for "Gracias a la Vida" ("Thanks to Life")

Posted By: hobie [Send E-Mail]
Date: Sunday, 4-Oct-2009 15:24:36

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyOJ-A5iv5I
Mercedes Sosa - Thanks to life (written by Violeta Parra)

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved. 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
"Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love. 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes... 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very song. 

Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life

Another look at energy.....

My friend Dr, Anna Bucy posted this on Facebook this morning. The author is Aaron Freeman, who is the "funniest black Jewish comedian on NPR".  Clearly he has his serious moments!!

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

-Aaron Freeman.

Had Enough of the Heat?

Time to break out the ND blizzard stories.   This is from the State Historical Society of ND, and it's about Hazel Miner, about whom we all heard when we were school kids. 

One of North Dakota’s heroes is a young girl named Hazel Miner who died in a blizzard March 16, 1920.
Hazel, the 16 year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Miner, had gone to school with her younger brother Emmet (11) and sister, Myrdith (8) on Monday March 15. They drove a horse-drawn sleigh from their farmhouse 2 ½ miles north of the rural school. In the afternoon a blizzard came up and the children’s father rode his horse to the school to bring the children home.
Mr. Miner hitched the sleigh horse and then went to get his saddle horse from the school barn. In the meantime, the sleigh horse started out of the school yard and took what the children thought was the road home. Mr. Miner could not find them in the blizzard and they could not hear him call above the wind.
Instead of heading north to their home, they headed east. Mr. Miner went home and with his wife went back out to look for the children. The sleigh crossed the road and came to the gate of a farmyard which they could not enter because of a big drift. They drove a few yards further, and then the sleigh tipped over into a ravine. Though a haystack and the farmhouse were nearby, they could not see their way to shelter.
After the sleigh tipped, Hazel tried to keep the wind off the children by holding the sleigh blankets for shelter, but the wind kept blowing the blankets down. Finally, she pulled the blankets over the smaller children and lay down on top of the blanket to keep it in place and to keep the younger children warm. Hazel talked to Emmet and Myrdith through the night and told them to keep moving their feet. She punched them to keep them awake and kicked off the snow that was seeping in under the blankets.
Sometime during the night, Hazel died. When a search party found the sleigh the next morning, Emmet and Myrdith were still alive. Hazel’s love, clear thinking, and brave actions saved her brother’s and sister’s lives.
Hazel Miner’s courage was honored with a statue that stands in front of the Oliver County courthouse. The statue was commissioned by former Governor L. B. Hanna in 1936.

Bison Restoring Prairie

This is good news!!  I'm remembering the bison at the Dakota Zoo--just across the field from our house in Bismarck.  They were huge beasts and incredibly strong.  The zoo keepers would give them old tractor tires--weighing 130-140 lbs each--to play with, and they'd toss them in the air with their horns and spin them around like the flimsiest hula hoops ever made. 

http://blog.nwf.org/2013/07/yellowstone-bison-revitalize-prairie-on-fort-peck-reservation-in-one-year/?s_email_id=20130714_MEM_ENG_WLO_July_Edition|SLPMem

Excellent Post from Juan Cole on UK's Coverage of NSA, Snowden

I keep visiting Juan Cole's Informed Comment these days for the USA's coverage of the NSA vs. Snowden.   Coles says the UK's Channel 4's reporting is unmatched by any USA "news."

They report, in full, and critically. I think aside from Chris Hayes on NBC.com and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! it would be impossible to get this quality of reporting on this issue on any US outlet. The fusion of Corporate News and the US Government (with its Deep State) is so complete that questioning the Beltway Bandits is out of the question any more.

 While the USA does its best to throw Snowden and Manning into prison and deny them asylum off our shores, people are waking up. Thanks, Dr. Coles!

Making a painting

A friend commissioned a painting--by me--a while back.  My first commission!  And the idea of that has pretty much stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, what if it's no good at all?

And here's how it's going:  Every time I show it to someone, they have all these wonderful SUGGESTIONS for making it better.  If I don't continue to work on it, though, that accomplishes two things:  1) it shuts them up good, and 2) it stops me from actually doing this. 

I've started, then erased/wiped off the paint three times.  That's ok....I've done that before on other paintings. But it certainly slows down the process.  I've pondered using encaustic (hot wax and color),
but that's scary--comes with the potential for burning down my condo.

And it's not advice, per se.   My most recent painting instructor used to love to walk up to a painting while I was working on it, pick up a brush, and daub away, always to good effect.  (I've thought of calling her to see if she wants to give me a coaching session or two, but she, one of the best deaf painters ever, is fed up with painting.  She wants to write, and she's also avoiding exposure to all the toxic chemicals involved lest she contract another case of cancer.  (She cured herself of the cancer by eliminating everything from her diet that could bollix her health:  no cooking, no carbs, no sugar.  She could be my role model, if I were a person who could profit from good example.)

Anyway, here's the picture (a photograph taken by my benefactor in Ecuador).  I love it, but I've discovered there's no natural light save for what's reflected in a few tiles in the corner and in the planters.  And it intrigues me that this darkness is her favorite aspect of the photo, especially 

  
under the arches.  Fascinating.  I especially love the two red chairs, and I'm wondering if this relates to the fact that she married her best friend, another woman.  And so on.....

Wish me luck.

My Patron Saints.....

An article by Gretchen Rubin on Positively Positive today talks about our patron saints.  Rubin lists six of her patron saints, including Julia Child, Winston Churchill, and Virginia Woolf.  I'll have to think about this before I can make any list.  But one of the questions Rubin asks to help us get started is "What did I do for fun when I was ten years old?"

My parents bought our lake cottage when I was ten, and the place transformed my inner life.  I loved wading in the water, netting baby bullheads with an old lace curtain, feeding the chipmunks out of my hand,  building a raft, rowing our old boat all over the lake and up & down the river, popping corn in the fireplace, playing with the neighbor kids who were my age and whose house had a huge wraparound porch with sofas and huge stacks of comic books for rainy days.  And the trees.  Oh, my god, the trees!  Oak and paper birch and maple and basswood and cottonwood!  When the wind blew, the leaves of the tall, tall cottonwoods made a glorious rustling sound.  The Sioux called the cottonwood the "singing tree."  They did sing!  And the song went right into my heart.

So there's my clue:  My patron saints are trees, and I've already named them:  Oak, Paper Birch, Maple, Basswood, and Cottonwood.  I need one more for six.  There are several here in this area that I adore:  Atlas Cedar and River Birch and that funny little Dogwood by my porch.  And I can't forget the pine trees:  White, Scotch, Norway.....I'm going to go out and find each of these trees and take a photo of it.

 Ha.  This is a Sycamore, another of my favorite trees.  No Atlas Cedars or River Birch yesterday.  Having a bad tooth, so that cut down on my plans.

being funny

Almost everyone who meets me says I am funny--even very funny.  I think it was my way of getting positive attention from my family, who otherwise thinks of me less positively.  I am not always funny, though.  My usual mode is grouchy and serious.  What I wanted/want to be is beloved, but that's a rare event.  oh, well.

Wendy Davis!! And Why I Support Planned Parenthood

Who'd a thunk one blonde Texas woman could lead the charge and take down the Texas Legislature?

Populist Feminist Revolt and Heroic Filibuster Defeat Extremist Anti-Abortion Bill in Texas

Please note the last paragraphs of this article by Mark Karlin, editor of Buzz Flash at Truthout:

Personally, I want to dedicate the Texas triumph to the late Molly Ivins, a personal idol of mine.  Over 12 years, I have interviewed just about every prominent progressive figure, nearly one a week, but nothing thrilled me like talking over the phone with Ivins.
In our long 2003 interview (read here), Ivins said of social conservatives in legislatures and Congress, "I think that there comes a point where they're ramming something down your throat that's just flat wrong and unfair; you just can't take it anymore."
Molly, because of the courage of Wendy Davis and the civic activism of thousands of pro-choice Texans and Americans, this victory over the forces of darkness is in your memory.
(Molly Ivins succumbed to cancer in 2007 at the age of 62.)

Here's Joan Walsh in Salon on Wendy Davis, Feminist Superhero 

"...Ann Richards Is Smiling."

Not to forget Katha Pollitt at The Nation, either!  

Welcome to....

First, please welcome back Kalyn's Kitchen!  Don't know how that lovely blog slipped away from my list of BLOGS I LOVE, but she's back...with "Happy Cooking and Eating--Real Food, Real Cooking, Real Results!"  Good stuff!!

And welcome to Gaming Your Finances!  I saw this on Twitter this morning in a comment on a Mother Jones article about Trader Joe's.  The comment said something about a monthly challenge: setting your food budget at $25 a week!  and the kind twitterperson added a link to this site.  I must say the idea is a little better than the blog post, but there also were LINKS in that, one of which had a recipe for PB & J oatmeal, which inspired a comment by Kalyn (yes, it WAS her!).  She was saying "I love peanut butter and oatmeal" etc.  Well, there could be worse things than peanut butter & jelly oatmeal, but I'm verra curious!!  Maybe I can eat this for supper instead of hot dogs.  (Please don't mind me.  I am a true believer in eating healthy, but I make exception for hot dogs--the worst of the worst (wurst??).  Where else can you, when you are STARVING, get an approximation of a meal for $2 in this town except from a hot dog cart?  And if I walk another half block, it'll be $1.75!!

And so on....

Obama Betraying US on Syria?

I read Andrew Sullivan's rant against Obama, especially Bill Clinton's scolding Mr. Obama, last night and today to a friend, and she said, "Well, what do we know for sure?"  So I checked one of my best-liked sources, Juan Cole, and he had this (and much more--please click his name) to say:

Former president Bill Clinton criticized President Obama on Thursday for his inaction in regard to Syria. This step seems extraordinary and surely has something to do with positioning Hillary Clinton to run as a more hawkish New Democrat against anyone in the Obama circle in 2016. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton appears to have pushed for arming the Syrian rebels, but could not get Obama’s backing for the move. Bill Clinton’s criticism is extremely unfair, since there are many bad situations in the world in which the US cannot fruitfully intervene, and Clinton knows this sad truth all too well.

Get a Load of This!!

Thanks to Cop Car, who lists her sources, including Time Goes By.



This woman, Johanna Quass, is 10 years OLDER than I am.  Could I catch up?  Hardly.  What she has is not only skill but also many years of gymnastic practice.  I'm just enjoying her apparent ease and beauty!  Way to go, Ms. Quass!

The voice of Virginia Woolf

Open Culture has the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf speaking. Her talk, "Craftsmanship," was part of a 1937 BBC broadcast.  Her speech is gorgeous.  The captions, should you choose to--or can--activate them, are absolutely accurate.  She pronounces every letter beautifully! 

These are good....

Ole Phat Stu posts Marketing-Speak!...
Thanks, Stu...(and Brian).  I especially like "maintenance free"  :)

What the Marketing people write - versus what they truly mean . . .
 
NEW - Finally sold all of the old model & lost the old blueprints :-(
ALL NEW - Parts are not interchangeable with previous design.
EXCLUSIVE - Imported product. Instruction manual in Chinese.
UNMATCHED - Almost as good as the competition.
FOOLPROOF OPERATION - No provision for adjustments.
ADVANCED DESIGN - The advertising agency doesn’t understand it.
IT’S HERE AT LAST - Rush job. Nobody knew it was coming.
FIELD TESTED - Manufacturer lacks test equipment.
HIGH ACCURACY - All parts fit.
FUTURISTIC - No conceivable reason for it to look the way it does.
REDESIGNED - Previous flaws fixed - we hope.
DIRECT SALES ONLY - Manufacturer had a big argument with distributor.
YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT - We finally got one to work.
BREAKTHROUGH - We finally figured out a use for it.
MAINTENANCE FREE - Impossible to fix.
MEETS ALL STANDARDS - Ours, not yours.
SOLID-STATE - Heavy as hell.
HIGH RELIABILITY - We made it work long enough to ship it.
NON-REFUNDABLE - We couldn’t make it work long enough to ship it.
INTUITIVE USER INTERFACE - Does not come with a manual.
CHEAP - Shoddy.

Thanks to Brian for the heads-up on this :-)

Juan Cole Does It Again....

In this morning's post on Informed Comment, Juan Cole really parses 2nd Amendment fundamentalists.  They're ok with "hunting our school children like animals," but heaven help anyone who leaks a government "secret."  We the people can't have any secrets from the government, though.
We've turned another corner on the path to perdition!

Iowa Made Network!!

My former coworker Craig Hlas (actually, I hired him 25 years ago for his great sense of humor) has come up with a network for promoting goods produced in his home state of Iowa.  To quote:

We're dedicated to promoting products made or grown in Iowa by producers, entrepreneurs, and artisans. We want to connect small and midsize Iowa businesses with customers -- and offer a directory for companies devoted to quality and integrity.

The Iowa Made Network's website lists 20 categories of items from Art to Furniture to Jewelry to Wine.  This being Iowa, the largest category is Food (n.f.s.) with 543 purveyors, but the next largest is Art with 129 artists.  Candy/Snacks (46 purveyors) merits its own category. There is even a category for Horses: "Uncle Slim's Pony Farm," whose owners have been raising Shetland ponies for 25 years.

This is an idea whose time has come, I think.  Every region of the U.S. has lost manufacturing (even the writing of local news) to China and other countries.  We don't all live in Iowa, but what's to prevent other states or even cities from rounding up their entrepreneurs and promoting them?  

Great TED talk on connection and vulnerability.....

Juan Cole Tells It Like It Is!!

Here's the headline for Juan Cole's blogpost today:  

Dear Oklahoma: We Feel for you, we love you, but do us some favors

The salient points: 

The immense, mindless violence of a tornado hitting a small Oklahoma town, turning houses into splinters and crushing people under rubble, including children, has rightfully dominated the American airwaves for the past few days. Oklahoma is a great state, a state with profound history, a place of big plans where Native Americans play an outsized role in politics and the economy and hardworking descendants of cowboys and homesteaders build admirable lives in its cities and small towns.

Oklahoma voters need to get past the pathos, however, to reconsider the politicians they keep electing to office, who adopt policies that harm Oklahomans and directly contribute to such tragedies. [Emphasis XE's]  Oklahoma has among the more corrupt and more despicable politics in the country, obsessed with hating gays and local Muslims (all three of them), with stingy and mean-spirited government, with controlling women, and with dirty oil and gas that is destroying our environment.

The sequestration, which your GOP politicians support, will cut funding for the National Weather Service, which performs little duties like… warning about tornadoes. Is that really what you want? If not, tell them so, and at the next polls, throw the bums out.

The hatred of government regulation (i.e. of good government) by Oklahoma’s political class impedes regulations like ensuring that there are shelters in all public schools. All they’d have to do is not give Big Oil $200 million in tax breaks a year, and they’d have the money to implement it.

Oklahoma’s senators, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, voted against relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York. You put them in office. They don’t care about people like you, living through the aftermath of a natural disaster. You should remember their position when they run for reelection.

Inhofe’s special pleading that Oklahoma’s disaster is ‘not like Sandy’ strikes the rest of the country as disgusting. This man is your public face, Oklahoma. Do you really want him there? You do understand that the rest of us have to support Federal relief aid for you in order for you to get it. We won’t hold you hostage to Inhofe’s small-mindedness, but we don’t appreciate your voting for him when you want our help.

And here’s the biggy. The tornado that so harmed you may not have been related to global warming. But it is indisputable that climate change will produce massive storms that will hit the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. By pumping out gas and oil you are dooming other small towns and big cities along the coasts to future destruction and loss of life, including childrens’ lives, of the sort you just suffered, except on a much bigger scale. You are not in any doubt that the climate can be dangerous.

Please, please rethink your energy policies and turn in a big way to wind and solar (you have a lot of both) as quickly as possible. You’ve recently made a start with wind energy, but it is frankly a drop in the bucket compared with what you could do — indeed, you’re the state with perhaps the biggest wind power potential in the whole country. You need to build out your grid to supply the rest of us, and you need to put in turbines everywhere they make sense.

Your Senator Inhofe, in the back pocket of Big Oil, denies all this, and makes your state look buffoonish to the rest of the world.  [Emphasis XE's]

Disasters require policy responses, to forestall them and to deal with the aftermath of the ones that can’t be prevented. Wise policy responses are crafted by caring, educated, wise politicians. You don’t seem to have many of those, and you need to pay more attention when you go to the ballot box. Otherwise, you are harming yourselves and the rest of us.

 [Here's the link to the whole thing if you haven't gone there yet:  http://www.juancole.com/2013/05/oklahoma-love-favors.html]

XE thanks Juan Cole for his trenchant prose on this topic.  She is disgusted with the seeming efforts to equate the destruction of the Oklahoma suburb of Moore by tornado with 9/11. (She remembers hearing about the ghost town of St. Mary's, Iowa, 1849-1859, which never made it onto the maps due to the same Bermuda Triangle of geography, wind, and destruction.  The intersection of Highway 1 and a county road 2 miles south of Mt. Vernon, Iowa, had been endowed with a post office, even.  But frequent tornadoes blew it all away. In XE's day, there was a farm with a famous herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle on that spot, and their prize bull, "Major Revolution," used to scare the crap out of her whenever she had to walk the two miles into town to work. He would paw and snort (cartoonists have captured the hot breath steaming out of a bull's two big nostrils). And, when the winds came, the cattle pens collapsed and the black cattle wandered out onto the highway, where their black bulk posed a hazard to trucks and cars driving in the dark.

So, weather is weather, Oklahomans....it's not a terrorist attack.  And please reconsider your votes the next time Inhofe and Coburn want to run for office again.

The Secret Garden.....

OK...yesterday was planting time on my porch.  So I stuck in some flat-leafed parsley, rosemary, basil, and mint.  And just by coincidence, my dogwood tree blossomed!  Maybe it's because it was so hot, but the flowers popped out.  They were greenish before and didn't look too much different from the leaves, but after one day of high heat, they've turned lovely creamy yellow.  Welcome back!!

Boating on the River

This peaceful scene shows part of the campus of the National Defense University (Home of the National War College) in southwest DC.  It's on the shore of the Potomac River's Washington Channel that separates Haines Point from the mainland.  It's a lovely area, and one you can't see well unless you're looking from  the water.  You certainly can't see the fronts of all the lovely old buildings facing the river.  Like Mt. Vernon, almost all of these places were built so that people could sit out on the front porch and catch the breezes off the river.  

Yesterday a bunch of us celebrated our friend Shirley's birthday by taking a boat tour around the island.  It was peaceful and refreshing.  And after lunch, the murky sky promising afternoon thunderstorms had dissolved into these glorious clouds & blue sky.  Happy birthday, Shirley! 

2013 Embassy Tour

• Today began the annual Embassy Tour in DC, when most of the foreign countries' embassies open their doors to visitors.

  
  

  Today was the Saudi Arabian, Thai, and Ukrainian. I got choked up in the Saudi embassy by the great food (especially the chicken & rice Al Khabsa), amazing photos of camels, Mecca), the tented seating areas with their glorious Oriental carpets, and the flowing robes for both men, women, & children.
  
  The Thai embassy had fabulous fruit & vegetable sculptures, exquisite musical performances on the Khim (hammered dulcimer) and ranket ekh (like a xylophone), massages, and fabulous food & drink. I had six sips of Thai iced coffee, and I'm STILL wide awake!

  
  

  I got choked up because I grew up on the flat, virtually treeless tundra in ND surrounded by rather chilly, blonde Lutherans, and all the while there were places like Saudi Arabia with dark-haired, dark-eyed, gracious people, palm trees, camels, amazing hills/mountains, and food like delectable dates growing on trees!. And the carpets! And the designs they painted on their hands! Unimaginable

  
  

  Lastly, we found the Ukrainian embassy on M Street, between Dean & DeLuca & the Key Bridge. I admired this one man's shirt, and he told me his mother had hand-embroidered it. Then I told him I used to live 1/2 a block from the Ukrainian Orthodox church in NE Minneapolis, and he LIT UP! "My grandfather used to be the pastor there!" he said. Then I told him how our kids' schoolmates were often first-generation kids from the Ukraine--Luba Smolka, Kalina Kramarchek--and he just beamed. "I KNOW the Smolka family," he said, and his grandfather raved about them as pillars of the church. Turns out he was born in Baltimore, as was my friend Cathy, (partner in crime mentioned earlier). Talk about a small world! And we watched a demonstration of a woman making pysanky (Ukrainian Easter Eggs). 

  
  

  The Ukrainian guy in the embroidered shirt from Baltimore used to visit his grandparents in Minneapolis--doubtless while we were living half a block away from the big, beautiful new church! I made a mistake and called it "St. Casimir's," but he reminded me that it was St. Constantine's. St. Casimir's was a Polish uniate church two blocks eat of St. Connie's. There were more than half a dozen Catholic churches of all kinds within three blocks of our house in any direction in NE Mpls, and the racket on Sunday a.m., when they all started ringing their bells made sleeping in on Sundays impossible.
• Can't remember when we've had more fun at exhibitions in DC! Next week: the European embassies: France, Germany, Italy, et al.....!!  Can't wait!

  
  

  NB:  Pictures to follow when I can figure out how to get them off my Blackberry.
  ....
  NB2:  Groan....How can Blackberry be so effing STUBBORN??? Still haven't got the photos pried out of its grip!  

QQ for the D.N.: A MISTAKE in the 2011 Rand-McNally Atlas???

Dear Dear Niece:

Since you are a big librarian and all, I'm wondering if it's just my rheumy eyes, or whether there actually is NO Hodgkins, IL showing in the 2011 Rand-McNally Atlas.  It's supposed to be in section J-7, according to the index in the back, but no way does it show up on the map on p. 32, which shows the whole state of IL.  

Ah!  Once blind but now I see!  It's on p. 34 that it's in section J-7.  Well, Hodgkins was only 2014 residents back in 2011, so R-McN had to economize somehow.  I get it!

Don't mind me....I'm just trying to track my replacement cell phone, the shipment of which has begun.

Gotta go meditate and then head out for the tour of the embassies today!  Have seen it advertised often (yearly) but have never gone before.  Hope I can find Dupont Circle! (Heh....)  Hope it's nice in your town today!  xoxo

Coffee Monster

About a month ago, I was walking from Union Station to Eastern Market to meet some friends for coffee, and I passed a freebie sitting on the sidewalk with a note: "FREE!  IT WORKS!"  Well, this was an espresso machine--Cafe Roma by Breville.  I thought one of my friends might like this, as she doesn't have an espresso machine or a coffee maker, either.  So I picked it up and lugged it along.  After about 3 blocks (with 10 more to go), it was feeling very heavy, so I began asking people I met if they wanted a free espresso machine.  Ha.  No, they didn't.  And my friends didn't want it, either.  Then followed the usual circus in which one friend offered to put it in her car so I wouldn't have to carry it home, then two items got lost in her car, then found, then delivered.

So.....fast forward to this morning when I decided to see if it would make a better cup of espresso than my little stovetop pot.  I had to look up the manual online to see how to proceed, but I managed to get all the pieces together, loaded the little 2-cup filter with my favorite (cheap, tasty) Cafe Bustelo, added cold filtered water to the tank, plugged it in, and turned it on. It makes a buzzing noise--BZZZZZZT!--which is weird, but soon I had a nice big cup of espresso!

Results:

The machine espresso has CREMA--unlike the stovetop.
The machine version tastes a little better--not so rough.
BUT the stovetop version is HOTTER--and the heat stays longer.

Well.  Do I need another machine in my kitchen?  No room, but I did like the taste.  There's also the possibility of making designs in the crema, though I haven't figured that out yet.

Bon voyage, mes amis!!

Doesn't this look like a wonderful rig? (The one in front, not the semi in back....) My friends are off to cross the country and stop at various places of interest along the way. May they have a fabulous time and return refreshed and happy!

Happy Earth Day! Close Your Local Coal Plant!

(Thanks to Informed Comment by Juan Cole.  Here's a quote from this post for those whose
compu-traptions (i.e., laptops, desktops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) can't do videos :

The single most important thing you can do for the earth is call your utility company and pressure them not to use coal, and lobby your city to develop its own solar installations, and put solar panels on your roof.

Close all the 600 coal plants in the United States and you’d dramatically reduce our 500 billion metric tons a year of CO2 emissions. (The supposed good news that our emissions have fallen from 6 to 5 billion metric tons annually is laughable, since 3, 4, or 5 billion tons a year will still radically alter the earth. We need to get it down to sustainable levels and hydrocarbons like natural gas cannot do that!)

Environmentalists should think strategically. As bad as a tar sands pipeline might be, coal plants are far, far worse. We should put all our eggs in one basket and target coal for extinction within a decade.

The solar industry already employs more workers than are in the coal mines.

Every day a trainload of coal goes through my neighborhood on its way to the power plant that heats the US Capitol bldgs.  Our b'loved Congresscritters like their comforts.

Earth Day/Hemp Day, Legalizing Marijuana for Mother Earth

Earth Day/Hemp Day, Legalizing Marijuana for Mother Earth

Today is 4/20 or Hemp Day, and this post from Bruce Margolin, a prominent Democrat and marijuana attorney who ran for Congress from California's Disttrict 33 last year (and lost to Rep. Harry Waxman, D.) has much information about hemp.  If given a chance and planted by farmers, hemp may save Mother Earth on many counts.

Here are some of Margolin's essay's salient points:

Some Major Environmental Benefits of Growing Hemp:

• Fast and robust growth: Hemp grows extremely fast and can be grown in any climate, in any agronomic system

• No herbicides/pesticides required: Hemp can be grown with no (or little) herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, or other biocides.

• Suppresses weeds: Hemp is a natural weed suppressor due to the fast growth of the canopy. Actually, hemp is a weed. Because it grows so fast and densely, it blocks out sunlight to other weeds that are trying to grow.

• Improves soil structure: Due to it’s long roots, hemp replenishes soil with nutrients and nitrogen and helps control erosion of topsoil. Also, once harvested, any residue can act as an eco-friendly manure.

• Hemp produces lots of oxygen: Hemp produces the same amount of oxygen while it’s growing that it would use in carbon dioxide if burned as a fuel. Also, due to it’s leaf/root ratio (this can often be 10% roots vs 30% leaves), hemp can produce between 20% – 40% more oxygen than will be polluted.

• Cleans up pollution: Hemp can actually clean up toxins from the ground. This process is called phytoremediation. A good example of this is when hemp was used to help clean up the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site to remove radioactive elements from the ground.

• Hemp can be used to minimize deforestation.

• Hemp can produce paper and home building supplies.

• Hemp can reduce global warming by substituting for both diesel and petroleum.

Obama Joins the Club

Obama Joins the Club  (click this to read William Rivers Pitt's brilliant column in today's Truthout).

Thanks, Mr. Preznit!  Thanks one heck of a lot--for nothing.  How did you trick us into voting for you?  Was it your beautiful, brilliant wife and two cute daughters and the White House garden?  Was it your PROMISES, which we now know were worth spit?  Your oratory, which compared with GWB's, dazzled us into thinking you were smart and cared about us?

You can go to you-know-where, and please don't come back any time soon.  Stay out of the mess you've created until we have a chance to fix it and restore the honor of the Democratic Party.

Thoughts for the Day!

I've always loved Rob Brezhny's "Free Will Astrology," still available in the Village Voice and other enjoyable publications.  Here's what he says today for my moon sign:

Here are three of our deepest spiritual aspirations, which we invite you to steal for your own use: 1. to develop the capacity to thrive in the midst of raging contradictions; 2. to be discerning as we protect ourselves from people's flaws while at the same time being generous as we celebrate their beauty; 3. to refrain from dividing the world into two groups, those who help and agree with us and those who don't. 
* 
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. 

Two More Pix of Jack!!

Here's two more photos of our newest golden boy! One by himself in his Swee'pea garb and one with his mom, Laura.  Lookit that spikey little hair!  Mom looks exceptionally wonderful, considering she's not had any sleep for 3 nights!  Those Scottish women are strong!!

4th Generation, continued....Here's Jack!

Welcome, wee Jack!  We're all very relieved and thrilled that your mom got through two+ days of labor and pronounced you "perfect."  Some of us think you've got a perfect name for a tough little lad, too.   Congratulations Laura & Sean!  Wow.  The fambly's growing!  Lennox last month, and now Jack.

There's a pink silk dress in the archives that I was saving for a great-granddaughter, but you can't have it. And I doubt, in their exhausted state, that your parents or your aunt & uncle in Chicago will be rushing to fill the gap any time soon (if ever).  

Please welcome Sheepy Lady!

The cheerful woman behind the blog Sheepy Lady works harder than many people.  She not only has four kids and a farm with sheep and a few horses, she also teaches school, works at Home Depot part-time, and does felting.  Anyway, there's a link to her blog in "Blogs I Love" that runs down the right side of this page.  We both participate in Daily Challenge, which is this wacky health website.  We've made several Daily Challenge pacts together, more than half of which we've completed!  XE welcomes her happy presence.  One of my granddaughters, Annie, enjoyed tending a lamb at a summer camp to which her parents sent her several years ago.  She was not enthusiastic about the whole thing at first, but the lamb won her over and bleated piteously when Annie had to leave at camp's end.  I was fascinated by all the sheep in Scotland, too--they even browsed on the roadsides in some places.  And Peggy's friend Et (now deceased, R.I.P.) showed us their newborn lamb triplets!  (Photo coming if I can get my new scanner to scan!)

Let's us get rid of coal, too!

Train tracks run beside the metro tracks at the end of our parking area, and pretty soon this morning, I'll hear a long freight train rumble past.  The cars will be loaded with COAL, and they'll be on their way to the power plant that heats the buildings of the U.S. Congress.  Imagine trying to get Congress to get rid of coal power!  Mentally, they're still using candles & kerosene lanterns to illuminate their proceedings.  (Thanks to Juan Cole for this and related information today.)

It's Arkansas now, but it could be the rest of us....

This post was on Cinderellen's Corner this morning.  She lives on the Cape and is keeping track of this spill.

Yay, Vets!!

Juan Cole has this video clip on his blog today.  There were NO WMDs, and the Iraqis had their country smashed for no reason other than El Busho & Co's desire to start a war and get more oil.  These good-hearted vets show the best of America.

GREAT List of Cabinet Appointments??

Thanks to Julianna Forlano of AbsurdityToday.com!!

Meanwhile.....

Water also is a source of contention between Israel & Palestine.  Israel does not hold any moral high ground in this, as indicated in this video clip posted today in Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment.  

Papa Francisco

"On March 15, the NYTimes had this wonderful article:  "God Is an Argentine."  Why not?

The new pope seems to be drenched in the milk of human kindness, save for his early training
and practice.  It does make me nervous when I see the video clips of him kissing all those little babies, though.  I picture the little runny noses, and I hope Papa Francisco does not catch a cold!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/opinion/god-is-an-argentine.html?smid=pl-share

Click that 'hood!

How well do you know Washington DC's neighborhoods?  Play this game and see....

http://click-that-hood.com/?city=washington

Buon Pranza!

Guess who's coming to lunch at the Vatican today??   President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner!  She's been the president of Argentina since 2007, when her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, died.  She was reelected in 2011.  She has had her battles with the Pope when he was cardinal of Buenos Aires (she said his position on same-sex marriage was "medieval"), and she lectured France's Sarkozy when he complained about her position toward the euro. She said she doubted he had one cent of Argentine pesos in his banks.  Wouldn't you love to be a mouse in the corner today when she meets the new Pope Francis??  Maybe she'll twitter about it? (CFKArgentina)

Some Pope! The Cardinals Have Outdone Themselves.

Since when is active participation in a "dirty war" a qualification for the "spiritual" leader of the RCC?

First week!!

Isn't that a sweet, peaceful, interested little fellow??  He's enjoying his world!!  That must be dad holding him--notice the tattoo.....

Mom has been doing a fabulous job for all those long months (well, they're more into weeks now, but e'en so, they add up)!  Now that he's here, she's measuring intake & output, even.  A true nurse!

4th generation!

He's here....but I can't get the photos downloaded....

LOVELY baby!  Looks just like his da!  :)

Lennox David Denson
b. March 6, 2013
6 lbs 4 oz.
19 inches

a

Meanwhile.....here's a nice little graph!

Great-grandson on the way!!

Beautiful Medea, my oldest grandson Ian's wife, entered the hospital this afternoon for labor and delivery of their first child.  They already know he's a boy, and they've already named him Lennox, a proud Scottish name.  He just has to show up is all.  Lennox is not due for another 8 days or so, but Medea's amniotic fluid is low, thanks to her having had the flu last week, so out he comes.  He's not in any distress, last I heard, but they are all being very cautious.  Cathy's niece Suzanne (Zannie) is a nurse-midwife, and she says it's common to induce labor when the fluid is low.  Ian,  Medea, and Penny, Medea's mom, who is a P.A., all discussed this last night, and they decided to take it one step at a time.  Since the fluid was even lower this morning than it was yesterday, they asked the doctor to induce labor.  If at any point there's a need to speed things up, they have asked for a c-section.

That's as much as I know now.  Holding everyone in the light!!!

Poem of the week

Thanks for this to panhala.net--and to Mary Oliver most of all.

http://www.panhala.net/archive/Mockingbirds.html

And then there's this, from today's Along the Way:

http://joared-along.blogspot.com/2013/03/squirrely-avocado-bird-tale.html

and thanks to Joared, too, this, which played on my dad's little radio in the early 1950s:

Hazards of Old Age or just Mercury Going Retrograde??

I've crossed another milestone on my path to senescence.  Last night I went to bed to read, and I was still wearing my earrings.  These silver earrings are from Scottsdale, and I love them.  Each one has a shamanic hand imprinted on it.  When I'm wearing both earrings, I tell myself the hands ward off evil spirits.

So there I was in bed, reading Book #1 of Harry Potter, and I felt one earring fall off.  I reached up, and sure enough, the right earring was lying on my shoulder.  The back, however, was gone from behind my ear.  It couldn't have gone far, right?  I'm checking the bedding, no back, and then I checked through the various layers of items I wear to bed in lieu of a pajama top:  tshirt, cashmere sweater, hooded sweatshirt--and I saw the back under my sweatshirt, but in my excitement, I bumped it, and it disappeared again.

I got up, put the backless earring in a safe place, shook out my sweatshirt, and searched through the blankets a little more with no results.  So I went back to bed, finished last Sunday's NYT Xword puzzle, and fell asleep.  This morning when I woke up, I could not find the backless earring!

Please be assured that I do not lose my earrings often.  In fact, I can't remember the last pair of which one went missing.  It was years ago, back in my working days when I wore earrings daily in an effort to be, as Emma Donoghue's character in Landing" said, "tediously well groomed."  When I retired, I installed a set of pearl earrings and have pretty much left them in until last month, when I got my hair cut very short.  In the past, store clerks here have tended to call me "sir," even with the pearl earrings and a modish (often curled) bob.  So now I've taken to wearing bigger earrings and even a bit of makeup to counteract the skinhead look.  Now they don't say anything.  Good.

Anyway, I have never before lost a whole earring while I was in bed reading.  But the lost is found.  I'm reminded that today is when Mercury turns retrograde until March 17, and during that time, the best laid plans of mice & men gang aft agley.  It'll all straighten out next month, though.  Maybe this is the universe reminding me to just take a deep breath and not panic, no matter what happens with the sequester, et al.  The Pope, too.  This wasn't a good for him to retire--schedules can go awry--but maybe it was best he did it before the planet began its retrograde pattern.

Downton Abbey, um......

Not Matthew!!!???  So freakin sad.

Now what?  Mary... and Branson??  She can pick up where her late husband left off on running the estate, and the two little cousins can be like siblings.

Thomas and Mr. Carson???  Don't forget....the more homophobic they are, the more likely they are to be homo!!

Pope Quits!!

First time a pope has resigned in 599 years!  The Pope announced his resignation yesterday.  Better folks than I have commented on this event, so here are some pertinent links:

First, Juan Cole in Informed Comment talks about the possibility of Catholics and Muslims creating greater cooperation once Benedict 16 is gone.  One the commenters to Cole's wonderful post dissents a bit and says,

Yes, it would be better if the future pope is open to all religions and works toward a better understanding between different religions, of course, but I don’t hold my breath.

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now had a wonderful interview with Barbara Blaine, president and founder of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, and Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice group.  You may recall the Pope coming down hard on the American nuns in Network, and the resulting "Nuns on the Bus!" tour.  The link includes the rush transcript.

Then there is Ole Phat Stu, who is hardly a champion of things papal.   I want to borrow this photo, which has run a couple of times in his column recently.....but OPS is doubtless dining out on his attitude.  Take your time, Stu....It's never a good idea to wolf down German food.