Do yourself a favor....

read THIS!!

Gail Collins hit one out of the park today, and the comments, minus the usual nastiness from the right wingers, are wonderful.  What a great read to get us on our way today.....

HE DID IT!!!!

Master Sean Denson is now the proud owner of a degree (Hons) in Computer Science from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. Need I tell you that he has worked LONG and HARD for this, and at long last, it's in his hands!!! Congratulations, Sean!!! Nobody deserves it more than you. NOW I hope you and Laura will tie the knot!!!

(Note the classic academic's "What's that smell?" pose)

New Meme: Technology during Your Life Span at 10-year Intervals....

A Little Red Hen stopped by to see her cousin, Hen Pink, and commented about "thinking 10 years ahead at our age."  There are many ways to consider what one's life will be like ten years from now.  But that got me thinking about what life has been like in the past--especially vis-a-vis technology. My grandmother died at the turn of the previous century--1900. She was 43 years old and never saw a motor car or an airplane (I want to spell it aeroplane...ha) or a radio or a telephone or electricity or indoor plumbing (although in Germany, the family lived ABOVE the cows, so the cows, at least, could tinkle in the house). Not to mention TV, computers, WIFI, cell phones, video cams--you name it. It all came after she died.

So...anyway, here's technology in 10-year intervals as I experienced it over my life span PLUS one heretofore unknown bit of technology I predict will be part of everyday life 10 years in the future!

1st 10 years: automatic transition in cars or portable radio--meaning you could lift it off the ground.

2nd 10 years: television!  (yeah....i was a junior in high school when TV arrived in the Dwyer home in Fargo)

3rd 10 years: stereo or LP records or color TV

4th 10 years: computers! The computers at work were room-sized. My first computer-related job was proofreading data cards before they were inserted into the computer to be tallied.

5th 10 years: personal computers 

6th 10 years: cell phones or portable video cameras or lasers.

7th 10 years: cochlear implant or Kindle or Nook or iPad

8th 10 years (THE PREDICTION): houses and cars go solar--all of them--or gene repair (curing illnesses by tinkering with or replacing genes)

I'm leaving out a lot of things like automatic coffee makers and washers, electric clothes dryers, crockpots, nylon/orlon/polyester fabrics--things we didn't have when I was very small but are ubiquitous now. Cars have gotten swankier and fatter and hungrier, but there's not been a whole lot of change in their basic operation (burn fuel to go).

Make your own list...it's fun to think about these things. Find a way to share it with the rest of us.

MAW has her troubles...

Spring 2010....eventful, hot, rainy here.  I am trying to get back into drawing the cartoons that occupy my thoughts.  BUT, seeing as I am not a professional  cartoonist, I'm having troubles that only a rank amateur would have--and this apart

from the actual DRAWING.  

F'r instance, I have LOST the memory card for my all-in-one printer-fax-scanner.  Even if I wanted to scan something, where could it go? 

Thus, after drawing the cartoon, and not being able to scan it, I decided to take a picture of it with my cell phone and forward that to myself.  I doubt that any pro cartoonist has to resort to this kind of thing just to get something published.

But I am just a beginner at this.  Malcolm Gladwell in OUTLIERS states that to become really good at anything--drawing, skating, pitching baseball, whatever--requires no less than 10,000 hours of practice. That's about 10 years' worth if you practice 2-3 hours a day. I don't think I practice ANYTHING for 2-3 hours every single day, unless you count eating.  I'm VERY good at that.  

It seemed, also, that Blogger itself was going quietly nuts.  Things were no longer what they seemed to be even last month.  Wot???  I figured this out, though.  If I use Firefox, everything--how to add new blogs or a new photo (as in my Garden Watch)--is OK.  If I use Google Chrome, it's way strange.

What, indeed, in MAW's universe has not been strange this spring?

thanks, Whoopee

I'm dedicating this You-Tube-bearing post to Whoopee in thanks for her recent post on her two bee children (also for the one on Caligula).  It's not easy taking care of two lively small children, with the new baby weighing almost as much as most kids do when they're much older.

So here's a little entertainment for when all else palls....I look forward to future posts after you and Ian and the children have learned how to play the fiddle and the other instruments.  Here's "Diga diga diga" by the Luminescent Orchestrii...(yeah, that's how they spell it)

Everyone's on hiatus these days....

Many of my most faithful readers are taking a break from blogging for a few weeks this summer: Kay's Thinking Cap, Darlene's Hodgepodge--even bloggers I read all the time, though they probably don't read XE much--like Whoopee (though not officially--she's just sidelined while her woman's bits heal after the birth of Caligula the Destroyer, aka Oscar).

Well, I'm not on hiatus...I'm just doing lots of dreaming about what to create next and running out every few hours to see if anything's up in my various gardens.  So I decided, for sheer bloggy pleasure, to go back to drawing cartoons for a while.  I thought of a good one today, and as soon as I finish editing a loooong piece for a client, I'll get cracking on it.  Watch this space......

I want to confide in my readers about something, too.  My housemate took it upon herself to dig up a second 4'x4' garden plot in the back yard this afternoon, but instead of removing the dirt from the sod and then tossing the sod along the fence where it can regrow, she just stirred it back into the plot again--with copious water.  So now there is a gigantic mud pit out back filled with very healthy-looking grass turned upside down that'll take a day or two to dry out enough to plant something in it.  I have memories of our Victory Garden back in Fargo in the 1940s, when we'd harvest potatoes and radishes speared with grass roots if we didn't get rid of the grass well enough.  And reading gardening pamphlets from NDAC about how grass and other weeds consume the nutrients needed for the veggies.  So....while I'm very grateful for her strong back and the speed with which she dug up the second plot, I think she should remove the growing matter and also add some good potting soil for the top layer as I did for the first plot, but she insists that the grass will add organic matter to the garden.  The ground is so warm now that the seeds practically burst open after just a few hours in the ground.  I'm feeling very conflicted about this.  It's nice to inspire others to plant a garden even if they don't do it the way I think it should be done.  But on the other hand, what the hey difference does it make?  If she wants her own plot, she can buy the seeds and water them, too.  I confess to feeling very selfish about this garden space--even though it's not even my own lawn--and upset that I feel this way, goldammit to hell anyway!

Tomato tower

Well, today would be my mother's 113rd birthday if she were still walking among us. She'd be just a few years older than Mary McGowan. Anyway, it was a lovely day..."What is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days." Some poet wrote that...and if I weren't so lazy, I'd look it up. OK OK, I did...it was James Russell Lowell.


I saw a new bird today. Must be a warbler of some kind. Kind of like a white sparrow with a black cap (but not a black-capped chickadee). The bird songs here are practically symphonic. And I noticed that the trees by the metro tracks--the ones that have the beautiful white flowers in the spring--are locust trees. Nice to know.  Mom taught me by her example to pay attention to the beauty around me.  It was a gift that keeps on giving.


I planted a tomato tower in the back yard today. I'm taking bets on whether it actually will produce a tomato!

"Whacking the old folks...."

 One sour note back in January, when we were celebrating President Barack Obama's inauguration, was his quiet announcement that there would be NO cost of living adjustments for Social Security for two years.  Xtreme English complained a little bit at the time, but hardly anyone else made a peep--especially our favorite insurance peddlers, AARP.  The announcement landed on a soft cushion of indifference, possibly calculated.

Yesterday, the June 7, 2010 issue of Nation magazine arrived with THIS alarming lead paragraph:

In setting up his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Barack Obama is again playing coy in public, but his intentions are widely understood among Washington insiders. The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink. 

The author, William Greider, goes on to discuss the commission, its purpose, and its membership, noting, "The people, once again, are kept in the dark." Greider's "excellent take on Social Security" also appears in an article by Trudy Lieberman in the May 25 issue of Columbia Journalism Review. 

Greider goes on, "What's extraordinary about this assault on Social Security is that a Democratic president is leading it. Obama is arm in arm with GOP conservatives like Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson, who for decades has demonized Social Security as a grave threat to the Republic and has spread some $12 million among economists, think tanks, foundations and assorted front groups to sell his case." 


Here's another paragraph in the Nation article (emphasis mine), about half way through the article:

Obama's initiative rests on two falsehoods spread by Peterson's propaganda—the notion that Social Security somehow contributes to the swollen federal deficits and that cutting benefits will address this problem. Obama and his advisers do not say this in so many words, but their rhetoric implies that Social Security is a big source of the deficit problem. Major media promote the same falsehoods. Here is what the media don't tell you: Social Security has accumulated a massive surplus—$2.5 trillion now, rising to $4.3 trillion by 2023. This vast wealth was collected over many years from workers under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) to pay in advance for baby boom retirements. The money will cover all benefits until the 2040s—unless Congress double-crosses workers by changing the rules. This nest egg does not belong to the government; it belongs to the people who paid for it. FICA is not a tax but involuntary savings.

Can us old folks do anything at all about this?  Can we at least get the President and his Commission to say what they're up to BEFORE the elections later this year?  Greider says, 

Citizens can win this fight if they mobilize smartly. We can do this by arousing public alarm  

right now, while members of Congress face a treacherous election and before Obama can 

work out his deal. Some liberal groups are discussing a "take the pledge" campaign that 

demands senators and representatives sign commitments to keep Hands Off Social Security 

Benefits. If politicians refuse to sign, put them on the target list for November. Barack 

Obama is standing on the third rail of politics—let's give him a warning jolt.

We get email....

This arrived from LRH on the left coast yesterday, and in honor of Memorial Day, 2010, I'm posting it here:

To Naomi's friends across the country,

Many of you have already made your statements about ending the wars, so why forward this? Ron and I think much about the future for our 4 grandchildren: Memorial Day needs a NO WAR effort. Thanks

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are making us poor. Right now, America spends $159 billion on contingency operations for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s enough money to eliminate taxes for everyone who makes under $35,000 a year, while cutting the deficit.

Progressive hero, Congressman Alan Grayson, is once again leading the charge to put an end to this disastrous spending. I signed the petition to support 'The War is Making You Poor' Act, an act that would cut waste, fraud and abuse in the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Join me and sign the petition at www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com

Join me in signing it, too.  Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone--yes, you, too, Mr. President.  You took office in January and (a) inherited a mess and a half from your predecessors and (b) had the pleasure of being in charge when some feckless oilmen befouled the Gulf of Mexico--and ultimately the planet--with their greed and misjudgments.  About now, you must feel your election was a ticket to hell. Hang in there and enjoy Chicago, that toddlin' town!!! It'd be nice if you, Michelle, Malia, and Shasha could find time to go out to Wishbone and have some corn pancakes!

Uplifting Sight!

This is something I have never even heard of or seen before. This woman lives in a Hummingbird fly zone. As they migrated, about 20 of them were in her yard. She took the little red dish, filled it with sugar water and this is the result.

The woman is Abagail Alfano of Pine, Louisiana - she had been studying them daily and one morning put the cup from the feeder (with water in it) into her hand. Since they had gotten used to her standing by the feeder they came over to her hand.

She says in touching they are as light as a feather. Abagail also said if she had known her husband was taking pictures she would have put on makeup!!

--You look very pretty, Abigail...don't need help from the factory, as we say where I come from. :)

These pictures are amazing. I hope you'll send these pictures to your Friends and family.

Robert Schumann's Widmung--one of my favorite liede

One thing I used to love, back when I was fully hearing, was singing in a choir.  My own voice was neither strong nor beautiful, but when blended with others', it grew powerful and nourished my spirit.  This is a song we sang for the spring concert when I was at St. Benedict's.  "Du meine Seele, du mein Herz"--you are my soul, you are my heart....so wonderful.  The young singer with the amazing voice is Lena Belkina, a native of Tashkent. She was not yet 21 years old in this video.
 
Friedrich Ruckert wrote the original German love poem:

Du meine Seele, du mein herz, 
Du meine Wonne, o du mein Schmerz, 
Du meine Welt, in der ich lebe, 
Mein Himmel du, darein ich schwebe, 
O du mein Grab, in das hinab 
Ich ewig meinen Kummer gab. 

Du bist die Ruh, du bist der Frieden, 
Du bist der Himmel mir beschieden. 
Daß du mich liebst, macht mich mir wert, 
Dein Blick hat mich vor mir verklärt, 
Du hebst mich liebend über mich, 
Mein guter Geist, mein beßres Ich!  

Here is an English translation by iGoogle mixed with a few 

phrases from the formal translations by Bertram Kottmann

and Brian Cole:

Thou my soul, you my heart,

You my bliss, you my pain,

You are my world that I discover

My heaven you, in which I hover,

You my grave, in which I gave

My eternal sorrow.

You are rest, you are peace.

You are summoned from the sky to me.

That you love me makes me worthy

Your gaze has transfigured me.

You raise me lovingly above myself,

My good spirit, my better self. 

A mother speaks.....

Peggy sent this to me last weekend, and I haven't had time to post it until today.  Here's the link to the article in case you want to pass it on yourself:  http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/000504.html
 And congratulations to Sharon Underwood, the mother and author of the following letter.  It's especially sad to know homophobia thrives among persons who consider themselves authorities on morality and who pass their ignorant, misguided attitudes on to their children, who then make life miserable for those they either know as, or consider, gay.

Sunday, April 30, 2000
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.
I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.
He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.
You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.
You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

I [Andrew Tobias, author] had the chance to speak with [Sharon Tobias] yesterday. Her son is doing fine now, the first in his family to graduate from college.


If you have friends who think Jesus would have been a Republican -- on the side of billionaire Pat Robertson, et al., in opposing Hate Crimes Legislation, opposing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and, yes, opposing Vermont's extension of economic benefits to same-sex couples -- please feel free to forward this column to as many of them as you like. Can't you just see it? Jesus arm-in-arm with the NRA trying to maintain the gun-show loophole? Stumping the Holy Land in favor of a massive tax cut for the rich, while opposing a hike in the minimum wage? Somehow, I think not.

Syttende Mai, Stoughton, Wisconsin

Syttende Mai, Stoughton, Wisconsin

Mors dag, Rehoboth Beach, 2010

You can't vote because you have car pool??? or it's raining? or you have to pick up the dog from the vet?

This email with photos arrived today from A Little Red Hen out there on the left coast.  She is not the author, but she passed it along to me.  Sad to say, this is something I know very little about.  1920 was the year before my parents were married.  It's not so long ago.

This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.
 
Remember, it was not until 1920
that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed
nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking
for the vote.














And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.
Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing
went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of
'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'



















(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above
her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping
for air.

(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her
head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate,
Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging,
beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917,
when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his
guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because
they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right
to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks
until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year 
because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?
Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's 2004
movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle
these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling
booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York)

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history,
saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk
about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought
kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said.
'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use,
my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just
younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'


HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history,
social studies and government teachers would include the movie in
their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere
else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing,
but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think
a little shock therapy is in order.

 











(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl[ace] [Washington, D.C.]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.


The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.


We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so
hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.')


Register to vote…

XE update: This movie is available on DVD, and you can get it from Amazon or Netflix. 

"I'm a U.S. Citizen Because my Ancestors were Immigrants"

Look up the Facebook group by the above name (I'm a U.S. Citizen Because my Ancestors were Immigrants). It's the jolliest site around. We're ALL immigrants. Where does the governor of Arizona get off? Most of the immigrants in Arizona are white people.

Interesting Bloggers

Please welcome Duchess Omnium and also Margaret and Helen. The Duchess stopped by XE last week, and I just spent an hour re-reading M&H. DO lives on a houseboat in the UK--wotta life, huh?--and M&H live in *cough* Texas. I've missed Molly Ivins, but M&H have her feisty, unabashed way of expressing their displeasure with Republicans and other vacuities.

Also, Whoopee, another UK blogger and one of my favorite writers, had a wonderful post recently about her new baby, Oscar, who arrived weighing almost 10 lbs at birth and created wreckage on the trip. I was tempted to tell her that my sister-in-law's first baby weighed about that much, and they had to break his collar bone to get him out. Anyway, here's the post.

Do It Yourself....

I recall seeing two old farmers in the Jack & Jill store in Bismarck years ago. Their cart was empty save for some big cans of Welch's grape juice (not frozen, just plain juice), a bag of sugar, and a few packages of yeast.  It didn't take a brain surgeon to realize they were going to make wine with all of that.

Thus, here's a handy little video to show you how they might have done it.  You can make white wine, too....just use white grape juice. The white wine recipe calls for using champagne yeast, but Whole Foods has some good German yeast that might work just fine.  And here's a link to the WikiHOW article.

We made our own red wine once--gallons of it from all the red grapes that grew in the Missouri river bottomland south of town. That wild grape variety has the worst reputation among home wine makers, but we forged ahead. Peggy and Sally were just tots, but they went along on the grape picking venture with our friends the Bergers and all their ambulant kiddies.  Katie and Tom had not arrived on the planet.

The process was more complicated than the video shows: we had to squeeze the grapes and mix it with the sugar and yeast in a big ceramic crock until it was ready to sit in the fermenting containers--big glass jugs obtained from the Big Boy restaurant east of town. We kept it downstairs next to the furnace while it fermented, and it produced a LOT of wine.  We bottled some of it, but we left most of it right in the glass jugs. I gave a bottle to my parents, and we threw away the rest when we moved out of that house to the log house.

It was pretty raw, and besides, nobody was into wine in those days. It was several decades before restaurants began having wine lists.

Anyway, my parents took the bottle of wine home and put it in the cabinet over their refrigerator. And there it sat for a few years.  When my mother had a heart attack, I went down to visit her and stay with Dad. I decided to make Shrimp Newburg for lunch one day, and I needed some wine. I remembered the wine over the fridge, so I got it out, opened it, took a sip....and whoa....it had lost all of its raw edges and was clear and beautiful. So that's what happens when you age a good wine! Alas, there was no more around after that bottle was gone.  C'est la vie....

Monday musings

my dreams have been most enjoyable of late. last week i dreamt about my art, and last night, i dreamt one of my kids came to visit me. they don't, usually. so it was a nice surprise. then i woke up. hot and sneezing. couldn't open the window, had no kleenex. so i got up, took a shower, and got dressed for the day.

two weeks ago, i found my grandpa's billfold. it still has the photo of my grandma in it. i never met either of them. but i know she could sing and play the piano, and he both provided and cooked the meat (usually wild game) for supper every night--he said she had enough to do taking care of their seven children without a lot of feather plucking or skinning on top of it. when there was no pheasant or duck or fish, he'd go out and shoot a few squirrels or rabbits. his billfold used to have a receipt from the grocery store in it, too. that's gone. don't know where.

In Which We Attend a Tax Day Tea Bag Event...

[Volunteers wearing day-glo shirts and caps in front of the Tea Bag enclosure in the background]

Yesterday, April 15, was "Tax Day," and the furious tea baggers were out in force here in the City of Satan. Well, there were several hundred, maybe even close to a thousand. The WaPo, ever eager to inflate the opposition to a legally elected Democratic President, said it was "thousands." The paper enthused that "more than 50 tour buses" poured into DC for the event. When was the last time YOU were on a tour bus? Did you count the seats? You do the math.

Anyhoo, on the same slope by the Washington Monument that had been COVERED, elbow to elbow, with protesters during one of the antiwar gatherings during the Bush 2 administration, the tea baggers gathered in a fenced-in area. Inside of this, the speakers' platform was set up so that--the cameras not being able to see the empty space behind--it might actually look crowded. Two park police were out by the sidewalk near Constitution Avenue (in full sight of the traffic) trying to manage their fidgety horses. By the time we left at 7 p.m., there were FOUR cavalry waiting to run down troublemakers--which apparently were both of us old girls plus a bunch of very young folks.

It was pretty evident just who was there. Take a look at the photos. Tell me if I'm wrong when I say that I perceived most of these people to be older, white, and lower middle-class.  About half a dozen nonwhite persons were there, but they were selling flags and buttons and t-shirts in an effort to capitalize on the market.

Yes, they had their hateful buttons and signs, but this time they were mostly manufactured, not hand-made, and all meticulously spelled!!  But boy, were they pissed off! One older gentleman refused to read my little handout ("Thank you, Obama, for these tax cuts!" followed by a listing of all the tax cuts us little folks (i.e., taxpayers) have received this year.) "Nah....I've been workin since I was 10 years old and I never took a penny from anyone, and I got 17 children and...." at which point, he turned and stomped away.  I called "Thanks for your good example and hard work!" But he didn't turn around.  And I got to thinking...17 kids!  I wonder if he's my cousin!! I should have asked him if he was from South Dakota.