Pixels, Politics, Posies and Pussycats

I HOPE

2008-11-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

By cartoonist Mike Lukovich, downloaded from the net. It was in both local papers this morning.

Here are some things about the last eight years I won’t miss. All of this material was taken from You Have No Rights by Matthew Rothschild.

Abusing the statute concerning material witnesses. The original 1984 statute was designed to prevent mob suspects from fleeing. It was used in the months after 9/11 to hold approximately four dozen suspects that were considered suspects but there wasn’t enough evidence to place them under arrest.

“Jailing people who are simply under investigation is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. If the government has probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime, it may arrest that person, but misusing the material witness statute poses the threat of making detention the norm and liberty the exception. District judge Shira Sheindlin.

Claiming that since this is a special war and the enemy not covered by Geneva convention protections for prisoners of war; that “enemy combatants” can be held indefinitely. Detainees have been held for years not only at Guantanamo Bay, but alleged secret CIA prisons or shipped to third party countries notorious for torturing prisoners. Essentially the Bush administration claimed the right to seize anyone, anywhere and hold them indefinitely. In a hearing before the Supreme Court it was argued that the Commander in Chief powers under Article II of the Constitution give the president the right to seize anyone, including citizens, even if the nation is not at war.

“At stake…..is nothing less than the essence of a free society……unconstrained executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber.” Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens

On October 31, 2001 Attorney General Ashcroft issued a regulation that allows the Justice department at its discretion to listen in on lawyer-client conversations if, in the opinion of the Attorney General, there is reasonable suspicion that the conversations may further or facilitate acts of terrorism. Before this, prosecutors had to go before a judge and convince that judge that there was probable cause that the prisoner was using these conversations to plan or commit further crimes. It’s kind of hard to plan your defense if the prosecutor knows what you’re going to do before you even go to court.

Using signing statements to get around laws passed by Congress. The soon to be Former Occupant set a record in issuing these. Over seven hundred were issued. Basically the president says he’s free to ignore any portion of a law that that he believes conflicts with his powers as commander in chief. This includes a law passed in December of 2006 that protected first class mail from being opened without a warrant unless there was suspicion that the letter contained a bomb.

Allowing the National Security Agency to attempt to monitor our phone calls without a warrant. Even though there is a law in place that allows such surveillance as long as a warrant was obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. The ultimate goal was to build a record of every phone call made in the United States.

And finally, in September of 2006, congress passed and the president signed the Military Commissions Act. This act basically blasts laws and protections going back to Magna Charta right out of the water. This allows anyone, anyone including U S citizens to seized as “enemy combatants” and tried before a military tribunal. Detainees are deprived of the right of Habeus Corpus guaranteed in Article I section 9 of the Constitution. In January of 2007 former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez claimed in a congressional hearing that while the Constitution prohibited the taking away of Habeus Corpus there was no express guarantee that any individual or citizen was guaranteed to right to Habeus Corpus.

We started watching “Band of Brothers” again tonight. Those men didn’t jump into Hell to see us come to this. The justification for these actions is that we need to be "protected" from further terrorist assaults. Democracy is not safe and it's not for wimps.

Cross posted in Women On.

MEASURE 65

2008-10-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

Oregon has a system of initiative and referendum. Frankly, most of the measures that end up on the ballot are more self serving than anything else. But, if you can get enough signatures on a petition onto the ballot they go. Including Measure 65, I think this is one of the good ones.

Republicans and Democrats in this state don’t agree about much but they do agree that making it harder for independents to vote or get on the ballot is a VERY GOOD THING INDEED. So, the very latest VERY BAD THING is Measure 65. This would create an open primary where everybody, no matter which party you belong to, gets to vote on everybody, no matter which party they belong to.

Back in 2005 the legislature passed a bill that makes it almost impossible for independent candidates to qualify. The bill counts a signature on a qualifying petition the same as a vote. In other words if you sign a petition to let Joe Six Pack run for governor as an independent you can’t vote for someone else when the actual primary is held. Of if the independent candidate manages to qualify by petition after the primary and you voted in the primary your signature doesn’t count. Are we all lost yet? Don’t feel bad. I had to read the news story more than once to make any sense of what was going on. Then I got mad. I believe my first reaction was “what the F&*%!” Then it was “you’ve got to be kidding.”

Measure 65 would allow an open primary and the top two candidates for any office would go to the general election. It wouldn’t matter if the top two were Democrats, Republicans or wombats, their names would be on the ballot.

Don’t think of the parties as collections of people, think of them as competing brands; say Coke and Pepsi. They want to protect their market share and want to limit the shelf space of any competing “beverages.” Both parties offer a brand name to donors; that’s how they raise their money. And the donors want to get the biggest bang and the most influence for their bucks, that’s why they prefer “Coke” or “Pepsi” over any competing brands. And, I believe, the biggest reason for this interminable, mind numbing campaign season. The earlier the choices are finalized, the better chance they have of influencing policy decisions.

I’m voting yes on Measure 65. I say, take it out for spin and see how it works. Anything to break the log jam here in Oregon. A Republican can’t get on the ballot here in Oregon without pandering to the right wing of the party. Problem is, once they’re on the ballot they can’t pull enough votes from the state wide center to get elected. Even worse there are some Democratic candidates basically running unopposed. And, in my opinion, this is NOT A GOOD THING.

And if Measure 65 doesn’t work, repeal it. After all, that’s what elections are for.

Cross posted on Women On.

RED FACES IN NEW YORK

2008-10-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

There was a short story in the local paper's National section this morning and this version was on the net.

TROY, N.Y. (AP) - Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama ." The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as "Barack Osama " and "John McCain." In the United States, the best-known person named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaida terrorist group. Commissioners for the Rensselaer County Board of Elections say they regret the error but do not acknowledge in a statement exactly what the error is. The botched ballots were first reported by the Times-Union of Albany.

If we had a Whoops award on this Blog this weeks’ would go to Rensselaer County elections officials who mailed out those three hundred or so absentee ballots. It’s been called an innocent mistake. The ballots were supposedly proof read. My little X-Files loving brain is going unh huh.I type for a living and I’m more likely to type an F or a G instead of a B. that S key is a long way away and uses a totally different finger. Faces are suitably red and the ballots will be replaced, but you do find yourself wondering.

Cross posted in Women On.

NOW WHAT

2008-10-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

This goes deeper than a market meltdown. I don’t think we’re going to be hearing the Free Market at any cost mantra for awhile. I’ve always believed that economics has a lot in common with religion. As long as faith is strong, it seems to work. And work a lot longer than you think possible. But once that faith is shaken, look out below.

A good example is personal retirement planning. We’ve been told it’s our responsibility to make sure our retirement is secure. To invest our money wisely. To increase our savings. We’re also encouraged to buy every new widget that comes on the market. That the two goals can be mutually exclusive is like having an elephant in the living room. You can ignore it all you want. It doesn’t go away and the shit just gets deeper.

I have a 401k account. I picked a mix of funds and bonds that hopefully will not totally tank in the near future. I have not dabbled directly in the stock market; I’m mindful of my economics instructors’ advice of “if you can’t afford to lose it, don’t risk it.” And, like a lot of people, I don’t make enough to risk anymore than my 401K contribution. We have some savings and we’re probably better off than a lot of people right now. Probably comes from being a logging family. We never had three good years in a row, but we managed. And we did pretty well most of the time.

The execs from companies like Lehman Brothers justified their hefty bonuses and extremely generous compensation packages because of the risks they were taking. What risks were you taking Kemo Sabe? It was your investor’s money you were risking and few questions were asked as long as the numbers on the ticker continued to climb and compliant boards of directors didn’t ask inquire too closely. But, what goes up can come down. And right now, well the piper is in town it’s time to pay up.

I learned a fancy term when I took my business classes some years ago. Fiduciary responsibility. Geez, twelve syllables in two words. It has to worth at least five bucks.

Basically it means you manage the money entrusted to your care for your client’s benefit not yours. Now we find that the top execs at Lehman Brothers lied to their investors a week before the company entered bankruptcy. Investors were told that everything was OK. Then boom, the company is history, the employees are out the door, and the grilling before Congress begins.

Questions are good. Asking questions a couple of years ago probably would have been better but apparently no one wanted to be accused of economic heresy and the cows are not only out of the barn they’re on their way to the packing plant. How many other execs have lied? How can I make good decisions when the people who are responsible for managing my investments lie?

Maybe it’s no accident that our MBA president has treated the American people the same way these business execs have treated their stock holders.

Cross posted in Women On.

EQUAL TO WASHINGTON?

2008-09-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sis forwarded an e-mail with information about John McCain’s time as a POW. I admire the man’s courage under fire. The man was a great fighter pilot. It doesn’t mean he’d make a great president. Actually, I’m not sure that what makes a great fighter pilot, necessarily makes a great president. The e-mail compared McCain to George Washington. I replied that we would have to agree to disagree on this one.

We’ve had three generals that made the transition to political greatness, or near greatness, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, (I do definitely question some of his policies) and Dwight Eisenhower.

Washington was what I’d have to call an Independent, in fact he warned against dividing into parties, Jackson was a Democrat and Eisenhower finally came to office as a Republican. Broad spectrum, that.

George Washington was also the losinginest successful general in the history of the army that he literally created from nothing. Granted he had a little (lot of) help from generals and troops from Prussia, Poland and most importantly, France. You can call ‘em Freedom Fries if you want, but without support from France we might still be carrying British passports. And, France’s support for our revolution probably helped bring on the revolution in France and another twenty years of war in Europe.

There’s an uneasy parallel here. The French economy was already shaky when they took on a war they didn’t have to fight, by supporting the American Revolution. Sigh. Start heading in one direction with an entry and just see where you end up.

Andrew Jackson is most famous for a battle that was fought after the peace treaty was signed. He’s also defied the Supreme Court ruling in support of the Cherokee and is infamous for their expulsion from their lands in the south and the Trail of Tears that lead to the Indian Territory in the west. He was the first president who was neither a Virginian or a New England lawyer. He had a famous temper, fought more than one duel, helped to create what became the Democratic Party and threatened to hang “nullifiers.” Given the opportunity I think he would have made good on that threat.

Dwight Eisenhower was a Kansas farm boy. His parents were pacifists, but he went to West Point. He came up with a better way to solve a calculus problem and took the reprimand for not paying attention in class. In fact it seems he was about as obedient as he needed to be at as cadet. Since class standing included demerits his class standing doesn’t reflect how he did academically.

He trained tank troops but WWI was over before he could be sent overseas. His commander in the Canal Zone was a military history junkie who put his exec through what amounted to graduate studies in history and tactics. He worked with George Patton to create the tactics for the new cavalry. Patton predicted that one day he’d be taking orders from Eisenhower. He was right.

Eisenhower commanded the American invasions of North Africa and Italy. He sacked generals who couldn’t get the job done even if they were friends or old class mates. He spearheaded the invasion of Normandy but of more importance he also successfully navigated the personal minefields of the likes of McArthur, Montgomery, Churchill, Patton and “Uncle Joe” (Truman’s label) Stalin.

He and Harry Truman also pretty much took an instant dislike to each other. Eisenhower didn’t much care for career politicians and Truman couldn’t stand career military officers. It was a match made a little lower than heaven.

During his two terms we saw, among other things, Social Security expanded, the beginnings of the interstate highway system, the beginnings of desegregation and the intensification of the cold war. The 101st Airborne was deployed twice by his orders. The first time they went to France. The second time they went to Little Rock.

Trouble is, I can also name at least one general that was a stand out on the battle field and a total disaster as a president. Ulysses S. Grant was the bulldog that led the Union to a final battlefield victory over the Confederacy. Yes, I said battlefield. We’re still working on the actual social victory. The fact that anyone gives a damn about the skin color of the Democratic candidate speaks to that. Unfortunately Grant’s abilities on the battlefield didn’t transfer to the White House. His two terms as president were a byword for corruption and cronyism that was unmatched until the Harding administration. And Harding was the bench mark for how low you could go until………..enter the “current occupant.”

I don’t think John McCain is quite the equal of the first three and I don’t want to find out if he belongs with the last group.

And, talk about irony; political success aside, Grant fought to preserve the union. The husband of the Republican candidate for Veep belongs or has belonged to a party working for Alaskan secession and she has sought the support of that party in the past.

LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT

2008-07-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Too bad there isn't a mood entry for "totally pissed off."

I haven't been posting too many straight political entries for awhile. I got tired of repeating myself, I figured other folks didn't need to read me repeating myself. I've been spending more time reading history trying to figure out how we got in this mess. And, as the gardner's (mom) apprentice (me), frankly I've had a head full of perrenials, annuals, bark and weeds this summer. Actually the way things are going gardening and canning could be considered radical acts.

BUT THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I COULD JUST............

Phil Gramm, former senator from Texas,

1. Worked like a good little beaver to rewrite the banking laws to breach the firewalls between separate types financial institutions

2. Tried to help deregulate the power industry leading to the Enron meltdown

3. Left the senate for a cushy job with Switzerlands' biggest bank

4. Was, and maybe still is, John McCain's point man on the economic matters and

5. When all the vultures come home to roost tells us the problems are all in our heads and we're a nation of "whiners."

WTF is wrong with this picture?

And the bail out for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is attached to a housing bill with block grants to help people facing foreclosure and the current occupant doesn't approve of block grants so he's threatening to veto it. The man is the lamest of ducks but he can still blow up the bridge in front of the out of control train. Who needs Bin Laden to wreck the country when we're doing such a great job of cutting ourselves off at the hips.

Hold the damn election next Monday. Certify the winner on Tuesday or ASAP considering possible electoral college questions and swear the winner in the day after. Phil Gramm, former senator from Texas,

1. Worked like a good little beaver to rewrite the banking laws to breach the firewalls between separate types financial institutions

2. Tried to help deregulate the power industry leading to the Enron meltdown

3. Left the senate for a cushy job with Switzerlands' biggest bank

4. Was, and maybe still is, John McCain's point man on the economic matters and

5. When all the vultures come home to roost tells us the problems are all in our heads and we're a nation of "whiners."

WTF is wrong with this picture?

Hold the damn election next Monday. Certify the winner on Tuesday or ASAP considering possible electoral college questions and swear the winner in the day after. Under the circumstances, a gala "aren't we just the greatest thing since..... "inagural ceremony and ball would not only be tactless but tasteless in the extreme.

RATHER TASTELESS BUT TRUE?

2008-04-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this on a website linked with lolcats. I was looking for the lolcats actually. Certainly a different take on history.

LOCK THE DOORS

2008-03-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

About that last entry. I'm reminded of a quote Harry Truman attributed to his father or grandfather. I believe it went something like this. "When somebody goes out their to way to tell you how honest they are it's time to go home and lock the smokehouse. "

We've been suckered in the old shell game. While we've been looking for the terrorist pea under the cup, every smoke house in the neighborhood has been cleaned out and the crooks are well over the border. Literally.

BRIDGE OUT AHEAD

2008-03-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Well, there’s another train wreck on the horizon and suddenly the hyper capitalists who were opposed the “government interference” in their business are begging for the bailouts. And of course it’ll happen because if it doesn’t the economy will tank.

What kills me is that a lot of folks saw this coming two or three years ago. I read articles in the Oregonian about the problems older neighborhoods were experiencing as the speculators bought up houses. Not to live in, not to remodel and resell, not to rent out, but leave sitting empty while the market went up so they could flip them and make a profit. The tube and papers were full of ads offering to teach me how to make a mint in real estate. I remember thinking, here’s the new gold rush and it’ll probably end the same way the others did. In the meantime, the neighbors were left with all the fun things that happen in old neighborhoods with vacant housing.

Let me backtrack a little. When my cousin couldn’t stay home anymore, mom and her niece sold the house to pay for her care. We had several options. A realtor wanted to buy the property, planned to rehab it (it needed it) and figured he could sell it for about $125,000. Since it needed about $40,000 in work, he offered $85,000; in cash.

A neighbor said he was interested, but it would have to be mortgaged. Considering the way his place looked we were 1) not sure he could get the financing he wanted 2) knew we’d have to pay for inspections that would tell us what the realtor had already told us about, dry rot and termites 3) needing cash not a mortgage. If we’d crossed our fingers and gone with the mortgage we would have had to turn around and sell the mortgage to a broker for the cash, taking a discount on the paper. In the end we went with the cash offer since it was simpler and we probably would have ended up with the same amount of money.

It’s the option of selling the paper that’s causing so many problems now. Those subprime mortgages have been sold, resold, bundled and sold again. They’re seeded through the economy like termites in the foundation of that old house. Hell, some of them are probably part of my 401K account.

Frankly, part of me hopes that the worst hits before the election. Because, if the shitstorm is bad enough no power on earth will get another Republican in the White House. And with luck it’ll wash enough of them out of both houses of congress.

In the meantime the Shrub is doing his Louis XV “Apres moi, le deluge.” Loosely translated? “After me, the shit really hits the fan. But hell, I have my pension, my oil stocks and the ranch in Texas. So long sucka’s."

What’s hard for the average citizen to realize is that the execs running the multi-national corporations may have American citizenship but their loyalty is to the corporation, not this country. And frankly, I believe they’re more dangerous than the terrorists ever could be. If a weak dollar allows overseas companies they have interest in to buy up American assets dirt cheap, it’s no matter to them who gets hurt in the fall out. They’re the ones that blew the bridge, disconnected the brakes and sent these overloaded train cars heading down the hill at ninety miles an hour with nothing to stop them.

And too many voters were too busy obsessing over who was going to survive "Survivor" and who was going to get dumped on "American Idol" to give a shit.

OPEN LETTER CONTINUED

2008-02-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

I would also like to ask the former senator how the so called homosexual agenda caused any of the problems I listed in my last entry and how preventing same sex unions would solve these problems. The answer is that they didn't and it won't. All it does is show that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes on and never has.

These politicians had a chance to address these problems when they were in office and they didn't. to do so would have meant deviating from their narrow, no tax increases for any reason agenda. That is a very real agenda and enough Oregonians got tired of the legislative in fighting to kick some of their asses out of office in '06.

Tags: OREGON, CIVIL UNIONS, ANTI TAX MOVEMENTS

OPEN LETTER TO A FORMER SENATOR

2008-02-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

There is an old saying, “where there is one, there is a majority of one

I remember the campaign to limit access to marriage. I also remember that some of the supporters used the argument that the winners wouldn’t try to block civil unions if the ballot measure passed. Now the winners argue that we can’t ever rethink or revisit an issue because the majority has spoken.

I suspect that if the original ballot measure had failed, it would have been recycled to the next election. And the next, and the next, and the next. As long as there was money coming in to pay the people holding the pens and petitions.

I wrote this letter to the Oregonian this morning. It might even get published. I wrote it in response to an op-ed piece from the former state senator helping to ramrod attempts to repeal access to some kind of same sex union here in Oregon. If I could use more than a hundred and fifty words and I wanted to get more personal it might have run something like this.

Dear Ms Shannon,

……..continued from original letter.

For the record I am a single, hetero woman who has lived in Oregon all her life. I haven’t noticed any “social upheaval” because a fellow Oregonian who is a man or a woman happens to love another man or woman and wants the whole world to rejoice with them.

Here’s what I have seen.

A brokenfoster care system that can’t keep track of its charges because quite frankly the system is busted and there’s no money to fix it.

An epidemic of drug use because there’s no money for prevention or intervention. Yippee, putting the Sudafed behind the pharmacy counter may have driven out the mom and pop meth labs, it didn’t put a dent in what’s coming over the border.

A state mental hospital so old, dirty, and decrepit even the feds want to close it down.

A state more willing to spend money for prisons than schools.

A school year shorter than many other states. (and a sister and brother in law who are totally exhausted at the end of the school year, teaching is no profession for wimps.)

Conservatives who have no problem with insurance companies who pay for Viagra prescriptions but don’t pay for birth control supplies.

Families who fall on hard times only to be told that “you never should have had kids if you couldn’t support them.”

Too few places in emergency shelters for shattered families needing to get out of abusive situations.

A recession that will probably put a dent in my 401K account, at least I have one.

An increasing deduction from my paycheck for health insurance. I don’t mind, at least my employer still offers health insurance.

Frankly, Ms Shannon, I could fill a book before I got to domestic partnerships causing social upheaval. Help fix these problems and maybe I’ll listen to your arguments. Of course, by then we’ll al be a lot older and a lot grayer and we’ll discover that this particular problem was a tempest in a teapot. A very small teapot.

And after working through two pages of entries on Ms Shannon on Google I haven’t been able to find out if she was defeated for re election or didn’t run again. Either way she’s one of a stable of ‘Pubs who were elected in the mid nineties. Most of them were kicked out in the last couple of election cycles because they didn’t get anything done. See the above list. These are all problems that could have been on the table when Ms Shannon was in the state senate. I could only find one bill attached to her name in my very limited search. A bill to legalize road side memorials for accident victims. Important, perhaps. A better memorial would be a better Oregon.

Tags: OREGON, MARRIAGE RIGHTS

MEAT RECALL

2008-02-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Frankly I hope nobody reads this during or after a meal. I’ll be honest I haven’t gone looking for links to the video the humane society put out. I’m sure it’s on YouTube or some place like that.

This ties in with some of the things I’ve been commenting about. There’s been a huge meat recall out here on the west coast. The LA Times had a good version of this story.

I think about the descriptions in Renault’s books of the animals offered at the festivals in early Greece. They offered the best they had and treated the animals with respect. The meat was shared with the celebrants. And frankly most of the meat people got probably came from the festivals. Heaven knows they seem to have had enough of them. Heck, we’re not vegetarians yet, but we’re as careful as can be about where the meat and poultry comes from.

But what pisses me off goes beyond the relatively small chance that one of these animals might have something like mad cow disease. It’s the unspeakable disrespect the cattle owners and this company has shown for everything and everyone involved. And this meat is specifically made for school lunches.

I’m sure these animals weren’t in the best shape when they were shipped but they put them on the trucks anyway. To treat any creature like this is an abomination. To treat creatures meant for the food supply is a double abomination. To feed this meat to our children is……well words fail me.

And the interviews I’ve seen on the tube show people concerned about their kids getting sick, I haven’t seen any comments of concern about how the animals themselves. I don’t know about anyone else, but the idea of eating meat from these poor, tormented creatures is nauseating.

It is disrespectful to the animals, it's disrespectful to the employees who have to deal with these poor beasts, and it's disresptful to the captive consumers of this meat, our school children.

FINDING OUR VOICES

2008-01-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

This entry is sort of a hybrid. On the grounds that it's all political in the end, this is ending up here instead of Cottage.

I’m still on the fence, sort of. Exploring alternative ways for my spirit to walk, but not closing the door on the traditions I was raised in. I’ve found a few good books and some really helpful websites. There’s Wicca of course, (it's a fair place to start but it isn't calling me) and the Native American wannabees. But I’ve also found sites for Celtic and Hellenic reconstructionists. There are a lot of folks out there who searching for the roots of the beliefs that Christianity and Islam displaced, often violently. They’re smart and proud and moving past the “just leave us in peace stage” to the “you are welcome to walk your path, but I’m claiming the right to walk where my spirit leads me.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry whenever I run across the latest claim of a “War on Christianity.” Who got the blame after September 11? After the militants of course. It was God’s judgment on America for tolerating gays, liberals, lesbians, witches, and whatever. Toleration, what a terrible word. If I keep my mouth shut, you won’t kick me. Perhaps it's time to say no. And keep saying it. And to insist on respect, no matter who we are. We expect nothing more and we will accept nothing less. And offer the same in return, when it's earned.

I sympathize with my mom, she’s happy in the church she attends. The Methodist Church does a lot of good internationally through their relief programs and locally through United Methodist Women. I don’t dispute it. It’s just getting too hard for me to put the good on one side and the centuries of destruction on the other and tell myself that it all balances out in the end. John Wesley was well into his sixties and still tromping through the snow putting the bite on passersby for donations to help the poor. He didn’t leave much in his will because “I’ve given it all away.” And what was left he directed to be divided among the six poor men chosen to carry his coffin to the cemetery.

How many William Wilberforces does it take to offset the Inquisition? 1492 was not only the year Columbus set out for Asia and ran into a new world, it was the year the Jews were expelled from a newly united, Christian ruled Spain. How many Martin Luther Kings does it take to offset over a century of persecution? They all claim inspiration from the same root, but too many of the branches appear to be twisted and fruit is tainted.

We look back at the beliefs of the past and count ourselves superior to our ancestors. We don’t haul animals to the alter and sacrifice them. But most of the meat was shared by the followers of the God or Goddess as part of the celebration. If one of our factory raised steers had the choice between our factory meat packing system and the sharp knife of a ritual sacrifice I wonder which it would choose. (probably tell us to go eat our veggies and leave him in peace, actually)

We don’t practice human sacrifice. At least not openly. What else would you call centuries of pogroms, religious wars and expulsions? What else do you call the hundreds if not thousands of people who just didn’t fit in who were accused of heresy or witchcraft? When the Thirty Years was over in the 1600’s nearly seven million Germans were dead. When the Battle of the Bulge was over and the siege of Bastogne was broken, the city was destroyed and twenty five thousand civilians were dead. Those were the ones they knew about. Another fifty thousand were never accounted for. What other name is there for the eleven million who died in Nazi Germany’s death factories? The list is endless and while some of the causes were good, we need to grieve for the lost.

Our ancestors have their own butcher’s bill to answer for. Wars of conquest, civil wars, and slavery. Makes a quite a list doesn’t it. And still, there was much good to their credit. We can claim the same. Just don’t claim that our actions are superior because they didn’t happen two or three thousand years ago.

And I think there is an element of fear in their claims. In this country and in Europe the church can no longer rely on the power of the state to compel conversion or obedience. And I thnk it scares them as much as it gratifies the rest of us.

My this entry did kind of meander didn't it? For now you’ll find me working my way through my books on herbs, doing a little research to see if there really is a way to talk to the animals, and waiting out this spiritual dry spell to end.

SNOW DAY

2008-01-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve ended up with the work equivalent of a snow day. I checked the road we live on this morning. Frozen but chunky. I figured I could probably get out of the driveway by 9:30 or so and amble into work for a four hours or so. My supervisor called and left it up to me. It’s not what the weather is doing right now that worries me. It’s the front that’s due in later this afternoon with some wind and a mix of rain and snow. It’s not the getting to work that worries me; it’s the getting home part. So I embraced my inner chicken and stayed home. The prediction is that it will be above freezing in the morning. And above freezing for the rest of the week. It’s about five weeks since the solstice and the sun is high enough in the sky now to really make a difference. At least the ruts in the street have been leveled out a bit.

That gave me time to go out and clean off the car and use the non business end of a broom to work a lot of the snow of the shrubs and bushes. I also cleaned off a couple of areas on the ground for the birds. I think the jays listen for the sound of the peanuts in the shells hitting the feeders because they show up right away. And there must be other sounds that announce “diner’s open” because the chirping sounds around the neighborhood got louder. So the little ones will have awhile to stoke up before the next front hits.

Got a kick out of reading some of the comments on the AOL article about the Kennedy’s endorsing Obama. And actually the comments you find on any article about Obama. Since anyone with an ounce of curiosity, a shred of integrity, and some time to do a little web surfing can get the name of the church he goes to, find out that his father came from Kenya, and that he isn’t in the market for a Muslim wife (although that would be his business not mine) I have to conclude that the Swift boaters are out in force. I wonder how many of these posters are pulling a paycheck from the Republicans.

I guess they have to do something. They’re stuck with Mitt Romney’s imitation of a robot, September 11 Giuliani, and Mike “let’s amend the Constitution to bring it in line with the Bible” Huckabee. We’ve got Bill sticking his foot in his mouth, and I don’t care what he “intended” to say, if you have to explain what you meant you might as well shut up. When you’re in a hole stop digging.

If you meant to say that LBJ managed to guilt trip congress into passing JFK’s civil rights bill after his assassination then that’s what you should have said in the first place. Add in this campaigns’ version of the Swift boaters and that sucking sound in the distance is getting awfully loud. For both parties.

And I think my last entry ties into Huckabee's campaign. I'm willig to bet that if he asked his audience to rank their concerns gay marriage would not be near the top.

And that is what's driving so many voters like me up the wall. What worries us isn't what you guys are talking about. How do we end a war that's coming up on five years? How do we get decent jobs back in this country? Why did it take so long for "official Washington" to notice a mortage crisis that's been coming on for several years? How do we get our food supply out of the hands of corporate multinationals and back in our backyards (or at least the next county) where it belongs? And it goes on and on and on.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP

2008-01-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of entries. I’m not sure what the subject really is and knowing me, it’ll end up somewhere I never expected it to. But, it revolves around women (and men), food, nurturing, and surprisingly how what we define as food does more than just fill our stomachs.

The combined blog never did get off the ground did it? Jobs, housecleaning, business running, pets, yards and kids tend to take priority over research projects. I still have some ideas. There’s a line from Fiddler on the Roof. The young student radical is hemming and hawing, trying to work up the gumption to propose to one of Tevye’s daughters. He tells her he wants to ask her a question, a political question, a question about marriage, actually. At her surprised “marriage is a political question?” He tells her (with a shrug and a sort of well, duh) “everything’s political.”

I have a hard time seeing food as political, but it is. The respect we show for food is reflected in how we treat the people who grow it and the people who prepare it. Small farmers and subsistence villagers are under corporate pressure all over the world. The almost endless varieties of food grains and oil seeds are being reduced to a few varieties of each. Tenant farmers are being forced off the land as coastal land is sold off for shrimp and fish farms or farm land is sold to grow crops for export. The former farmers or fisherman find themselves working for wages to buy what they used to grow or catch for themselves. Or worse, they’re forced into the city slums to compete for low wage jobs, if they can find jobs at all.

Women have made progress in this country, but we’re still the ones who do the majority of the cooking, housekeeping, chauffeuring, and everything else it takes to keep a family running. I know my mom worked just as hard as a stay at home mom as she ever did cooking in a dorm kitchen at the U of O. But her cooking, cleaning, gardening, sewing, preserving and child care work never appeared on a balance sheet because she didn’t get paid for it.

I’m coming to believe that there is something fundamentally, perhaps fatally flawed in an economy that values a parent’s contribution to the state of our nation if there is a paycheck involved and doesn’t even take notice when no money changes hands. Goddess knows I don’t want to go back to a time when a woman’s place was only in the home. But I pray for the day when contributions everyone makes to our families are counted, whether money changes hands or not.

And I also pray for the day when the definition of family goes beyond husband, wife, 2.5 kids, a dog, a cat, a minivan, and a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. It already has for many of us. It’s the getting the rest of the kids to agree on who’s allowed in the sandbox that seems to be sticking in some folks’ craws. Here’s hoping they wake up before they choke the rest of us. There’s more to family than a shared set of genes and more to love than any of us can imagine.

Anyway, I thought I’d pour a little water in the sandbox and start building a sand castle. If somebody wants to help build one castle, come and play. If you want to build your own castle and build a bridge between the two, it works for me. Heck, if you want to build the village tavern, I’ll stop by for a drink.

POTATO/POTAHTO

2008-01-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

Consumer or customer. Is it potato or potahto? I’m coming to believe that the words are not interchangeable. There’s a kind of mutual feeling to the word customer. There is a feeling of equality. Dare I say community? It implies that your “custom” is important and perhaps appreciated. A feeling of taking the time to make sure it’s done right. The word has a feeling of choice. I choose to make this purchase because it fills a need that I have. A retailer is treating you as a customer when you're told "we don't have what you're looking for right now, but we're getting new items in next week, can I give you a call after I check the shipment?"

The word consumer is giving me a whole different feeling these days. I get the feeling that I’m supposed to get in, pick the product that’s the closest to what I’m actually am looking for, get in line, pay for it and get out. News stories throughout the year that emphasize the failure of certain corporations, Wal-Mart for example, to reach their projected sales figures imply that it’s the consumer’s fault for not buying enough. Buy stuff, buy stuff to store your stuff, then buy more stuff to fill the space left by organizing the old stuff.

Mom and I look at a lot of cute things around the holidays or for use in the yard during the four months or so when it’s actually warm enough to do things in the evening in this part of the country. The make or break is “where do we put “?” when we aren’t using it. (Leave yard furniture out around here and it will be green by next summer. The state plant of western Oregon should be moss.) The question is usually a breaker not a maker. Or what are we going to move out to make room for this? Another sale breaker. J

The media onslaught is worst during the holidays. The Black Friday Shopping Frenzy is played over and over on the news. If one fifth of the potential customers are shopping, that means four fifths of us aren’t. We’re home sleeping off our Thanksgiving dinners, watching the parades, breaking out the Christmas carols, reading, playing with the kids, taking a walk if the weather permits, tormenting the cats, whatever; the stuff will still be there when I'm ready to look for it. And if it isn't? I probably wasn't meant to buy that item anyway. LOL

*Note for further research. Which corporations hold stock in media and also own or hold stock in major retailers or drug companies. That would help explain the news stories that emphasize buy, buy, buy stories. Or the “news” releases for new drugs that are barely disguised commercials.

LINKS

2008-01-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

With Lisa's help I finally learned how to do links. Just double click over the text in any color other than black. It should show an underline and you'll be able to click and go. I'll try to remember to highlight the text or capitalize it or something so it shows up better.

TAKING IT BACK

2008-01-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

Lisa writes with feeling about dignity or the lack thereof we’re facing. Lack of community and modern technology have created an unholy alliance that allows us to let it all hang out because nobody knows who we are and go just about anywhere we want in order to do it.

We’ve always pushed the envelope. Cromwell’s commonwealth of plainclothes, closed theaters, whitewashed churches and a ban on celebrating Christmas is offset by the Restoration. Complete with silks, satins, outrageous wigs (and that was for the men), the comedies of Wycherly, and a king who was too much a gentleman to ignore a pretty (and willing partner). Charles II fathered at least a dozen children, acknowledged them all, yet died without a legitimate heir. He was also too much a gentleman to put aside a barren queen.

Regency excess was followed by Victorian whalebone. Clingy empire waistlines gave away to corsets and crinolines. Seventeenth century lace and frills (again for the men) gave way to sober shirtfronts and starched collars.

America’s Gilded Age was a glittering era of starched shirt fronts, bared shoulders, glittering gems and Robber Barons. The Grover Cleveland of the 1880’s joined list of public men with private affairs (and children born on the “wrong” side of the blanket) that included Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

The Roaring Twenties gave way to a worldwide economic collapse followed by a World War followed by what I guess you could call the fit in at any cost fifties.

Through the years there was an unwritten code that allowed the private affairs of public men, and women in some cases, to stay private. Was this wink, wink hypocrisy? Or was it simple acknowledgement that no one is perfect? Most of us tittered when Bill Clinton claimed he smoked, but didn’t inhale. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d just said “mind your own business.”

The generation that helped win WWII was also the generation of the Organization Man. If the corporation said “move to LA” the answer wasn’t “but my whole family lives in Chicago.” It was “how soon to I need to be there.” The family scattered and the folks got too old or tired of shoveling snow and moved to Florida. We lost not only family ties but community ties.

We traded the Ma and Pa diner on Main Street for the McDonalds near the new freeway exit. We gave up the folks who knew our names for the harried sales help with name tags. We gave up the gal or guy behind the counter who knew just how we liked our coffee, that the eggs should be over easy and the hash browns extra crisp for fix your own coffee, eggs cooked to fit a biscuit and potato patties in greasy little baggies.

We traded the local shoe store where they knew your size and the clerk would probably tell everybody at the pub about your new pumps for do it yourself at Fred Meyer.

We traded the local hardware store and the guy behind the counter who probably helped you plan your new kitchen and would sell you three widgets if you needed them for plastic packaging with two more than you needed.

We traded the local meat market where the meat in the back was probably chewing grass in the next county a couple of weeks ago and the butcher knew who was in the market for soup bones for CO2 treated meat in plastic packaging and E coli.

We traded the anticipation of the first local tomatoes of the summer for red “things” that look like tomatoes and taste like plastic.

There were three or four TV channels and we all watched Ed Sullivan or the Untouchables, or Laugh In. Folks knew which friends or relatives probably wouldn’t answer the phone when PBS ran the original Forsyte Saga back in the sixties. It was a community of sorts. New shows had at least half a season to find an audience, maybe even a season or two.

Now we have I don’t know how many channels and shows that don’t find an audience within the first couple of weeks simply disappear. They’re gone before I even know they’re there. I loved the X-Files. After I stumbled over it half way through the second season and eagerly looked forward to any reruns from season one so I could catch up.

We traded standing on the stool watching and “helping” mom make dinner for soccer moms, video games and little kids who have to have their moms figure out when they have time to play together.

We forgot, if we ever realized it, that businesses are in the business of selling “something.” The move towards preserved prepared foods had been slowly growing for over a century before WWII. And the first efforts at preserved foods were to supply the military, long distance shipping and the pioneer trade. There was a huge need during the war for food that could be prepared and preserved or shipped as mixes for military use.

After the war there was all these consumables needing consumers. We found ourselves with a new label. We were no longer customers we were consumers and Madison Avenue stepped up to the plate. The cake from the mix was “in” and do it yourself was out. Even if the home made cake tasted better. Somehow dinner in a can was trendier than what you cooked in your own pan at home. There was this new line in the national ledger. The consumer price index. And forty years later we found out that what we’d been consuming had more in common with the chemistry lab than the pantry just off the kitchen.

We woke up one day and discovered that the local shops where your custom (patronage) mattered were gone. We ended up with big box stores that advertise gift bags for the first five hundred customers who show up at 2 AM on Black Friday and are “shocked” when everybody stampedes through the door trying to be first. And happy as hell that the stampede made the regional cable news channel for a bit of free advertising. They ran it over and over and over.......

And the elected hired help has cooked the books so that only the finished products and the money used to buy them are counted in the national ledgers. Mom staying home and baking bread or cookies isn’t even a blip on the radar screen. Mom going out and working so she can buy bread and cookies for her family is part of the Gross National Product. Jerry was the guy downtown who sold hardware, not Jerry’s, the big box store across town that you can use for your daily walk.

I don’t want to go back to the days when we had to make everything ourselves, a bad harvest meant everybody in the neighborhood might go hungry, or it taking a week to get to Portland by horse and wagon. There has to be a balance between being a consumer and a customer. We aren’t going to be treated with respect or allowed any kind of dignity unless we demand it and work towards a day when the threat to take our“custom” someplace else means something.

You go girl. I'm not sure we have time to wait for the pendulem to swing back.

OUR DEMOCRACY VS THEIR DEMOCRACY

2008-01-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

And here I thought it was our democracy. This link was provided by another member of our J Land community. I'm all for letting as many vote as can and letting it all shake out in the end. But that's just me.

AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL REVISED

2008-01-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

I was searching through my archives for another entry and came across this entry from the 2006 election season. Parts of it are still appropriate. And I got a kick out of writing it the first time, so sue me. And some of it kind of ties to my earlier entries this week.

Anybody who’s read my journals for awhile knows that I have a rather twisted sense of humor. Spending an evening researching the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster can leave you looking at some things in a slightly different way.

I suspect that we take the Creator/Creatress far more seriously than God/dess takes themselves. The human foot and back don’t suggest an Intelligent Designer. It gives me the impression of somebody who was definitely making things up as they went along. I mean flat feet and bad backs. You’d think somebody could have planned things a little better.

And take the human body itself. I mean you have a two legged, barely furred critter. Whether it's above the waist or below the waist, there are some very sensitive umm projections bobbing or sagging in the wind. SOMEBODY had a seriously twisted sense of humor. Clothing may have been invented for protection, but I’m sure it was adapted very quickly for “show.” You may have seen portraits of Henry VIII. The young Henry was a tall, slender athlete. Henry in old age definitely needed all the velvet and satin camouflage he could get his pudgy bejeweled hands on.

Can you imagine any of our politicians, broadcasters, or religious leaders being taken seriously with their (sniggering, hand-waving) willies waving or in many cases sagging in public. How seriously would anyone take Rumsfeld if he had to testify in the buff. How about taking the generals out of their beribboned uniforms when they appear to testify before congress or announce their latest victory is just around the corner plan to the media.

In fact how seriously would you take any politician if they had to do their stump speeches in the altogether. No lecterns allowed. I know. I’ve got a new slogan. “No clothes for congressmen, or any other employee of the people.” I bet the speeches would be a lot shorter and more to the point

WHERE'S THE PROOF?

2008-01-06T21:48:00.000-08:00

There's faith and there's religion and religion is hopelessly entangled in politics so this little piece goes on the political side of my little piece of J Land.

We did manage to meet Lisa and her wonderful hubby Matt for lunch up in Salem. Salem is about midway between Springfield and Scappoose so it’s a good place to meet. Lancaster mall is close to the freeway and there are enough decent places to eat to provide a different place to meet and keep in touch.

Something she said while we were talking about everything under the sun has sort of stuck with me. It’s the Christmas season after all, but how can you really prove that a rabbi from the back of beyond in Roman era Galilee even existed. It’s hard to realize in our paper plagued era just how little has survived from that era.

The gospels have Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem for a census. Presumably some record was made, we’re talking about taxes after all, but where was it stored? If the tax information was stored in Jerusalem, tough luck, the city was destroyed in 70 AD at the end of a protracted siege. Any records there would have been lost. Palestine was attached to Syria for the purpose of taxation (biblically at least) but that part of the world has been sacked almost as often as Palestine, again paper burns, gets dumped in the cistern, or gets trampled under foot. No help there.

Then there’s the other end of the story. Palestine was never an easy province for the Romans to control. From what I’ve read, there was a rebellion large enough to require an army to put it down about once a generation. And the low level resistance was constant. If the authorities sent a notice of every rebel or potential rebel executed for opposing the rule of Rome or the descendants of Herod, they’d have run out of room in the archives. And again, any records kept in Jerusalem would have been destroyed when the city fell. The Romans were thorough. I’ll give them that. They were a lot of things. For one thing, their armies were really good at ancient population control.

So, we can’t find an ancient piece of paper anywhere that mentions the name of Joshua Bar Joseph. We can’t prove he existed. We can’t prove he didn’t. What we can see is how the teachings attached to his name have been used and misused over the centuries. Perhaps what’s important is the message, and how it’s used (or misused now) not proving how it got here.

THE WELL SEEMS A LITTLE DRY

2008-01-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

Seem to have hit a dry spell. I have ideas but the words just don’t want to come. Ah well, it happens. It’s been damp and chilly for the last couple of weeks. Didn’t get a white Christmas but we did get a little snow yesterday afternoon. Some of those flakes were the size of quarters. Heck it snowed for an hour before it even started to stick, and it’s mostly gone by now.

Nothing like the snow that’s been falling in other areas. Heck, it’s not even supposed to get below freezing this week. And I’ve only had to scrape my windshield a couple of times to get ready for work. That’s really unheard of around here. We even missed most of the high winds earlier in the week.

Some of the bulbs are all ready peaking through the ground. The little snow droppy flowers under the dogwood are all ready up. They’re usually the first. Three more weeks or so and we’ll be out of it. Oh, yeah we can have six inches of snow in February, but it’s gone the next day. The crocuses do look like they want to find the rewind button though. Little purple and yellow blooms poking their heads above the snow.

One batch of the family did make it over for Christmas. Sis and my BIL are both teachers. They work hard and pour everything they have into their work. By the time vacations roll around, they’re both pretty whipped. And we’re all getting to the age where your bed and your favorite chair are where you want to be if at all possible. And bless him, their oldest wants to be a teacher too. If he’s anything like his folks, he’ll do fine.

The foreign new depresses me. The local news is almost at depressing. I’ve been working on a history of ancient <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Rome. I have to say that it is depressing as all get out to find this wonderful little footnote in Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ. The brother of the Roman politician and philosopher, Cicero wrote a manual on electioneering technique that included this: “It was for this campaign that Cicero’s brother Quintus drew up for him a manual of electioneering technique. ‘Be lavish in your promises. Men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal……Contrive to get some new scandal aired against your rivals for crime, corruption, or immorality.’ “ And this was more that two thousand years ago.

It’s enough to depress a terminally optimistic hyena.

On that wonderful note. ‘night.

JUST WHEN YOU THINK

2007-12-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

you've heard everything something like this comes up. I mean, I know the man has no shame, but really. Poor Prezzie, the big, bad Dems forced him to go to war to soon. Obviously, the candidates running for the Republican nomination are out to win, even if they have to portray the Shrub as even more incompetent than he's already perceived to be.

No lie is to big or too brazen if it gets the candidate elected. I'm thinking of cuss words that haven't even been invented yet

SIGNS ON THE ROAD

2007-11-29T16:06:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading a fair bit of history the last few weeks. Being down with a bug and a flair up the “irritation where you don’t want to be irritated” over the holiday weekend meant for good chunks of time with my nose stuck in any of two or three books. Spent most of my time in Will Durant’s volume on the Reformation. And found some things jumping out at me.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s noticed that the truth in any form should be at the top of the endangered species list. It’s been bad and it’s getting worse.

During the bad old days of the religious wars and great persecutions, both sides believed that it was no sin to lie to a heretic. And I suspect that there are radicals living in the Middle East, Pakistan or Afghanistan who would argue that it’s no sin to lie to an infidel, either. Once you’ve started down that slippery slope; well be careful that the bridge isn’t out at the bottom of the hill. Lies, bribes, anonymous informants and torture are the unholy signs on so many roads leading to that “Greater Good” of political, religious or economic unity just glowing just over the horizon. Most of us get there and expect to find Disneyland and end up with swamp gas.

If you accept that certain elected and appointed individuals believe that they had a mandate not only from the voters but from the almighty to assert American power and to “make their own reality” the lies fall into place. If you believe that those who disagree with you are deluded at best and heretics at worst lying to achieve your goals is just another tool to create a greater good. Your view of the greater good, no matter how few others share it.

Using the word heresy to describe political opponents may sound like overkill, but religious unity as a means to impose political unity has been used for centuries. The current occupant is the latest in a long line that includes Isabella of Spain, Henry VIII and Cromwell for England, Richeleau and Louis XIV for France, among others. Luckily for us the Shrub is about as successful at that as he was at running a baseball team. Some luck, I keep hearing "We're knee deep in the Big Muddy" jangling in the background.

BLACK FRIDAY

2007-11-25T18:56:00.000-08:00

The kids saw five minor accidents on the way down from Portland Thursday. Nothing really major, but the feeling that people just weren't paying attention.

And then we came to Black Friday. A good description for the shopping day after Thanksgiving. Got a kick out of some of the news stories about the early morning shopping on Friday. Waiting in line for hours to get in the mall at two in the morning. And some of the big retailers opened in the afternoon Thanksgiving. One quote was basically “they’ve had dinner, it’s time to go shopping.” Heaven forbid there should be two or three days out of the 365 days of the year when we can’t worship at the cash register alters. Or want to spend a little time with our friends and families. Can’t have that, there’s no money to be made out of it.

Things went a bit badly at one mall in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Idaho. One of the doors didn’t open properly and the crowds were more unruly than usual. Folks, nobody held a gun to your head and made you stand in line for several hours so you’d have a shot at one of five hundred free gift bags. It was chaotic and they’re lucky nobody got hurt.

Reminded me of one of the scariest work days I ever had. I been trained to bake after I started working at Chatel. The first time I opened and handled most of the baking the day after Thanksgiving I was more than a little nervous. You look at what was baked the year before, pan up and hope for the best. And the mall was opening at seven that day, not four in the blessed am like Penney’s did this year. Free Disney snow globes. Oh joy! What did we do? Stayed home in our nice warm living room, petted cats, and processed leftovers. Leftover turkey and veggies make for a great soup.

And no we don’t have our Christmas shopping done yet. It’ll get done. I’d be happy just to get the whole family in one place at one time. Even if we have to bungee cord some of us from the ceiling. Mom, me, two sisters, their husbands, five nephews over six feet tall and three cats. Happily crowded. LOL

SCHOOL SPIRIT

2007-11-25T13:25:00.000-08:00

This entry will have some links to web pages to give some background about a very interesting article in the Portland Oregonian last Wednesday. I think your patience will be rewarded.

There's a decent Wikipedia article about Jefferson High School here. And another Wikipedia article about a dance ceremony performed by the Maori of New Zealand can be found here. And what happened when some exchange students from Tonga helped teach it to the kids at Jefferson and their football team started doing it before their games can be found in the Oregonian article here. Apologies for all the ads in the Oregonian article.

I don’t know why some of the other coaches and the Oregon sports association has been so anal about this. I haven’t really dug deep enough to find out how successful Jefferson’s football program has been in the past. But, if the enthusiasm and spirit focused on the haka have caused a turn around in team success I guess I can understand their frustration. If Jefferson used to be a push over and is no longer an easy win, then whoops I guess we’ll have to work for it now.

A predominately black school. They’re doing something different. It must be gang related. God/dess save us, if we can be saved. I really wonder sometimes. Frankly, for all our blue state rep in the national elections, Oregon has a history of racism that has never really been faced. And it's a mystery sometimes when I try to understand how my folks managed to raise a fairly liberal free thinker except that dad never let anybody tell him what to think or believe and neither did granddad.

I think it’s fantastic that kids from a place like Tonga want to come to school in Oregon. I think it’s even better that they’re going to a school like Jefferson, making it their home, and enriching it with their culture. Oh, and the Tongan students aren't just going to Jeffereson and we're getting students from other Pacific nations too.

My nephews go to David Douglas High school. It isn’t part of the same league so their team doesn’t play Jefferson. But, the kids and my sister have seen film of the Jefferson players doing the haka and they all think it’s great.

Just a side note, the extended version of Return of the King has several how we did it documentaries. One pretty much ends with members of the stunt crew giving the actors who played the two kings a very impressive haka. And the stunt guys looked so proud while they were doing it.

My personal opinion? Hey, teach us too, and we’ll do it together. Or we'll do ours and you do yours and then we'll get on with the game. But, that’s just me.

GETTING WHAT YOU PAY FOR

2007-11-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

I found the core of this in a "journal ideas e-mail" to myself. It still didn't come out quite the way I saw it in the first place, but what the heck.

Back in the seventies PBS had a series out the UK called Connections, hosted by James Burke. He’d take a subject such as the discovery of how a touchstone works and follow how being able to easily determine the purity of gold led to easier trade which led to other changes. At the end of the series he walked us through several scenarios of how people might react if they were told that no matter how hard they work, they can only have so much. A scenario that we’re facing more and more as we face increasing limits. Increasing population numbers versus availability of water, space, or the diversion of food crops into other uses such as ethanol production as oil prices rise.

And we can see how this plays out when what is “good” is defined as how many “things” you can squeeze into your living space. When what you have must be replaced by the newest version of what you may already have only to be po’d when the price comes down sooner than you expected. A price you were willing to pay because you just had to be the first one on the block to have the newest widget.

Remember the uproar a few months ago when Apple came out with a new cell phone? The price came down really fast and the first buyers were up in arms. I couldn’t help thinking “Hey, you wanted it bad enough to pay the intro price so you could claim bragging rights for whatever reason.” As if the charisma of owning the latest gadget would somehow rub off on you. You got what you paid for. You were the first. The price you paid not only covered the phone, but the bragging rights.

And the media is carefully structured to keep us believing that we can only be happy if we keepbehaving this way. That having time to read, learn an instrument, carve, paint, make cat’s cradles, spend time with your family, or singing (even if you do sound like Agent Scully singing Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog in the episode Detour) is somehow “unproductive.” Unproductive for who? Well, for the businesses that want to sell you these things ready made. But, maybe not for the rest of us who value family time, cat’s cradles, or singing. Even if some our best tunes are sung in the shower.

T SHIRT COMMENTARY

2007-11-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Detail from a screen capture of a T shirt worn by David Duchovny in the movie the TV Set. This was the best of several shots. If you can't quite make it out, it says Four More Years. Somehow I don't think he voted for Bush, ya think? And since they let him wear the shirt, I suspect nobody in the production voted for the Current Occupant.

The film is hilarious, in an over the top way. It's the subtle as a sledge hammer story of a guy trying to get a pilot made. And the inch by inch compromises that turn the story into the total opposite of what he started with.

INTERFERENCE?

2007-11-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

Well, measure 49 passed Tuesday. Measure 49 tweaks 2004’s measure 37, which tweaked 2000’s measure 7 which attempted to tweak the landmark land use laws passed in the seventies. Back when Governor Tom McCall told out of staters “we really appreciate your visit” with the emphasis on visit.

It doesn’t solve all the problems but it’s a start. It green lights the small projects and forces the owners of large tracts to at least submit appraisals to back up their claims for compensation if they aren't allowed to develop their property the way they want to. The largest contributor on the anti side was a lumber company whose development claims reportedly totalled nearly 50,000 acres. The largest contributor on the pro side was a vineyard owner who has been doing very nicely in the post seventies era, thank you and would like to continue to do so.

One nice advantage to investing in our own entertainment is that I at least didn’t have to listen to the pro and con ads for it. Even though I supported it. I laugh, because it beats crying, when I listen to complaints about government interference in property rights. Hell, one level or other of the government hired help has been “interfering” from day one.

It’s a bit late in the day to go “well you stole it fair and square and I eventually bought it, so now I can do what I want or be compensated for government interference.” ??????????? Frankly this whole extreme property rights movement that bubbled up in the eighties (another thing we can thank Reagan and company for) makes me just a little sick. Make that a lot sick. I wish I could find a copy of the old Jack Ohman cartoon featuring Reagan’s secretary of the Interior, James Watt, He’s standing in a landscape of endless stumps and calling it a forest. Government “interference” made the land available for homesteading and logging in the first place.

The US either took the land of tribes wiped out by disease or hunted around until they found a “chief” that would sign a treaty giving up land that wasn’t theirs to sign away in the first place. If that didn’t work, eventually the tribes would fight back and find the survivors herded onto reservations. Even then the hired help didn’t abide by the treaties that were signed.

The elected and appointed hired help, whether on the local, county, state or federal level has interfered from the get go. The feds took the land and passed the Homestead Act. The feds looked the other way while the rail road king pins decided which little town would live or die and charged rip gut freight charges to the ones that were left.

Federal taxes and support created the Interstate Highway system. Miles and miles of straight line asphalt and concrete that bypassed all the little towns and left them to dry out like raisins on a dying grape vine. Miles of freeway so you could get to someplace that started to look just like what you left behind. And get there as quickly as possible.

And what did we get in return? Fast food, fast shopping and “cities” in the southwest with no civic center. If you plunked an ancient Athenian or even a Spartan down in the middle of one of these, they’d probably argue it wasn’t a city at all. Not marketplace or central place where the citizens could gather and make the laws in sight. No temples to the Gods or Goddesses. I forgot, the temples are there. I just doubt that any Athenian would recognize a strip mall as a temple, though. We’re left with a collection of people whose only tie to each other is the freeway that brought them there.

The Bonneville Power Administration built dams that turned on the lights in the Pacific Northwest and made it possible ship goods by water from Idaho to the Pacific Rim. The dams also drowned the fishing grounds at Celilo Falls and put several nails in the coffin of the Northwest salmon runs that supported the most complex non agricultural communities of Native Americans in this hemisphere. In the fifties the feds decertified some of the remaining tribes, parceled out some of the land too "former" tribal members and took what was left. No land, no fish, no game, a remnants of a people, dying languages and endless casinos catering to the people who took the land in the first place. Interference, what interference?

You may have figured out by now that I have very little patience for big anybody prattling about rights for the little guy in a thinly veiled attempt to get even more, leaving the rest of us with less. Especially when the only real right we seem to have left is the right to buy what they want to sell us. It's interesting that this measure passed by the same percentage as Measure 37, about 65 percent for, 35 percent against. Yes, the urban counties around Portland and Eugene led the way. But it passed further up the valley, over on the coast and in the grain and orchard country east of the Cascades.

But, in an era when oil is flirting with $100.00 a barrel and gas is over $3.00 a gallon, the last thing we need is more sprawl. Oregon, Washington and Idaho help the balance of payments in this country with our unsurpassed apples, peaches, pears, strawberries and other produce. We raise and export wheat and other grains. Heck, we have closer ties to the other side of the Pacific Rim than we do with the east coast. Our vineyards are producing wines as good as and sometimes better than the imports from Europe. We can't give the land back to the Native Americans but we can save it for their children and ours.

I GUESS I CAN UNDERSTAND

2007-11-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

why politicians court these blocks of voters. If they think alike hopefully they'll vote alike, too. It's a bit like the money boys and girls who want nominees decided as soon as possible so they'll know which horse to back in hopes of a better return on their investment.

Easier to court a block than to try to court us prickly, square pegs. They have to court us one.......at.......a.......time. Which leaves the prickly square pegs saying to ourselves and to them "tell me again why doing it this way is a good thing." Because I'm having a really hard time seeing it right now.

TELL 'EM TO #$%^ OFF!

2007-11-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

I was watching one of my Cousteau documentaries last night. This set was on the work his organization did on the Danube River in the early nineties. There is a sequence where he describes the geological changes that led to the current geology in the area. Immense salt mines and limestone formations left over from the receding of the ancient Tethys Sea. He discussed geologic time the way we talk about the weather. And it got me to thinking about other things.

I doubt is there is any first world country where the age of the earth is debated more fiercely than the US, and I think it’s a symptom of what’s killing us. Pope Benedict recently called on the people of Europe to remember their Christian heritage. As Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict ran the organization that took the place of the Holy Inquisition. Yes, your holiness, let us remember the Christian heritage of Europe.

Let me see, forced conversions and crusades preached not only to “free” the Holy Land but against fellow Europeans. By all means let us remember the heresy hunts that allowed torture and anonymous accusations with the unnamed accusers sharing in the property seized from the accused. And I must be honest. The church didn’t kill anyone. They just condemned them and turned the accused over to the secular government for execution. Usually by the most brutal means possible.

And the Lutherans and the Calvinists went at each other as enthusiastically as the Roman Church went after them. After reading the bios of some of the leaders of both sides, I’ve come to this conclusion. If any of them were alive now they’d as likely be in a psych ward as standing in a pulpit. Don’t even get me started on the likes of John Calvin. Reading Will Durant's description of life in Calvin's Geneva was eye opening to say the least. No dancing, theaters, card playing and mandatory church attendance was the least of it. Having the elders show up at your door at least once a year to quiz the members of the household on the state of their souls, well I know how that would go over now. Shades of the neighborhood committees in communist China under Mao.

Let us not forget the seventeenth century witch trials that targeted the old, the infirm, the scolds, the cantankerous and those who just didn’t fit in. What could Benedict possibly say to the more than seven million Germans who perished in the Thirty Years War? What can anyone say to the more than 600,000 Irish who died from siege, famine and disease in Cromwell’s “pacification” of Ireland during the period between the death of Charles I and the restoration of his son. And this out of population of little more than one and a half million. And I've seen the same atrocity wood cut used to damn Catholics and Protestants.

After watching the Anglicans who’d been persecuted by the Puritans and Presbyterians during the commonwealth definitely not turn the other cheek when they were back in power, Charles II was quoted along the lines of “Presbyterianism was no religion for a gentleman and Anglicanism was no religion for a Christian.” Charles himself was a skeptic who may or may not have received last rites in the Catholic Church before his death.

I find a great deal of good in what is reported of the teachings of the rabbi who may have come from Nazareth. I say reported because I suspect that as much was left out as was included when the leaders of the new church got their hands on it two or three centuries later. I find very little good in what the power hungry have done with those teachings. And even less in the gyrations those who claim that every word and punctuation mark in scripture is inerrant and infallible.

Curiosity led me to some web searching which led me tothis very interesting site. So if perhaps one third of Americans (at best) attend any type of worship service in any given week, what the heck is going on here? Watching presidential hopefuls twist themselves in knots trying to placate the minority within a minority of the religious right is painful and embarrassing. When did we become so afraid of being seen as not nice or not fair that we lost the power to tell the modern Know Nothings to take a running jump at themselves or to at least MYOB.

Or at the very least, "I believe I can get elected without you." And then make it happen.

(In case nobody has noticed from earlier entries, this is something that really ticks me off. I loved science when I was in school. I have a degree in Anthropology. I've never had a problem separating the how and the why. I just found myself in total, jaw dropping, awe of the whole damn thing. Put me in front of a picture of galaxies dancing and I won't come up for air for the rest of the evening. Rueful shrug

And I do appreciate more than anyone can imagine the individual churches who try to practice what that rabbi taught. Very often in opposition or in spite of the ruling bodies of their denominations.

It's about power and control folks. Who has it, who doesn't, and what they'll do to get it and keep it. It's enough to send you screaming into the night, isn't it?)

A MIGHTY LABOR, FOR WHAT?

2007-10-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

There’s a scene in the movie 1776 where John Dickenson has gone through a recitation of battles, statesmen, and great leaders from English history. He turns to John Adams and basically asks “if we’re giving up these things, what are we getting in return? You?” Adams didn’t have the greatest rep in the continental congress. Even he admitted he was “obnoxious and disliked.”

Rereading my last entry, I have to wonder. Our English ancestors went through the turmoil and upheaval of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At a time when governments were becoming more absolutist, they hung onto their hard won rights and liberties (even if they would have defined some of those rights and liberties in ways different from our definitions). At times they hung on by the skin of their teeth. They did these things so that their children (us) could bring forth…….W? Cheney? The rest of the useless crew that’s good enough to get elected and not much else?

Has a lion labored mightily only to bring forth…….. a mouse?

GROWING PAINS

2007-10-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Here’s another entry that grew and took on a life of its own.

Back in 1969 Masterpiece Theater premiered with the costume drama, The First Churchill’s. It was good then, and still impressive after more than thirty years. It was released on DVD a couple of years ago and I finally broke down and bought the set. The twelve part series chronicles the rise of John Churchill through the ranks of the army and the courts of four Stuart monarchs. Churchill was recognized as a military genius and was created Duke of Marlborough by Queen Anne.

The scripts do a fantastic job of telling not only the people stories but the political stories. I’m not sure if scary is the word I would use, but it’s more than interesting to hear problems we have now, being discussed more than three hundred years ago. Religious freedom, the right to face your accusers, the right to be brought to trial or released, the right to bail and the rise of party government. And perhaps the most important, is the ruler subject to the law or above the law? Listening to James II claim in council to be “above the law” had an oddly familiar ring to it.

Rewatching this series only reinforces my belief that teaching US history has to include English history. American history always has an arbitrary feel to it, at least at the beginning. And I’m being arbitrary starting with Henry VIII. But you have to draw the line somewhere or you end up going all the way back to Roman Britain.

Bluff King Hal and his six wives, interesting enough, but how the king’s government worked through the resulting problems is the real story. Despite his reputation, Henry was not really a tyrant. Capricious, mercurial, temperamental, somewhat spoiled, and increasingly cruel he may have been, but all the changes made during his rule were made through Parliament. Of course England’s sixteenth century parliaments were nothing like American representative government.

But, at a time in history when power was increasingly concentrated in monarch and a few ministers with almost no input from the governed, the English somehow managed to keep some semblance of representative government. It took a revolution or two, they beheaded a king to do it, and it took at least two centuries to work it out but they did it. Kind of makes me think our job isn’t done yet.

Henry’s position as head of the English church, the break with Rome and the succession were all handled through parliament. The King in parliament, not the king and parliament. When his daughter Mary tried to undo the changes made by her father and her brother Edward, she again acted through parliament. Elizabeth may have been at logger heads with her parliaments over her marriage and taxes but she couldn’t ignore it. James I may have believed in the rights of an absolute monarchy but he knew when to bend when he had to. His son Charles never learned to bend and paid for it with his head.

Incidentally, Charles was a prime of example of the ruler who believes that he has the divine right to rule. Faced with opposition, any means may be used to support that power including lying and deliberate deception. Sound familiar?

I’ll skip the commonwealth and Cromwell for now, but when Charles II was restored to the throne it was at the invitation of his people through parliament. His parliaments’ remembered his father and kept him short of cash. Charles had more than a dozen children by his mistresses, but none by his queen. Louis XIV of France supported his cousin with secret stipends and kept the pot boiling in England with bribes to members of Charles’ parliament. England had their own version of the McCarthy era with a fear of the pope and a catholic heir to the throne instead of the Red menace. Things really never do change, do they?

But, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed during Charles time, and we’re fighting over it still. The act put into written law something that had existed for nearly three centuries. And the complaint of Charles’ successor, his catholic brother James, that the act allowed traitors to go free on bail to plot more treason has a strangely modern ring. Hmmm, I wonder what word we could substitute for traitor in that sentence? And the time between the first uses of writs of Habeas Corpus and the act is longer than the time between our revolution and the present day. Perhaps we should show it a little more respect.

Anyway, England was willing to support James as long as his Protestant daughters were his potential successors. Faced with potential Catholic successor when he finally had a son, the gentry and lords invited James’ daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to come over.

I suspect the intention was to use William and Mary as levers force James to honor the promises he made when he succeeded his brother and raise his son as a Protestant. When he fled England for sanctuary in the court of his cousin Louis parliament settled the crown on William and Mary. And brought more succession problems. Neither the Stuarts or the Tudors had much luck when it came to legitimate heirs. And the Mary and her husband were first cousins, so I guess they were hit with a double dose of ill luck. Dutch William had no particular love for the English, or they for him. Forcing James from the throne gained English resources for the opponents of French ambitions on the continent and added protection for the Dutch states.

When Mary’s sister Anne also failed to produce a living heir, the succession was settled again by parliament, this time on the Hanoverian descendants of one of James I daughters. Poor Anne, more than a dozen children and most of them didn’t survive more than a year or two. Her grandfather James had married into the Danish royal house, as did Anne. So her husband was probably a cousin too.

Parliaments and congresses are just as capable of acting capriciously and unfairly as monarchs and presidents. But, more knowledge of how we got where we are might help us deal with the problems we have now.

Lines on a map don’t make a nation. A nation is made up of its people whether they all live withing those little lines or not. And a nation comes into being the same way people do. It takes time, patience, and perhaps more than a little pain. Unlike child birth, it has to be done without the benefits of painkillers. And while we can’t do it without human costs, we owe it to each other to keep those costs as low as possible.

INVISIBILITY

2007-10-24T11:09:00.000-07:00

There have been several accidents and at least a couple of fatalities in the Portland area involving bicycles. The two fatalities involved riders in the blind spot of a truck preparing to make a legal right turn. Amid the calls for new laws I have a few observations gleaned from three decades of commuting, the last eight involving twenty miles both ways sharing the road with trucks and very large pickups and SUV’s.

Assume that you are invisible to every other driver on the road. You may be driving a neon yellow hummer with Oregon colored cheerleader pom poms, but drive as if no one will notice you. The big rigs with the sign on the back that says “if you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you” are there for a reason.

Never assume that the driver behind you will stop for a yellow light. Remember you are invisible and he or she may be not paying attention. Or may be paying attention, and still be an idiot. Actually, if they are riding your bumper, don’t assume they’re going to stop for a red light either. Try and leave yourself with someplace to go, just in case. Go through the intersection or change lanes.

You may have the right of way, but never assume that any other driver is going to honor that. Remember you might as well be invisible to the other drivers. And if they are driving a jacked up pick up, you might just be invisible. I’ve dealt with so many of those drivers who never seem to look down, Or to the side, now that I think about it.

I know the rules of the road favor the bike riders. I also know that they don’t have to have a license to be on the road. They were written when there were fewer trucks, huge pickups and SUV's on the road too. And any suggestion that licensing bike riders might be a good idea, at least in this neck of the woods, provokes an outpouring that boils down to “we don’t need them we're doing you a favor by not using any gasoline.” OoooooKaaaaaay, no license. Personally, I think if you're going to share the road with me, you should have a license too, but that's just personal opinion. But, how about proof you’ve taken a safety course? One of the first lessons when I took driver’s ed was a physics lesson. A vehicle of x weight, traveling y speed, needs z number of feet to stop. Simple and scary. Especially when you are smaller than almost anything else on the road and virtually unprotected. In a contest with anything that has a motor, the person on the bike is going to come up the loser.

And frankly if you’re going to wear dark clothes, have no lights, and ride a bike at dusk or after dark, you don’t need to pretend you’re invisible. You are invisible.

THAT GAGGING NOISE

2007-10-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Apparently some of our home grown conservatives are having a hard time even uttering Al Gore's name in the same sentence as Nobel Prize. If the subject is mentioned at all it's to make a list of all the people or groups they think should have gotten the prize instead of the former senator and vice president.

Suddenly folks who were willing to undercut the experts working for government agencies claim that Al Gore doesn't know what he's talking about because he's a journalist by training and a politician by profession. Heck, he's doing what journalists do. He's researching the story and reporting it as he sees it.

And we've been seeing the results of conflict over scarce resources for decades. It's only going to get worse.

Lines drawn on maps don't matter to people who don't have opportuhnities at home and see them over the horizon. Can any of you think of a country that's having a real problem dealing with undocumented immigration right now? And can you think of a country with a relatively small population that may see good land opening up as the climate warms while its more populous neighbor to the south sees increasing problems with drought and soil loss?

WHAT IF?

2007-10-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

This is one of those “this has been bouncing around the old brain pan for awhile so here goes” entries. I guess this is my answer to the folks that claim that a genetic answer to at least some folks being gay doesn't make any sense. Actually it makes perfect sense to me. And I guess it's coming up right now because the Oregon legislature finally, finally, passed a law okaying civil unions and an anti discrimination measure this year. The signature gathering campaign to keep the laws from going into effect in 2008 and put them to a state wide vote came up short. Although I'm sure they'll keep trying. Goddess, don't these people have anything better to do with their time? At least time is on the side of the angels.

Even though I don’t use it, at least to earn a paycheck, I have a BS in Physical Anthropology. I tend to look at some things from a certain point of view. From a sort of why would this make sense as a good adaptation to help a species survive point of view.

It’s really too bad that we have such a hard time teaching evolution in this country because the misconceptions about Darwin’s theory are legion. Evolution doesn’t really work on individuals, it works on populations. My sisters carry the same genes I do. Even if I don’t have children, if my actions allow them to be more successful in raising their children, I’ve succeeded in passing my genes on to the next generation.

There is increasing evidence that our sexual behavior is part hardwired, part socialization. There seems to be a fairly steady percentage of folks attracted to same sex partnerships in most populations. At least that’s what I’ve read in the press over the past few years. So, why have these genes survived?

Things haven’t changed since our ancestors whacked two rocks together and discovered that a sharp rock or six could make up for a lack of fangs and claws. We still have to grow it, catch it, gather it, or make something to trade with somebody who has an extra basket of turnips to trade. Actually this could include making the basket or pot to put the turnips in.

At a time when extra hunters, farmers, craftsmen (and women), and eyesto keep track of the kids were a valuable resource, relatives who didn’t have kids but were willing to support their relatives’ children, could give your family group an adaptive advantage. Modern culture has more layers between the producers and consumers, but somebody still has to raise it, package it, move it and make things to trade for it.

But, our families are fragmented and that adaptive edge has been lost. Or has it. There are plenty of same sex couples willing to act as foster parents or adoptive parents when they get the chance. They’re still helping the family survive, it’s just a bigger family. And I honestly believe that we hurt ourselves when we try to shut out a part of our larger family for whatever reason.

Now that I think about it, insuring that teaching evolution remains controversial has its uses for the powers that be. If enough children learned to view what we do as a nation from an adaptive point of view, they’d begin to understand just how screwed up most of our business and political policies really are.

Many of the conservative faith groups and intelligent design folks talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk. If we are all the unique creation of some higher being (I lean towards the divine boot in the ass theory of creation myself) they sure don’t act like it. Oh, I forgot. For some folks, it’s their group that’s part of the divine creation. The rest of us are just one level above pond scum.

RASPBERRIES FOR LUNCH :-p

2007-10-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

A short raspberry entry. (as in blowing a raspberry or a Bronx Cheer) An outfit called Garden Harvest has come out with a line of chips that advertises “a half serving of fruit or vegetables (depending on the variety) in every serving.” A one ounce serving is 120 calories.

Uh, guys, I can have full serving of green beans with garlic, tomatoes and onions for about half the calories, and it’ll taste better. Or an apple, a whole apple. Or my baggie of fresh veggies and home-made cheese spread. Of a few pieces of dried fruit. And the complexity of the flavors of something that hasn’t been spindled, folded and mutilated is surprising and welcome.

Someone brought in a bag of the apple cinnamon ones to work. And frankly they’re pretty bad. They don’t really taste like apples or cinnamon and I find it hard to believe that there are real apples in the mix, but the label says that there is. Sorry, guys, I’m eating my lunchtime apple and those chips don’t taste anything like this. Actually the chips taste kind of like Applejacks cereal, only not as sweet.

Heck, for that calorie count I can have half a square of Lindt super dark chocolate and three or four small figs. Or some combination like that. Thumbs down all the way.

AN INCOVENIENT TRUTH

2007-10-14T21:14:00.000-07:00

We got out copy of An Inconvenient Truth this week. We sat down and watched it yesterday evening and didn’t get around to fixing dinner until almost seven thirty. And since the cats take their cue from us, they ate dinner late too. Basically fifteen minutes or so after the silver ware quits clattering they start showing up and starting the “I’m hungry, feed me, dance.”

I found the film interesting and compelling. But, then I read Earth in the Balance when it came out several years ago. And it scared the heck out of me then. And that was about ten years ago.

I get a kick out of reading about this DVD and this one. I had even more fun researching the backgrounds of the folks who made them. I’m not quite sure what qualifies Phyllis Schlafly as an expert on climate change. And two of the scientists named in the description are on the faculty of the same Alabama university. And while I might understand their fears about America losing some of it’s sovereignty to help fight global warming, I question how they don’t seem to be worried about threats to our sovereignty from multi national corporations. Oh, I forgot, most of the big multinationals are headquartered in the US and it’s the rest of the world that needs to be worried.

I can hear the complaints fifty years from now if the ice sheet on Greenland don’t fully melt and the oceans don’t rise up to twenty feet, “he was wrong, neener, neener, neener.” What at least some of these folks don’t realize is that a five foot rise would devastate most coastal areas. Most of Oregon’s beaches would be gone. And I’m not sure what would happen to our coastal artery, Highway 101. Some of the highway runs right along the coast, no further than fifty yards from the ocean in some places. Other parts of the road run along the cliffs. Undercut the cliff and bye bye highway.

And the CO2 doesn’t have to warm the climate to play havoc with the planet. The increased CO2 being absorbed the oceans is slowly increasing their acidity. Increased acidity may interfere with the life cycles of animals that need to form shells to survive. And many of those animals are a big part of the ocean food chain. An already stressed food chain.

We’re already facing water shortages from depleted aquifers here in Oregon, and two thirds of the state is high plateau and desert. He didn’t name the islands that have been evacuated already since they were only a few yards above sea level in the first place. Some critics fasten on studies that indicate that the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are disappearing more from lack of precipitation that warming. But why have the snows gone away? And they ignore the other glaciers that are disappearing too. In a few decades a certain national park will be the park Formerly Known as Glacier. It’s happening in Europe and South America too. And almost forty percent of the people on the planet are at least partially dependent on water melting from glaciers feeding the rivers they live on.

I’m one of those who tend to be err on the side of caution. I’d rather find out that we’d been too cautios and can ease up, rather than the other way around. And I believe that we have the ingenuity to come up with ways to solve the problem. The most fascinating graph is actually the one where he shows how we can lower CO2 levels using technology we already have. Trouble is, I think some of that technology isn’t in the hands of the folks who stand to lose the most money in the short run. Of course if it turns out that ol’ Al is even half right we all stand to lose in the short run and the long run.

So, I’d say, get the DVD, see it for yourself and make up your own mind. Nice thing about the net,it makes the research easier.

ROCKET FUEL

2007-10-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

There are several things that prompted the last two entries. One is watching our sister city of Eugene deal with trying to revive the core downtown area. Back in the early seventies when the downtown pedestrian mall concept was at its peak Eugene decided they had to have one too. They tore up the streets, got rid of the parking, put in some benches, a few food kiosks and a really ugly fountain and they were off to the races.

The planners made two big mistakes. They forgot or disregarded the fact that for at least six months out of the year it is chilly, foggy, rainy or snowy here. Especially during the peak shopping season around Christmas. The most successful downtown, unenclosed malls are either in the south or in cities that may get cold but don’t get rained on. Second, they green lighted the construction of Valley River Center. A nice enclosed shopping mall with lots of entrances, lots of stores, and plenty of parking. And let's not forget the warm and dry part.

This was followed by a giant sucking sound as the lights in down town Eugene blinked out. They tried, oh they tried to keep it going. Slowly sections of the mall were taken over by kids with too little to do and the down and out with nowhere to go.

Location, location, location was never truer than it is down here. We’re part college town, part lumber town and I doubt you can scrape up just over 200,000 people for the whole area. The next largest population hub is Corvallis/Albany. It’s just over thirty miles from here and we don’t have much of anything that they don’t have at home. The U of O has tried hosting a few rock concerts over the years. But, it’s funny how folks who don’t have a problem with all day tail gate parties with unlimited booze frown on drugged up rockers. Never mind that the cops would rather deal with stoned Dead Heads over boozed up football fans.

The Hult center is a nice little theater complex but it’s hardly a large scale destination site. Outside football, basketball and large scale track meets, there is very little to attract outsiders to the area for entertainment.

Over the years the down town limped along as local developers bought up sections of property. A business or two that had managed to keep going saw its quarters sold and the doors shut. The property bull dozed or shuttered. Most of the ones that managed survive owned their own property. It’s an eclectic mix, but not really the type of shops that high end developers want around.

Starting a couple of years ago the biggest property owners tried to muscle the others out and force a multi block, all at one go concept redevelopment of downtown Eugene. Surprise, surprise, the other kids didn’t want to play nice. The businesses that had stuck it out either didn’t want to sell or wanted prices comparable to the values the big boys were getting. The screams weren’t exactly deafening but they were there. The city council flirted briefly with using eminent domain but that idea fell faster than a cooling soufflé. Seems folks in this neck of woods aren’t any fonder of the idea of forcing the sale of private property to sell it other private parties than folks in other parts of the country are these days.

The high end organic supermarket, Whole Foods, was going to be one of the anchors. In spite of the fact that we have a very nice locally owned, similar chain right here in town called Market of Choice. The big boys discovered that a lot of folks are tired of seeing their tax dollars used to lure outside businesses that compete with our own local shops and stores. Whole Foods has since backed out, partly over who was going to build the needed parking structure.

The tug of war just ticks me off. There is nothing stopping the folks that own large chunks of downtown from developing the property they own except their own ambition and greed with a little encouragement from the minority on the city council. The business owners who have kept going through the bad years see no reason to let their property or businesses go for less than other guys want, and I can’t say that I blame them. And frankly those of us who live in Springfield, Santa Clara, and the suburbs need a damn good reason to anywhere near down town Eugene in the first place. Down to Earth is on 5th street and the Mac store is on 8th street. Those are my two reasons to go anywhere near down town Eugene. There is a thriving Saturday Market during a good part of the year but it’s in the park blocks, not down town.

Short of nuking the local shopping malls this is not going to change. Get in some good high density housing and I believe the rest will take care of itself. Quit trying to copy what other cities have done and find a uniquely Oregon way of solving the problem. Make the downtown the place to live, work and shop and maybe the rest of us will come by to catch a piece of the action.

IT'S NOT FAIR, PART 2

2007-10-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

The second case of the grumps isn’t confined to Oregonians, it’s the pervasive complaint that “I succeeded on my own, with no help from anybody, so it’s not fair for me to ask me, tax me whatever to support anyone else.” Oh puhleeze, give me a freakin’ break.

Let’s start with your parents, who probably should have their asses kicked for bringing such a whiny excuse for a human being into the world in the first place. Two people got together and brought you into the world, Creator/ress alone, knows why. And their parents and their parents, back to the first piece protoplasm that managed to copy itself. And “thought” it was such a good idea, it did it again, and again, until the universe was not only graced with daisies and blue whales, it was stuck with us.

The universe must have really smiled on your parents. They must have been able to afford everything from soup to nuts to insurance from the get go. They were probably filled with hopes and dreams and lucky for you, it worked out. I’ve lost count of the letters to the editor on the theme of people shouldn’t have kids if they can’t afford them.

As I said, you’re young, you’re full of hope, things work out for a lot of years and then things go wrong. They did for my family. Dad was disabled in his mid fifties and mom had to go to work. With a lot of luck, help from friends and family and a lot of hard work we managed to make it. But, a lot of things didn’t work out like they’d planned when they first started our family. And it’s not like you can return a kid once it’s born and things get tough.

Maybe there’s a good reason we haven’t received any visitor’s from among the stars. Any intelligent space faring nation would have planted a swarm of warningbeacons around our system all broadcasting some variation on “enter at your own risk. The natives on that little blue ball are armed and dangerous. If you do plan on visiting, please leave the relevant information on the monitor beacon so we can notify your next of kin, pod brother, clone,” however they handle things out there.

So show a little humility for cryin’ out loud. You didn’t come into the world on your own, you probably won’t go out on your own and in between just about anything you’ve managed to “create” is standing on so many shoulders that if it was a pyramid it would probably reach the sun.

And before I go any further, let’s talk about certain taxes and tax breaks. It’s a constant litany from the development lobbies. We’ve got this great idea for whatever, but we need a break on getting the property together. Tell you what, you buy it with a bond levy or something and sell it us at a good price. We need a break on the property taxes. We need a break on building roads, sewer lines…..whatever. I think I see a pattern here. When you need help, it’s an investment. When somebody else needs help, it’s a hand out.

Oh my, things kind of got sidetracked. Anyway every greatnew idea that someone comes up with is built on generations of work done by countless generations. Agriculture has an eleven thousand year or so history. Pottery and baskets to store the harvest in, almost as old. Plows and other tools to work the land are almost as old. Weaving and spinning several thousand years at least. And I’d love to know what went through somebody’s mind that allowed them to make the connections for weaving, spinning, looms and spinning wheels.

Smelting and working metals? Probably three to four thousand years of history. And how did someone come up with the idea of mixing two metals together to create a metal stronger than either one. Knocking rocks together? Hundreds of thousands of years. But, the fine stone work, a few thousand years. Metals good enough to build the machines that powered the industrial revolution come from the seventeen hundreds. The earliest calculators that led to computers came in the mid to late eighteen hundreds.

So, no matter what great new widget you claim that you came up with “all by yourself” show a little respect. Isaac Newton said something along the lines of “If I’ve seen further it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.” If someone manages to go further and better it’s because someone else has done ninety percent of the work.

IT'S NOT FAIR, PART ONE

2007-10-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

This entry is a bit along the lines of Lisa’s last entry, but a little different. In my case it’s disgust over a couple of fairly widespread ideas that some folks hold that really bug the hell out of me. I may have done entries on this earlier, I know I’ve thought about it. If I’m repeating myself, sorry. And my description of the hullabaloo of the attempts to tweak Oregon's land use laws is not exhaustive by any means. It would probably take an entire book to do it justice.

Number one. Back in the mid seventies Oregon put in place some fairly strict land use regulations. The idea was to protect farm and forest land from uncontrolled development. We didn’t want to end up as LA north. It was basically a one size fits all set of rules, and the way they weren’t handled wasn’t always fair. But, hey as we’re told from the age of five on, life isn’t always fair.

Having said that, Oregon is not an easy state to build in. Except for Astoria, on the mouth of the Columbia and Bend, just east of the Cascades, all the large cities, and I mean ALL of them are in the Willamette Valley. And most of them are between Salem and Portland. One set of rules for valley area and another for the rest of the state probably would have been a good idea. Heck seventy five percent of the state doesn’t have to worry about sprawl because it’s too dry, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter and too far from anywhere else for almost anyone to want to live there. It’s the other twenty five percent that’s causing the problems.

And I have to agree that some of the irritation could have been averted if a way had been found to handle “set asides.” After the owner buys a house or a business the local city or county decides that some kind of easement is needed. Forflood control, or greenway, or something, that in the opinion of the elected or appointed hired help, that is needed to protect a flood prone area, help wild life, etc. Basically the land owner is told, it’s still your land but you can only do certain things with it and we aren’t going to pay for the use of it. Some of these situations could have been handled with a little more tact and probably would have gone a long way to defusing some of the irritation.

The problem, as it was sold to voters when the land use laws were amended three or four years ago, was that people who bought property (speculated really) before the laws were passed couldn’t do what they intended to do when they bought the land. So, measure 37 was put on the ballot to correct this. The wording the ballot measure was basically let me use the land the way the law said I could use it when I bought it or pay me for the “lost value” due to land use restrictions. Never mind that there are twice as many people living in Oregon now as there were in the fifties and sixties. Never mind that most of the new growth is in the Willamette Valley. (because it’s the only part of the state that’s anywhere near level or has any water to speak of) Never mind that other people have built houses, farms, and vineyards since the land use laws were passed, had certain expectations based on the law, and would see their land values impacted, too. Repeat after me, “once you open a can of worms…….” Many of them are also saying “it’s not fair” too.

And I have to admit that this has impacted people in my own family. My great grandfather moved his family to Oregon in the late 1800’s. He bought property in the Newburg area. When he died the farm was subdivided between three sons. My granddad lost his farm in the twenties. The last of three pieces was sold recently after cousin Ernie passed away several years ago. The remaining section was too small to subdivide under the rules and too large for any single remaining member of the family to buy the others out. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I suspect that if any one of them had wanted to farm the place something could have been worked out with the others. Heck, Ernie hadn’t farmed the place for years. He’d leased the land to somebody else to work.

Anyway, we were shown ads with tearful oldsters who only wanted to build an extra house or two so their kids could live near them. Or they’d planned to sell the property as a retirement nest egg. Three guesses who paid for the ads. The timber companies, the real estate companies, and developers looking for new land to build on. After all large scale developers are in business to build things and the real estate people are in business to sell them. And the land use restrictions have been making it harder to make a buck. But, hey life isn’t always fair is it?

One of the first things that caused a lot of screaming from supporters of the measure was lack of portability. After all it was sold to the rest of us as “I want to do …….” Not I want to sell the land to somebody else to do, whatever. You’d have thought a bunch of long tailed cats had been turned loose in a crowded rocking chair factory from the caterwauling when that little detail came up.

Anyway after a couple of years of court challenges, 37 was upheld and the claims started pouring in. Incidentally, there were no provisions in the ballot measure for any kind of verification of loss of property value claimed or any funds set aside to pay these claims. And at least one claimant has admitted that they don’t really know if their land is worth what they’re asking but “hey I might as well try to get as much as I can.” And if you can get enough people bidding on a tract in certain parts of the state, the sky is pretty much the limit.

One out of state timber company that had bought out a small local company tried to put in a claim to develop nearly thirty thousand acres in the coast range. That was one of the claims that broke the camel’s back. It has beenwithdrawn, by the way. I know what the press release said, but I suspect that someone from the company came out and actually looked at the property involved. The company is headquartered back east and most of those thirty thousand acres probably looks pretty vertical to somebody not familiar with the state. Most of the coast range valleys are short, narrow, and ten or twenty miles of narrow, curve filled roads from anything that looks like a store, or much of anything else, now that I think about it. Lots of miles of roads with a drop off on one side, a mountain on the other and no, I repeat no, shoulders.

Anyway, last session the state legislature finally rediscovered it’s balls, sort of, and put a measure on the November ballot to fix some of the flaws. It green lights the small scale claims that were used to sell measure 37 in the first place. It also sets up a case by case framework for larger claims. For those the current owner will have to prove the land is worth what they’re asking for in lieu of the right to develop, take the availability of water and the impact on roads and schools into consideration, and if there is any justice force the developer to shoulder the cost of building the infrastructure needed for the new development.

Of course we’re being hit with the “it’s mine and I should be able to do what I want with it.” God, so many Oregonians sound like a bunch of spoiled brats. Hell, the land wouldn’t even be available if we hadn’t stolen it from the Native Americans in the first place.

After all, I’ve felt for a long time that “it’s not fair” that mom and I should have to subsidize the building of roads and sewer lines so a company whose business is to build mall space or houses and hope they can sell them and make a profit on it don't have to foot the bill themselves. Or, that unlike Washington, developers aren’t charged a surcharge on each lot to help build new schools for the new families coming in, and so on, and so on, until we reach infinity. But then, (all together now) “life isn’t always fair, is it?”

Geez, this got long and it's just number one, so I'll have to say……to be continued. (don't worry there's only two or three things that have really been bugging me every time I run across them) ;-) I mean besides the war, over population, the war, the Current Occupant, the war...............

SMALL COMPLAINT

2007-10-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

Oregon PBS did a little companion documentary to go along with Ken Burn’s documentary on WWII. I watched about half of it and had very mixed feelings. It was a series of interviews with Oregonians who were living in Oregon during the war and either worked stateside or were in the service. That part is interesting. But, the series had an unfinished feeling to it. The stories tended to skip around from the beginning of the war to close to the end. From home front to battle field without following any kind of time line or attempt to put the story in context.

The production jumped from stories about Japanese Americans who found themselves interned for the duration at the beginning of the war to a soldier who found himself fighting in Luxemburg. There was no attempt to say when he was in Luxemburg or where the little duchy is. It’s sandwiched between Belgium, France and Germany by the way. And I’d guess the fighting took place sometime between D Day and VE Day. I guess my inner obsessive compulsive would appreciate a little more clarity please. I haven’t watched much of the Ken Burns series for pretty much the same reason.

Although I did get a kick out of a story in the Oregon documentary about a nutrition expert who donned boots and stagged pants to see whether or not loggers could do their jobs eating peanut butter sandwiches instead of meat. He decided they couldn’t so the loggers were entitled to bigger meat rations. From stories I’ve heard about the depression years in Oregon I suspect that a lot of logs got cut on bean power. Or out of season venison and elk. Dad had a few stories about that too. Most of the old game wardens would look the other way if the hunter was feeding a family and kept it on the QT.

And there was the storyhe told about the feed store owning member of the local draft board up in the Newburg-Swiss Home area who boasted that he’d make sure all the Catholics would be drafted. Three guesses as to the leanings of most of his customers. He wasn’t in business at the end of the war.

Frankly the WWII section of Peter Jenning’s series on the 20th Century, the companion documentary to Band of Brothers, or the old Thames TV/PBS series The World at War are far better, in my not so humble opinion.

HEROES IN OTHERS EYES

2007-09-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

There were several things that prompted that last entry. It’s partly the date, partly watching the mini-series again. It’s definitely a Sunday afternoon not before bed time program. And partly something I ran across while checking the availability and price of Ken Buns new documentary series. You know how Amazon gives you suggestions to go with what you were looking for in the first place? Well one of them was a film that Clint Eastwood directed, Flags of Our Fathers. It was released earlier this year and apparently tanked at the box office.

It’s about the grinding, bloody battle for Iwo Jima and follows the men who raised that famous flag when the battle was over. And it follows them back to States for a War Bond fund raising tour. I haven’t seen the film but from the description it’s an examination of our need for heroes, who gets tagged and how some of the “heroes” think of the label.

I get a kick out of reading customer reviews, especially the one and two star ones. At least one of them definitely didn’t get it. For one thing, the bulk of the fighting in the Pacific was done by the marines, not the army. At least the service they belonged to right. Makes me wonder if the reviewer saw the film. And he complains about how these men kept “whining” that they weren’t heroes. They weren’t in their own eyes. They did a job. They were part of a team. And I wonder how it felt to safe at home making speeches to raise money while your buddies were going through the next meat grinder and the next.

Mom had a high school class mate who joined the marines. He died on a beach in the Pacific. He died on Tarawa. Just another battle in the history books. Another flag on a box.

And anyone who knows classic country music knows what happened to Ira Hayes. If you don't, do a seach for the Ballad of Ira Hays. Damn, I’m outta here.

HEROES

2007-09-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of the mini series Band of Brothers. It’s a hard series to watch, and not because the action in the film is about as close to real combat as most of us will ever get. These men were closer to each other than any blood brother could ever be.

Tomorrow is September 11, actually is on the east coast. There will be a lot of speeches about heroes tomorrow and I wonder if we really understand what a “hero” is. It’s a word that’s been tossed around a lot the past few years. Mostly by people who have an agenda to satisfy. Funny thing is, you don’t hear it much from the men and women in uniform. It’s the civilians with those agendas. Especially some individuals who never wore a uniform when they had the chance. They seem quick to provide others with the chance to earn the label they never earned for themselves.

There’s a documentary that goes with the mini series. Interviews with the men from Easy who still are still alive and willing to tell their stories for the camera. Sometimes they have to stop, after all these years the memories are still too fresh. D Day, the days after, Brecourt, Carentan, Bastogne, Market Garden, Landesberg, names the rest of us know only from history books or paintings.

There is a common thread that runs through all their stories. They don’t claim the label of hero for themselves. It’s always someone else. The brother that died at Monte Casino a few days before one man jumped on D Day. The men who never made it out of the planes. The soldiers who never even made it ashore. The heroes for these men were the brothers who came home under a flag or who rest under a marker somewhere in Europe.

At end the former company commander remembers a letter from a comrade. The writer’s grandson had asked “were you a hero in the war, grandpa?” “No, but I served with a company of heroes.”

So, while the word hero is being tossed around tomorrow, please take a moment to think about who your heroes are and why. We had a neighbor who served from day one to the end of WWII. He never talked about it much. He fought his way across North Africa, Italy and Southern France.

And while we’re at it, let’s remember those who could have earned the title and never seized the opportunity. They had better things to do with their time.

Tags: Band of Brothers, Heroes, WWII

SEPTEMBER 11

2007-09-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

With the anniversary of September 11 two days away, I’ve run across some interesting information. I don’t know if either of these earlier September dates have been mentioned in the press.

I came across both of these other September 11’s in Arundhati Roy’s collection of essays, War Talk. The first is September 11, 1922 was the date Great Britain announced its mandate in the former Ottoman province of Palestine. This followed the Balfour Declaration that supported the establishment of a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people. Part of the original madate was subdivided into what is now Jordan.

I haven’t been able to confirm that date of the 11 for this. I have found two references that confirm that the announcement was made in 1922 and that it occurred in September. One is in the Wikipedia entry on the Palestine Mandate and the other is in the book A history of the Arab Peoples. A passable history book on Arab Islam and the history of the area into the mid twentieth century. Passable, I never managed to finish it but it’s a fair reference as long as you double check. (I like Amazon because of the reviews. The book has been out since the nineties.) Just a personal comment. Of course the author is biased. I never met one that wasn't. That's probably why the title is A history rather than The history. I've also noticed that people usually complain of bias when the author doesn't agree with them, not when he/she does.

The other September 11 occurred in 1990. On this date, the first president Bush announced the decision to go to war with Iraq for the first time. Interesting.

EXPERTS 2

2007-08-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

I suspect that when Ms. Lappe was discussing experts she meant the ones who have managed to get a degree or some sort of certification that can be presented to prove that they’ve successfully passed the tests to prove that they know what earlier experts knew.

There are other kinds of experts. They don’t have degrees, they haven’t been certified. Their area of expertise may not be very wide. They know a river because they’ve fished it, worked by it, live by it, maybe took a boat down it a time or two.

Dad was a logger and he loved to tell stories about the job. During the late fifties and early sixties trained foresters went around the units telling the loggers to pull all the logs out of the rivers because it was bad for the fish and it was assumed that all the logs in the river were the result of trees being cut and allowed to fall into the streams. They pretty much ignored the guys who told them that some of those logs had been there for years and the best fishing was usually near the fallen logs.

Out came the logs, away went the fish partly because there were no shady places to hide, and no still places for insects to lay their eggs. So a few years later the forest service came back and said to put the logs back in. For the record, I don’t believe in logging next to streams, believe logging should be done very carefully, that a tree that’s allowed to fall on its own and rot is not wasted, and that clear cutting as it’s currently done is an abomination.

We had a nice little dust up last year between a forestry grad student at OSU and about half the faculty of said forestry school. The student was part of a study on recovery after a fire. Hehelped author a report that showed evidence that a forest will recover just about as fast if it’s left alone as it would if salvage logging took place. You would have thought that he was advocating drowning puppies and kittens. See, a lot of funding for the forestry school comes from the logging companies. And logging companies sell logs. That's another funny thing about the experts who get interviewed in the media or act as spokesmen for the status quo. Many were trained at schools funded by industry donations, have tenure on faculties at those schools, or work for think tanks funded by those industries.

I'll be the first to say that we need people with expert knowledge. The current administration is sad proof of what happens when party loyalty is put above needed expertise. We just need to remember that the expert opinion may come with a built in bias and that not all experts have degrees or certificates. Some of them have dirt under their fingernails and callouses on their hands. They may not dress very well and they may not even speak our language. Doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about if they could just be heard above the din of Fox News, political pundits, and the development at any cost crowd.

And I’ve noticed that the current administration will defer to “expert” opinion only when it agrees with the programs it’s pushing.

Never mind that abstinence only programs don’t work any better than any other sex ed program. Never mind that teaching to the test is geared to turning out good little cogs for the corporate machine. Never mind that people who actually live in other countries don’t really want to shop at WalMart. Never mind that the farmers who actually farm the land in third world countries just might know what grows best on their land. Never mind that these people would just as soon grow the food they eat instead of growing crops for export cash so they can then buy imported food. The list is endless.

One of the events that helped crystallize the Mahatma’s beliefs involved a famine in the Bihar province of India. Haven’t found an exact date but probably the late teen early twenties. Most of farmers were tenant farmers and they were required to plant part of their land in indigo for the dye. It was part of their rent payments. And many of the landlords were British. When chemical dyes came on the market, the market for indigo collapsed and the landlords refused to take the indigo when the rents came due.

Instead they seized the farmers’ food crops and livestock when they didn’t have the money to pay the rent and when there were no more crops or animals to take, the farmers’ seed, tools and other possessions were taken. The situation blew up in the governments' face, Gandhi spent some more time in jail using the time to plan on how to kick the Brits out of India and an agreement was reached to allow the farmers to plant part of their land in crops that couldn’t be taken.

And curiously, India which our elected hired help never really supported because the first government’s policies were a bit too “socialist” for out tastes, is doing fairly well. Well enough to be targeted by WalMart and the big multi national ag comapanies at least. While Pakistan, the result of the partition of the sub continent, has gone from dictatorship to dictatorship usually with US support. The country also appears on the verge of blowing up in our faces. As you sow has never been truer.

From academic experts to indigo, how’d that happen? Except to say that India is the next big market the capitalist experts have in their sights and many of the peasant groups are mobilizing to help each other find another way to go. They are the ones with their sandals on the ground. They are the ones that will get ground under the wheels of the “progress” the academic, European American experts are so “expert” at.

For the record I'd like to say that if India or any other country actually wants the Wal Mart shopping experience they have the right to try it. Personally, I'd rather be smeared with honey and staked out on an anthill, but hey that's just my opinion. But, it should be an Indian company, run by her people, with the profits staying in India. Not a bunch of American carpet baggers pulling everything they can out of another country.

EXPERTS

2007-08-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

Also starting to reread Frances Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. She had an interesting take on experts in her introduction. The experts we find quoted in the mainstream is almost automatically a servant of the status quo. That's what he or she is an expert in. It's very hard for them to think outside the definitions they are used to. They aren't likely to look for a new way of doing things because then they wouldn't be an expert anymore. Takes a lot of guts to say "hey, I don't know everything. What can you teach me?"

FROM THE DESK OF TEDDY ROOSEVELT

2007-08-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

Found this in the intro section of Overdo$ed America by Dr. John Abramson.

It is no limitaion upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing buisness under corporate form....they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations....Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

Theodore Roosevelt

PBS PROGRAM

2007-08-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

I'm assuming that all PBS stations will be carrying this program at 9 tonight. We keep hearing about how Muslims are all fanatics, fundamentalists and generally bad news. And many of them are. Want to know how we ended up with the fundamentalist survivors? Watch the PBS special on the Moorish kingdoms in Spain. Many of these kingdoms were reletively enlightened and fairly tolerant. Especially compared to their Christian counterparts further north. Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in "relative" harmony. At least they were allowed to live together.

The last independent Moorish kingdom was Grenada, and it fell in 1492. The year Columbus sailed for the so called New World Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the last 200,000 Jews from Spain. Many killed by the ships captains who charged rip gut fees for passage, sold into slavery, shipwrecked, or never even got the chance to book passage. They were killed on the way to the ports for the treasure they supposedly were carrying.

Something tells me we've inherited some seriously bad karma. The Moorish citizens of Spain were at least allowed to remain in Spain but were subject to perscution. Moorish converts to Christianity were in constant danger of being denounced to the Inquisition for practicing their old faith. The persecution finally led to a revolt in 1568 during the reign of Phillip II. The last survivors were expelled in the early 1600's. Funny how fanatics breed fanatics like flies hatching out of spoiled fruit.

ALERTS AND RECALLS

2007-08-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

Got a little start on Twilight of Empire. Got through the intro and the first chapter anyway. Fairly dense prose and a lot of things to chew on. Remember all those color coded security warnings that kept popping up before the 2004 election? Funny how every time Bush was down in the polls Homeland Security upped the security warnings. Anyway, there’s a peace movement named Code Pink. http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=3As a play on words it’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer. Effective, but so not subtle. But, subtle doesn't get you noticed, so hey go with what works.

Has anyone else heard of this group? If you haven’t, it doesn’t surprise me. The elected hired help and their corporate masters have learned a valuable lesson. You don’t have to go out of your way to censor speech on the local level. All you have to do is make sure it doesn’t make the evening news or the front page of the paper.

While the current head of Homeland Security keeps surfacing periodically with vague warnings of threats from overseas terrorists think about the actual threats we’ve faced the past year or so.

The people who used to live in New Orleans are still waiting for promised help to rebuild their city. Good thing the Caribbean Islands aren't part of the US. They get hit with severe storms far more often than the continental US does. They'd never get rebuilt. Granted they don't have as much to rebuild. But still, after two years.

Recalls of contaminated meat products don’t even make the headlines anymore. And e coli is so common in the beef supply that you’re safer treating any and all vegetables as if you were in a third world country. When in doubt wash it. If not in doubt, wash it anyway.

The FDA has announced that it’s scrapping the closure of several of its labs because of fears over imported food products, wheat gluten with melamine in it for example.

There’s just been a huge recall of commercially canned products processed in the US because of fears of botulism. I’ve never heard of botulism in commercial products (doesn’t mean it never happened, I just never ran across it). Botulism was something that happened with badly processed home canned products.

The latest recalls have parents digging through their kids toy boxes looking for long list of Chinese made toys with lead paint and little tiny easy to remove magnets. Among other problems.

I don’t dismiss the possibility of another attack in the US by overseas terrorists. But, those airplane hijacking psychos weren’t attacking people, they were attacking symbols. I don’t think they even gave the people on the planes or in the twin towers a second thought. The human casualties were a useful bonus. It upped the terror value of the exercise.

I’m not going to call the people running the businesses responsible for all these recalls psychos, but I don’t think they’re giving the people affected by these problems a second thought either.

TWILIGHT OF EMPIRE

2007-08-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Those who are familiar with the Rings movies would recognize Viggo Mortensen as the actor who played Aragorn. He's also something of an artist, photographer, and poet. He has also founded a small publishing house called Perceval Press. Their major output art books, cd's and poetry but they do a small number of politically oriented books. http://www.percevalpress.com/twilight.html?-session=pp_sc:CFC8744413ec7317ECUKs1E905D8

Follow this link to Twilight of Empire:responses to occupation. A collection of essays and photographs from Iraq and Afghanistan. The press just brought out the second edition of this book and believe in it enough to offer it for the cost of shipping. Which is $5.95 or so. I just got our copy today and mom's been leafing through it ever since. For anyone who is interested I just thought I'd provide the link. This is not a book you can read cover to cover in a few sittings. And be sure there's nothing breakable close at hand while you are working on it.

There is also a link under my favorite sites that will take you to their homepage. There are usually links to news stories and articles from US and foreign sources. More than a few are in Spanish. Not suprising when you consider that the founder speaks English, Spanish and Danish. And us stuck with the Current Occupant who has trouble communicating in one language. Have fun and watch out for your blood pressure.

GOOD WEEKEND

2007-08-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

On the whole a good weekend. Made a bit more progress on getting the yard in shape. One of my nephews lives down her while he’s in school and he put in a couple of good clean up sessions in the yard. He gets a good meal and about ten bucks an hour. He got the patio area around the crawl space in back set up so we can camouflage it. Relocated some of our surplice blocks and bought some landscape timbers to go on top of them. Make a nice set up for pots and garden art. It took some patience and doing one at a time but we got those babies where they needed to be.

Local nursery had a nice sale on their pottery so we were able to pick up some planters for our new creation. And picked up a couple of trellises to match the ones we already have. We’ll set those up on the other side of the house to screen part of that back yard. Honeysuckles or trumpet vines or some darn thing. We’ll worry about that next spring. Just getting them up will be job enough.

NN1 has been doing summer school this summer up in Corvallis. His little brother (who’s taller than him, I know the feeling and who will be known as NN3) came down this weekend to visit and they both came down for dinner. Other grandma lives all of two blocks from us so we had a nice party. Then between errands NN3 called to tell us they were on their way down again. Seems he’d brought graduation pictures to share and forgot to bring them Friday. Apparently he told sis he forgot to bring them and she told him to get them down P D Q. He brought down shots for both families and the grandmas did a good job of divvying up the goodies. He’s finally growing into his ears and hands. All five boys are going to be six foot or better. I feel like such a shrimp sometimes. Oh, and N3 will be going to school in Portland this year so we might actually get to see him more than once a year.

Weather’s great and it looks like it’s going to hold out for the low eighties for next weekend’s Scandinavian Festival. Four days of everybody claiming to be honorary Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes. The Broiler Festival, the Filbert Festival and some of the others have come and gone while this celebration of good food, wonderful crafts, singing, dancing and people watching keeps going strong. Looking forward to it.

WHAT COMES FIRST

2007-08-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

You can still find sections of the roads that the Romans built two thousand years ago. Clear away the brush, two thousand years of plant debris, replace a few stones and they could probably be used today. In some old cities you could probably use the old sewers and water systems. For all I know, some of the old towns still are using them.

Over five centuries ago craftsmen built cathedrals to the glory of God and perhaps to their own genius. Most of those cathedrals are still standing. Most of those cathedrals will probably still be standing five hundred years from now. If we don’t blow them up in a frenzy of self destruction or sheer stupidity.

A freeway bridge built forty years ago, pronounced deficient in 1990, collapses “unexpectedly.” The gist of state officials explanations is that “nobody told us it was that bad.” I don’t know what to do first; laugh, cry, scream or pray.

Laugh, because somehow I’m not really that surprised. Cry for the drivers who depended on that bridge and assumed it was safe, scream because I suspect it didn’t have to happen, and pray not only for the families left behind but for ourselves.

If your house has a leaky roof or termites you deal with the problem and repair the damage. Well, this country is our "house." It's time for the government (us) to tell the elected hired help to quit playing idealogical games and for us to get our heads out of the sand. The house is falling down around our ears.

TRUCE

2007-07-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

Bandit, number three and the youngest member of the group, has not been much of a lap cat. I think she's starting to adapt though. Not in the lap yet, but sharing a chair. And getting in the territory of the lap lovingest member of the menagerie. Lucky.

Although it might look like it, Bandit is not hissing or anything. Just keeping an eye on Lucky. Lucky probably spent ten minutes coming and going. Looking over the edge, going away, coming back and giving a general attitude of "I can't stand it."

After about ten minutes Lucky made her way to mom's lap. Bandit kept an eye out for the minute or two and then started sawing logs. Lucky is currently comfortably sprawled and the bandit continues to make z's. I expect that by the time winter is over we will have three lap cats. And that's just fine by me. Over the years it's been interesting to see the behavior change with the cats. Getting closer and closer to us. Lucky especially has turned into a "patter." She'll reach up and pat your cheek. And she does it very gently.

This is a great improvement. When I first got my Mac, which sits on a desk, she would give me so long and then give me a goose in the hip pocket. "You've played with the one eyed monster long enough. Play with me now."

PURSUING EXCELLENCE IN WHAT?

2007-07-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

This will be an itsy bitsy rant. There is a summer series on PBS called The Pursuit of Excellence. Now, this is PBS. But this isn’t the old educational PBS, this is the new and improved PBS. So, is this excellence in foreign languages? God knows we could use all the experts in Middle Eastern languages we can get. Excellence in mathematics? Nope. Excellence in any of the sciences? Sorry. Great designs for the next space shuttle? I’m kidding, right? Fantastic new musicians? RLMAO. New windmill technology for alternative energy? Go catch Climate Change on the Weather Channel. Anything that would actually help solve the huge pile of problems facing not only the United States, but the entire world? I'd laugh, but it's just to keep from crying.

And I have to admit that I couldn’t even dare watching any of this without throwing something at the TV. So far they’ve covered synchronized swimming, breeding ferrets and tonight, (drum roll, please) hairdressers. What is this, the Twilight Zone? Or is this when Arthur Dent discovers that earth was actually populated by the cast off real estate agents, phone sanitizers, massage therapists, and hair dressers from another planet?

And I don’t really have anything against synchronized swimmers, ferrets or hairdressers. I think ferrets are bright, cute and probably a lot of fun. And one would probably rule the roost at our house.

The grad schools in math and science in this country are busy. Trouble is a lot of the students aren’t from Oregon, Utah, the Dakotas, Kansas, Ohio, or Maine. They hail from China, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, or Brazil. Countries where people know that solving the problems that face us will take everyone working together. Just not in the swimming pool or the beauty shop. Remember the story about Nero and the fiddle?

:-)

2007-07-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Portland Oregonian cartoonist Jack Ohman's take on the Michael Vick fiasco. Per the sports section this morning, the NFL has told Mr. Vick not to report to the Falcon's training camp at this time. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

PLUSES AND MINUSES

2007-07-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Just ran into some bumps in the road this week. The main one involves my historically sensitive skin. There are times when I wish I had a hide more like, say a pumpkin rather than a peach. Usually lots of showers and talcum powder keep me fairly happy. Occasionally things get out of hand (for reasons I’ve never been able to catalog) and I end up with an “irritation” in an area you really don’t want irritated. And it got out of control. Didn’t help that we had an office meeting this week. And the usual location is literally two buildings over and about a block away. Like an idiot I soldiered on, by Friday I was seriously sore. Rats. Shot this weekend to hell.

The marathon knitting session is over. Managed two shawls in two and a half weeks. Interesting thing, nobody has heard of prayer shawls or the ministry some churches and small groups have. Added a couple of cards with an explanation of “what this is.” Hopefully a couple of people will end up with big fuzzy hugs and maybe somebody else will try to do it too.

Spent some time Sunday making a frame for the card. Went to website for the Lion Brand Homespun yarn I love to use. Used the pictures of the different yarns and Photoshop Elements to craft the frame. This isn't all the colors but it's a good representaion of the colors available. Thought it would go well with the shawls.

Totally pissed off with the story of the dog fighting quarterback from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Atlanta. Yes, I can understand that he hasn’t been convicted of a crime yet. But, this happened on his property. Even if he never bought or fought a dog hewas involved. Either that or he’s guilty of terminal stupidity if he tries to claim he didn’t know what was going on. Rather than demonstrating in front of the Falcons headquarters maybe the fans should announce that they’re boycotting the team until the SOB is at least suspended. I wonder if part of the problem is the whole macho sports culture in this country. We had a problem in Portland a few years ago with a Trailblazers player and dog cruelty charges. Also OSU football players and rape charges-over several seasons. (This was a few years ago) A culture devoutly to be avoided. But while it makes so damn much money involved these turkey’s aren’t going to be held accountable for anything.

Two things that I simply can’t wrap my brain around. One, how can anyone treat an animal this way? Either fighting them or using other animals “bait?” I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. Second, the supporting stories about police raids have some interesting details. The spectators manage to escape but property gets left behind. Including children’s items. These jerks are bringing their kids to these “contests.” I definitely don’t get that.

The flowers are beautiful, the beans are growing, and we’ve gotten our first tomatoes. Mom lucked out and managed to get the tail end of the cherry crop for canning. If you buy seventeen pounds of cherries to can you will handle every last cherry before you’re done. But, they will taste really good in January.

On the whole there are more plusses at the end of the week than minuses. I can be thankful for that.

CUTTING THROUGH THE LAW

2007-07-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is another wonderful passage from A Man for all Seasons. This one has to do with the law. The characters include Sir Thomas, his wife Alice, his daughter Margaret, future son in law William Roper (in the course of the play he goes from enthusiastic Lutheran back to enthusiastic Catholic), and Richard Rich. I’m not sure if the actual Richard Rich was quite as morally slippery as he is portrayed in the play. Here he is a young academic seeking preferment and not unwilling to sell out a friend to obtain it. Sir Thomas is still Lord Chancellor and could order someone arrested. Or at least very strongly suggest it.

Rich: I would be steadfast!

More: Richard, you couldn’t answer for yourself even so far as tonight.

(Rich exits)

Roper: Arrest him!

Alice: Yes!

More: For What?

Alice: He’s dangerous.

Roper: For libel; he’s a spy.

Alice: He is! Arrest him.

Margaret: Father, that man’s bad.

More: There’s no law against that.

Roper: Yes there is. God’s law.

More: Then God can arresthim.

Roper: Sophistication upon sophistication.

Me: (I think he’s referring to philosophical hair splitting. In fifth century BC Athens sophists were known as itinerant intellectuals who used verbal arguments to convince people of their arguments. Some have come down in the writings of their antagonists as using verbal trickery to achieve their successes).

More: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper the law. I know what’s legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

Roper: Then you set man’s law above God’s!

More: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact-I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no voyager. But, in the thickets of the law, there I’m a forester. I doubt if there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God.

Alice: While you talk he’s gone!

More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So, now you’d give the devil the benefit of law?

More: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get at the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws-man’s laws, not God’s-and if you cut them down-and you’re just the man to do it-d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the devil the benefit of law, for own safety’s sake.

It’s that last sentence that’s stayed with me since I read the play for the first time. And doesn’t the “cut down all the laws that keep us from…….” sound painfully familiar?

Tags: THOMAS MORE, ENGLISH HISTORY, THE LAW

BUSY CARTOONIST

2007-07-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Jack Ohman of the Oregonian has been busy since the Fourth of July.

The Mike Royko of cartoonists.

Need I say more. Pictures are indeed worth paragraphs.

Images downloaded from the Go Comics Website.

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE, AGAIN

2007-07-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

To quote Patrick Henry in the PBS series, Liberty; “I begin to smell a rat.” We were inundated last week with stories about claims on behalf of the Vice President that his office doesn’t have to comply with certain executive orders issued by the Current Occupant earlier in his administration. The orders require reports on how offices within the executive branch handle sensitive materials. The reason for non-compliance, the vice president is not part of the Executive branch. Hunh?

When the constitution set up the office of vice president, it assigned the occupant of the office two responsibilities. To become president if necessary, and to act as president of the senate. And as president of the senate, the Veep has only one responsibility. To cast the tie breaking vote if the floor vote is tied. Ergo, the argument went, the Veep is really part of the legislative branch. The claim wasn’t pressed that hard once the uproar started. It pretty much faded by the end of the week. But, oh my, in the meantime, most of the media and the cartoonists had a field day with their outrage at this ridiculous claim. And most of us overlooked something.

We’re dealing with an administration that has media manipulation down to a science. I’m betting that Dick Cheney never believed that claiming that the VP is part of the legislative branch was going to fly very high. So while we’ve all been desperately trying to keep track of the purple pea in the shell game where did all other colored peas go? And I got taken in too. I forgot that the more outrageous the claims this administration makes, the less likely it is that they really believe them and the more likely they’re hoping we’ll react like one of Pavlov’s dogs when it smells a nice, juicy steak. And most of us did.

I’m not sure which administration opinion of the American citizen is more contemptible. The apparent assumption that most Americans would actually believe this crap? Or the cynical (and apparently accurate) assurance that the attention of majority of the media and the American people can be diverted, again? By then, what’s really being hidden has been successfully consigned to a closet in the basement. Preferably behind a moat swarming with hungry piranas and seeded with land mines. And if we get too close to the hiding place, another off the wall claim is made and the pack is off again, barking noisily and industriously up the wrong tree. Again.

Frankly, it’s getting damned embarrassing.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME

2007-07-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

Realized while I was catching up with various journals this morning that July 4 was the third anniversary of this little piece of the web. What a ride it's been. And will continue to be.

And I've neglected to thank Kas for nominating me for the Thinking Blogger Award and Cin for mentioning me when she was journaling about Rocking Girl Blogers. Thanks ladies. We'll keep the torches lit.

I DON'T SEE ANY IMPROVEMENT

2007-07-06T19:30:00.000-07:00

Goddess I seem to be in a crappy mood tonight.

AND YOU SAY THAT THE BATTLE IS OVER

And you say that the battle is over
And you say that the war is all done
Go tell it to those
With the wind in their nose
Who run from the sound of the gun

And write it on the sides
Of the great whaling ships
Or on ice floes where conscience is tossed
With the wind in their eyes
It is they who must die
And its we who must measure the loss

And you say that the battle is over
And finally the world is at peace
You mean no one is dying
And mothers dont weep
Or its not in the papers at least

There are those who would deal
In the darkness of life
There are those who would fear down the sun
And most men are ruthless
But some will still weep
When the gifts we were given are gone

Now the blame cannot fall
On the heads of a few
Its become such a part of the race
Its eternally tragic
That that which is magic
Be killed at the end of the glorious chase

From young seals to great whales
From waters to wood
They will fall just like weeds in the wind
With fur coats and perfumes
And trophies on walls
What a hell of a race to call men

And you say that the battle is over
And you say that the war is all done
Go tell it to those
With the wind in their nose
Who run from the sound of the gun

And write it on the sides
Of the great whaling ships
Or on ice floes where conscience is tossed
With the wind in their eyes
It is they who must die
And its we who must measure the loss
With the wind in their eyes
It is they who must die
And its we who must measure the cost

Words and Music by David Mallett

This song appears on two of John Denver’s albums, and was first released on The Autograph album, and has also been released on The Wildlife Concert album as a live track. This was released in the nineties and frankly it hasn’t gotten any better. They just can’t compete with Paris and Brittany. Soldiers are dying and families are crying but it only makes the news when the casualties are local. The Republican senator from Oregon has his faults, but at least he calls the families of the soldiers from Oregon and talks to them for awhile. It’s something at least. Not enough, but it is something.

HE DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS

2007-07-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

So the Current Occupant believes that sending "Scooter" Libby (Lord a guy with gray hair going by Scooter in public :-P) to prison is too harsh. This from the man who signed off on a record number of death penalty convictions while he was governer of Texas. Including a defendant with an IQ in the seventies and the communication skills of a seven year old and a defendant whose lawyer kept falling asleep in court. Frankly words fail me.

EXCERPT

2007-07-01T20:09:00.000-07:00

Wolsey: Very well then.......England needs an heir; certain measures, perhaps regrettable perhaps not, there is much in the church that needs reformation, Thomas. All right regrettable! But necessary to get us an heir. Now explain how you as Councilor of England can obstruct those measures for the sake of your own, private, conscience.

More: Well.....I believe that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Exchange between Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.

These lines may be more true now than when Robert Bolt wrote this play in the fifties. I hauled out my copy of the film over the weekend. How often do we hear, "I don't really agree with this but we need to............................" only to find that events don't go the way we thought they would, that we we thought was true wasn't, or that we just plain screwed up.

A prosecutor insists on keeping a rape case going with no good evidence and finds himself not only having to drop the charges but sanctioned, disbarred, and facing a civil suit. Members of congress give public support to a war either out of honest belief, party loyalty, or fear of being labeled "soft on terror." Now they spend their energy trying to explain away their earlier support and the war goes on. We're faced with candidate after candidate, all trying to be everything to everyone only to be seen as empty shells. They only succeed in being no one to no body.

For some reason the words just aren't coming tonight. So, I'll leave it with this. You either follow your conscience or you don't. And I truly believe that every time you don't a little piece of yourself gets chipped away. Do this often enough and there won't be any you left.

THIS IS SCARY

2007-06-28T20:16:00.000-07:00

Does this scare anyone else as much as it does me?

NBC Sting Shakes Up Texas Town

By GRANT SLATER,

Posted: 2007-06-28 18:37:41

Filed Under: Crime News, TV, Law, Nation

MURPHY, Texas (June 28) - A sting in which police teamed up with "Dateline NBC" to catch online pedophiles was supposed to send a flinty-eyed, Texas-style warning about this Dallas suburb: Don't mess with Murphy.

Instead, it has turned into a fiasco

One of the 25 men caught in the sting, a prosecutor from a neighboring county committed suicide when police came to arrest him. The Murphy city manager who approved the operation lost his job in the ensuing furor.

And the district attorney is refusing to prosecute any of the men, saying many of the cases were tainted by the involvement of amateurs.

"Certainly these people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but the fact that this was all done for television cameras raises some questions," said Mayor Bret Baldwin.

It is the first time in nine "Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator" stings across the country in the past year and a half that prosecutors did not pursue charges.

"Dateline" has made prime-time entertainment out of contacting would-be child molesters over the Internet, luring them to a meeting place, and videotaping their humiliating confrontations with reporter Chris Hansen.

"Dateline" works with an activist group called Perverted Justice, which supplies adults who troll Internet chat rooms, posing as underage boys and girls, and try to collect incriminating sex talk.

City manager Craig Sherwood approved such an operation in this well-to-do community of 11,000 after being approached by "Dateline" and Perverted Justice, but he never informed the mayor or the City Council. He said secrecy was necessary for the sting to be effective.

Over four days in November, 24 men were arrested at a two-story home in one of Murphy's newer neighborhoods after allegedly arranging to meet boys or girls there.

Some other suspects contacted Perverted Justice decoys online but never showed up at the house. Among them was Louis Conradt Jr., an assistant prosecutor from neighboring Kauffman County, who allegedly engaged in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy.

As police knocked at his door and a "Dateline" camera crew waited in the street, Conradt shot himself.

His sister, Patricia Conradt, told the City Council that police acted as "a judge, jury and executioner that was encouraged by an out-of-control reality show."

Then, last month, Collin County District Attorney John Roach dropped all charges. He said that in 16 of the cases, he had no jurisdiction, since neither the suspects nor the decoys were in the county during the online chats.

As for the rest of the cases, he said neither police nor NBC could guarantee the chat logs were authentic and complete.

"The fact that somebody besides police officers were involved is what makes this case bad," said Roach, who was informed of the sting in advance but did not participate. "If professionals had been running the show, they would have done a much better job rather than being at the beck and call of outsiders."

As details of the suicide emerged, Murphy's mayor, City Council and most of its residents learned for the first time that potential molesters were being luring to their city. Many were furious.

"They can chase predators all they want, but they shouldn't do it in a populated area with children, two blocks from an elementary school," said Lisa Watson, 33, who lives down the road from the sting house and has three children and another on the way.

Bryan Whorton, who lives with his wife and baby across the street from the house, said his neighborhood was put in danger. Cars sped up and down the street and police sprinted from hiding spots, guns drawn, to arrest suspects, he said. One suspect dropped a bag of crack, Whorton said.

"This is a family community. It didn't look kosher at all," he said.

Two weeks ago, the City Council voted to buy out the city manager's contract for $255,000.

NBC's Hansen said Murphy is the only place the show has encountered such resistance.

"I don't want to get involved in the DA's business or the police business," he said. "I can tell you in the other locations, these issues did not come up."

Eric Nichols, a Texas deputy attorney general, said that when law enforcement authorities pull an Internet sex sting, officers posing as decoys follow strict rules. Detailed chat logs are kept to ensure that "sex talk" is initiated by the potential predator. That way, a defendant cannot claim entrapment.

Eric Chase, a defense attorney specializing in sex crimes, said stings are the job of police, not TV crews. "Police should not be abdicating a very important function to either private organizations or entertainment organizations," he said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

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The story doesn't say what kind of conviction rate that the earlier stings netted. But, frankly something like this scares the hell out of me. A private advocacy group links up with the entertainment industry to out people "probable" pedophiles on network television. What the #$%$$#%!!!!! Ok. they probably are guilty. Probably, not are, and with a tainted chain of evidence an ethical prosecutor can't go to court and get a conviction that will stand up on appeal.

And what happens down the road if folks who believe in alternate religious expression or radical politics get the same treatment. I try to follow up most comments on my journals. What happens if the followers of a modern day Cotton Mather decide to try to out the neo pagans and the wiccans. Far fetched? Maybe. Check out Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here."

I'm afraid these guys would show executions if they could get away with it. Or at the very least water boarding.

TAKING THINGS IN ORDER

2007-06-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

I have a co worker who is heavily involved with the local Relay for Life cancer fundraiser and the events that go with it. If I sound a little distracted over the next couple of weeks or so it’s because every free minute (when I’m not baking, sleeping, cat comforting, doing my laundry, etc, etc, etc.) I’m planning on knitting as fast as my ten little fingers can manage. Thank heaven for big needles and chunky yarn. The goal is two prayer shawls for the auction at the fund raiser dinner.

Trying to come up with a description of the how and why of these shawls got me to thinking about some of the half baked ideas still popular among some of our elected hired help and the freaky deekies on Fox and talk radio. Still popular in spite of the unlearned lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the so called war on terror. Especially the idea that each of us is autonomous. Individuals can stand alone. Our country can stand alone. We should stand alone. Our country should stand alone. We can do it on our own with no help or support from anyone else.

Obviously too many of these individuals have never knitted, crocheted, baked, sewed, canned or tried to raise a garden. In fact, I suspect that most of us are insulated from the “how” of something is created in a way that used to be true of only the very rich who could afford to pay someone else to do these things, preferably out of sight and out of mind.

When I knit a shawl the first stitch is just as important as the last. In fact I couldn’t get anywhere without it. And if you don’t cast off and tie off the last stitches properly the whole thing will unravel. Every stitch depends on every other stitch. If I drop a stitch along the way it affects every row below it and throws off the pattern of every row after it.

Ever had bread, especially white bread, where the salt was forgotten? It’s awfully bland, isn’t it? And you can’t add if after the bread is baked and expect it to be successful. And don’t even think about forgetting the yeast in the recipe. You can follow every other step in the recipe and all you’ll have in the end is a brick. And the yeast has to go in at the start, you can’t get good results with certain types of bread without it anymore than you can leave out the flour or water.

I’ve miscounted the amount of sugar in a jam recipe and ended up with very good strawberry syrup. Useful, but not what I planned on. And you can’t sew a shirt, leave out part of the pieces and expect to get anything that looks like a shirt. Each piece depends on the others and they really need to go together in order.

How successful will a garden be if you try to plant the seeds before the ground is prepared? Can you harvest a crop before the seeds are planted? Some crops even work together. Before farmers knew what fertilizer was, they knew to rotate their crops. Grains one year, legumes like beans the second year, and allowing the cows or sheep to graze in the field the third year. Maybe they didn’t know why it worked, but it did.

Maybe part of the problem is that too many of us don’t make or grow something, anything, from beginning to end anymore. We pay someone else to do the work, raise the crop, create the garment, and all we see is the final, completed product. In the end too many of us have no more idea of the steps that were followed than a fish knows about astronomy.

REMEMBER WHEN

2007-06-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

Remember when television dared to poke a stick in the eye of the powers that be? In spite of network attempts at censorship. Remember what helped get the Smothers Brothers cancelled? Now? It's enough to make you very, very angry.

Of course this was before the fragmentation of the communications industry that allows some of us to float through without ever hearing something we disagree with or God/dess forbid encourages us to use our brains for something besides keeping our skulls from collapsing. Who needs a censor when the protests can't be heard above the din of the empty headed competition.

Waist Deep In The Big Muddy

by Pete Seeger 1963, planned for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 but CBS objected to the blacklisted Seeger making obvious references to the"big fool" in the White House, finally sung by Seeger on the Comedy Hour in 1968 as the finale in a medley of anti-war songs

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

Words and music by Pete Seeger (1967)
TRO (c) 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, NY

AGAIN, AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.........

2007-06-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Lisa over at http://journals.aol.com/mlraminiak/ComingtotermswithMiddleAgehas been chronicling her attempts to hire a reasonably competent crew for her café. There isn’t a lot to choose from in a small town. But, heck how can you expect a responsible work ethic from the young people when you can’t find it so many older adults including the elected hired help.

The man Garrison Keillor calls the Current Occupant wouldn’t have his New England/Texas hybrid ass behind the Oval Office desk if his last name wasn’t Bush. Heck, if his name wasn’t Bush, I’m betting the party hierarchy wouldn’t have touched him with a ten foot pole. His beleaguered and barely competent attorney general wouldn’t have the job if he wasn’t an ol’ buddy of the shrub. And Rumsfeld with his famous “you go to war with the army you have.” That may be true if you’re attacked and have no choice. In that case you hang on as best you can, choose your battles and build the army you need. This administration CHOSE to invade Iraq with “the army we had” and the best set of rose colored glasses our tax money could buy. On the way to Baghdad and the “rose petal” welcome they trashed the reputations of anyone who dared to disagree with them.

Story after story is coming out the offices charged with rebuilding Iraq of loyalty to Bush and the Republican Party being placed far ahead of any kind of competence. The mess in the Attorney general’s office is rooted in placing loyalty above ability. Bush appointees have edited reports by government scientists to make sure they toe the party line. Even though the people doing the editing have little or no expertise with the material they’re rewriting. It’s like hiring an experienced auto mechanic and telling him/her their next job is baking a seven layer wedding cake. Ain’t gonna happen, girlfriend.

Anyone else cut back on their meat and fish intake because of contamination by bacteria or pollution only to wince over the stories of contaminated vegetables or drinking water. I guess the advice for eating and drinking in third world countries holds true here, too. Boil the water, wash the fruit and veggies, and make sure the meat is well done.

How many of us have purchased something that looked good in the store and got it home to find it falling apart when we use it or wash it. How many talking heads have we seen on the news explaining the latest meat, vehicle, or drug recall with “we’re doing it but we aren’t taking responsibility for the problem.”

I suspect that I’m not the only one looking at the current crop of presidential hopefuls and going “is that all there is?” Actually the emotion is closer to “IS THAT ALL THERE IS!!!!!!” Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

One of my favorite films is Apollo 13. For a lot of reasons if only to hear “tell me this isn’t a government program” when the flight director finds out that the CO2 scrubbers in the command module and the LEM are not, repeat, not interchangeable. There is an attitude of we can do this. Of taking what could be a disaster and doing what you can with it. Fueled with courage, optimism, training, large amounts of coffee and a lot of cigarettes. And you can make a square peg fit in a round hole, if you have enough pieces to work with.

There’s a wonderful scene that starts with a large box of stuff being dumped on a table followed with “we gotta make this fit in the hole meant for this, using nothing but that (indicating the pile of equipment on the table), ……….ok, let’s build a filter.”

Of course this is a story about NASA in the early seventies. Remember the stories of the space craft that crashed on Mars because somebody forgot to check whether the ship board computer was measuring distances in meters rather than miles. :-P While the computer on the ground was programmed in the opposite system. Big difference between a kilometer and a mile. Big crash, red faces all around and no real explanation for who was responsible for checking the details. Probably the same guys who didn’t make sure scrubber components were interchangeable.

Failure is still not much of an option.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

2007-06-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

“Peace of some sort was overdue; for some years artists had trouble getting about at all, what with Spartans marching on Thebes, then Thebans marching on Sparta. Everyone was for Thebes in the early days. But since all her victories, the old neighborly jealousy had waked up in Athens; and we had an alliance with Sparta now. I suppose this was expedient, but it disgusted me; it is things like this that make a man like me leave politics to the demagogues. The one good thing was that those dour-faced bullies needing to ask our help proved they were down to third roles for good and would never play lead again. They had been thought invincible, only because they were in war training from the cradle to the grave; but the Great War went on so long that other Greeks too got this professional experience, though against their will. By the end of it a good many had borne arms since they were boys, and barely knew another calling. So, like actors short of work, they went on tour. There were still nearly as many wars going on as drama festivals, and all of them needed extras.”

From Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo. The main character is an actor looking back on his career. A career that started near the end of nearly two generations of civil wars in ancient Greece that ended what we call the Golden Age.

I chuckled when I read it the first time and it’s so well written. And then I thought about it and started making some comparisons, and then I wasn’t laughing.

NOT REALLY SAD

2007-05-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

It's funny, I don't feel sad when we go up to the cemetary where dad is. He's with family and friends. His closest friend is just little way back. I remember Earl stopping to overnight when I was little and he drove a truck for Bird's Eye. And I remember how dad used to tease him about being left handed. He always got stuck on the end of the row of guys working the harvest. If he wasn't careful he'd get his tools caught in the one next to him.

All the little roads still have the names of whoever was working the land when they were laid out. And they change every little bit. You cross the road and Heaton road becomes Jacquith road. There's even a Heaton Creek. My grand dad lost his place during the twenties. I don't think he really a very good business man. But he was the one everyone called when they needed a steer butchered or their hops dried. He rented a place and ran a small dairy while grandma worked for the phone company. In a one person office. Half the kids in town knew how to run the switchboard. Even came in handy for Earl when he got sent overseas as a radioman. Those old army radios were nothing more than miniature cord boards. Surprise, he actually had some idea how to work one.

The road over Chehalem Mountain is paved now. It was gravel back in dad's time. And the road up the mountain coming out of Newburg still has more curves in it than a drunken Boa Constrictor. Imagine trying to drive it at night, in the fog with the little slit head lights they allowed during the wartime black out.

If I feel sad when I'm up there it's because I never got a chance to meet the man. He was gone long before dad met mom. But, as long as the stories are told and remembered he's never really gone.

HOLIDAY WEEKEND

2007-05-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Swung by a local bookstore and picked up a couple Mary Renault’s Greek history novels. Looks like I’ll have to do a little on-line shopping to get the series in the right order. She ended with Alexander the Great, but that’s what they had on the shelves. What I’ve read is excellent, and I’m looking forward to reading them in the order the history takes place. Sometimes I think I’ve learned more history reading well written and researched novels than I have reading history books. At least had more fun.

Spent part of the weekend going up to the cemetery near Portland where dad is. And my great grandparents, grandparents on his side and a few assorted cousins. If it had been clear we probably could have seen Mt. Hood through the trees. After we were done doing the flower thing, we got out our lunch and were going to hang out in the car for a bit before heading home.

We’d noticed a couple going along the family line and noticed they’d stopped at headstone near dad. We talked for a bit, turned out it was cousin and his wife. Hadn’t seen the man for a good thirty years. If we’re lucky his sister will call one of these days and I can pick her brains about some of the family history. When they put up great grand dad’s marker they forgot to put in his middle name or initial. It’s surprising how many John Heaton’s there are who had wives with the initial H. And I don’t know if Hortense was her first or middle name. Anyway, we had a chance to catch up a little.

We stopped at a nursery that specializes in roses on the way back. It’s just outside the little town of St. Paul, Oregon. Fell in love with the miniature roses. You can have a whole garden in an eight by ten patch. And we did leave with three plants. Three Stella D’Oro day lilies that is. LOL The roses will have to come later. We’d been planning to add the nice little yellow day lily to the mix and were surprised to find such nice plants at a rose nursery of all places. They do have beautiful roses planted there though. And they sell what are called “bare root” roses not grafted hybrids. Takes a little longer to get the size plant you wantbut it’s worth the wait. Even some of the miniatures have all the scent you’d want and some of the old fashioned English climbers and ramblers, marvelous. And they sell online. http://www.heirloomroses.com/ Checking out the link is worth it just to look at all the pictures. They have some great ramblers, but we don't have room for anythng that big.

Other than that, caught up on the laundry, did some baking, harassed the cats, enjoyed the sunshine today, and the extra day off. I’ll have to try to pack at least four days work into three because we’re heading out on Friday for nephew number three’s graduation. He’s giving the valedictorian speech. Maybe we’ll actually get to here him string more than a half dozen words together at a time. Either that or it’s going to be a really short speech. This young man gives a whole new meaning to the word, laconic. J

It’ll be a fast trip for me. Over on Friday, drive back on Sunday. Mom may or may not be staying for rest of the week. Chris is starting summer term at Corvallis in June. She might be able to hitch a ride with him. We’ll figure something out, we always do.

A BUSY CARTOONIST

2007-05-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

Jack Ohman, who draws editorial cartoons for the Portland Oregonian has been a busy boy this week.

His take on the late and not so great Jerry Falwell. Is that expression priceless or what?

And the bridge is out, slow motion train wreck of scandals involving former

and current Bush appointees. And the local Eugene paper used almost all of it's editorial panel on the opinion page to comment on the attorney generals' unfolding laundry list of assaults on the constitution he's sworn to uphold. With friends like these the constitution doesn't need any more enemies. Way to go Jack!

CACOONS

2007-05-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Right now I’m feeling like that painting called “the Scream

Cin made a good comment about my last entry. If we aren’t careful our children aren’t going to know how protest. We’re already so fragmented that I’m honestly surprised when anyone does mount a protest about anything. But, the first time a group agreed to hold their protest in a designated “free speech” zone, the first nail went in the coffin. Whenever we agree that we need a permit to hold a rally on public property, our property, there goes another nail. The constitution doesn’t say anything about speech only being free if it takes place in a certain area.

Once upon a time (sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale) the market place was public space. You actually had to interact with people to get what you wanted and there were no private security guards to tell you to shut up if the discussion got a little heated. Of course you might end up in a brawl but better a bloody nose than scared rabbit silence.

There were town squares with the obligatory statue of a local hero or a slightly rusty cannon, cliché I know but it was public property where the public could meet and speak. But, the new strip mall cities in the southwest don’t have town squares and the market place has been replaced by private merchants on private property.

We can get in our big ol SUV’s with the tinted windows and drive to the store or the mall. We can avoid making eye contact with any one, in fact a lot of us are probably afraid to in case we honk off some nutcase. We park and go inside, again basically ignoring anyone around us. We do our business. We pick out our packaged, plastic wrapped, pre cut, pre-measured, pre weighed goodies and most of the time there isn’t a clerk in sight. In some stores you can check out and bag your purchases on your own. You don’t even need to interact with a checker. You can go back out to your oversized chariot, drive home and never interact with another human being. Home to our environmentally controlled cocoons and our pre packaged music and entertainment. God, I’m a surly bastard this afternoon.

If you know even one or two of your neighbors it’s a miracle. Heaven knows I don’t want my neighbors knowing about everything I do or get a gander at everything on my reading list but how can we get enough voices together to be heard when we can’t even get together?

THOUGHTS ON THE WEEKEND NEWS

2007-05-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, or at least hope you’ve heard it all. Something or someone comes along and knocks you upside the head. Ran into it again this weekend. Frankly, I’m not sure whether to post this on the political side or the religious side. First thought is political, but to be frank this blind faith the onward and upward benefits of capitalism and world trade smacks more than a little of a religious faith instead of being something you can actually prove. Guess I’ll file this under political for now.

Since the Stryker brigade shipped out of Fort Louis earlier this year, the military has been shipping supplies overseas through the port at Gray’s Harbor Washington. Naturally this has attracted anti war demonstrators. As of the last weekend the cops were trying to contain the demonstrations to an area away from the port entrance. The reason given by the spokesman for the cops was that it was “for their own protection.” Since there was no mention of counter demonstrations, I have to ask: who or what are they in danger from? The cops? Didn’t hear anyone else mentioned. Sorry Mr. Policeman, you are a necessary cog in the preservation of the status quo. After all, you’re first in line to keep the people paying the bills from objecting about how the money is being spent.

Also, speech that has to take place in a restricted area can hardly be considered free. Actually, as soon as you have to ask permission to speak or assemble, you can forget about freedom of anything. Hm, I seem to be becoming a closet anarchist.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is going down the tubes, a little town in Kansas gets wiped off the map by ahorrendous tornado, most of the GOP presidential hopefuls are about as attractive as the south end of a north bound mule, that contaminated gluten has been found in the feed used for hatchery salmon here in Oregon, ad nauseum and what do I find when I sign on to AOL and look at the “news” headlines? Paris Hilton’s been caught driving suspended (again), Brit’s old boyfriend is not impressed with her new main squeeze, they’re still feuding on American Idol and a restaurant owner refused to serve OJ Simpson. !#$%^^%$ the H E double toothpicks is going on here? (sound of forehead repeatedly hitting desk, I started this on my break.)

On the subject of that tornado. I do not want to belittle what these people are going through. I can’t imagine losing everything that way. But,let’s move along here. Dear Weather Channel, please drop the interviews you’ve shown at least two dozen times and give us something new. How can these people rebuild? What is involved? What kind of buildings can they build that might withstand this kind of storm? What do they have to do to safeguard their rebuilt utilities? How are they going to pay for this? Does your homeowners insurance cover events like tornado damage? How often does tornado alley get hit with a storm that strong, anyway? Really, I’d love to know. Volcanoes, tidal waves, and earthquakes aside, Oregon is looking really good right now.

A DAY WITHOUT WOMEN

2007-05-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

A while back there was an indie film called A Day Without a Mexican. Now imagine how this country would look for a day or week if we all decided to pull a day without women and stay home and just do what was absolutely necesarry for our families. And no nookie for the guys, no matter how enlightend they are.

Now imagine what would happen if the women announced "this is how it's going to be until you chuckleheads get your priorities straight."

See Lysistrata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

Just a thought.

Tags: WOMEN'S RIGHTS; LYSISTRATA; ANTI WAR MOVEMENTS

ONE MAN'S VIEW

2007-04-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

This letter was in the local paper today. I don’t quite agree that just because you have a gun will shoot somebody eventually. But it is part of the culture of violence. This is the culture that is killing us. He does have an interesting take on teaching us about the value of life. But I think everyone should have to watch babies being born, not just the boys.

HERE’S HOW TO END WAR.

That there is even any argument over whether anybody should possess automatic weapons is the height of idiocy. Anyone attempting to claim that guns are not made for the express purpose of firing projectiles to penetrate flesh and disrupt a living organism’s critical functions – often to the point of death – is a liar, a lunatic or both. Guns prevent crime like penises prevent pregnancy. Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; give a man a gun, and he will eventually kill somebody.

We men need to take responsibility for our gender’s collective life negating insanity. You don’t see women inventing gunpowder, dynamite, Uzis, multi-nuke- tipped missiles, land mines, depleted uranium artillery shells or the splattering gel that burns tissue down to the bone. Women are perhaps to busy with trying to keep the species going.

I believe that if any man had the slightest idea of the long and arduous sacrifices necessary just to deliver a single human being into this world, he wouldn’t be so quick to grab a gun or sign up for war. In fact I propose the all too obvious way to put an end to war: a pan cultural imperative that every male by the age of 14 must witness a minimum of three live human births. If you want to see blood, do it in a way that helps you really appreciate this precious and fragile miracle called life.

VIP SHORT from Eugene

Tags: GUNS, WAR, ENDING WAR

UNDER SIEGE

2007-04-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

While we were recovering from the great book case move, I hauled out a movie I taped off the tube several years ago. It’s a made for TV flick I literally stumbled over just as it was starting. It’s called Under Siege and it is NOT the early nineties flick starring Steven Seagal. It’s a story about terrorist attacks inside the US at some unspecified date, presumably the mid eighties. Since it was produced in the mid-eighties they’re a mix of European radicals and Muslims. This film was apparently available on VHS at one time, it isn’t anymore and I’ve never seen it on the tube since. Especially not since 9/11.

And I don’t think it’s because it might give the current terrorists ideas. They’ve come up with all of the events that happen without any help from us. The two story lines involve the FBI’s by the book search for those responsible and the political side. There’s not proof Iran was involved but too many of the politicians involved see this as a chance to take out as much of Iran’s ability to train and equip the radicals as possible.

You’ve got an FBI director trying to uphold the law and conduct an investigation that will lead to who was really responsible even if it takes longer than is comfortable, a president in the hot seat, a newspaper editor fishing for a story, various hot heads looking for a chance to take out Iran whether it was involved or not, a mixed bag of left wing and Muslim terrorists, and explosions occurring with depressing regularity.

Under increasing pressure to “do something” the president agrees, in theory at least, with his chief aide’s advice that they can’t afford to bring whoever planned these attacks to trial. The argument is that his followers and sympathizers will use additional violence to secure his release or disrupt a trial. What they don’t know is that they were a very small group working on their own in the first place and at this point the planner of the acts of terror is the only member of the group left.

His motivation? He’s an Algerianleftist whose son was killed in a bombing in Paris just before the Iranian revolution. His disgust with the US, the Soviets, and the radicals who in his eyes have sold out to protect their own lives. The perpetrators? The Shah’s secret police attempting to take out dissidents supporting the Ayatollah. Oh, what a tangled web we’ve woven. I wasn’t able to verify the claim of Iran’s UN ambassador that the shah’s secret police killed nearly 150,000 of their own citizens during his reign. A government the US supported.

Faced with news stories based on leaked FBI intelligence linking the attacks to Iran their UN ambassador gives the planner’s name and location to one faction of the administration at almost the same time the bureau puts their puzzle pieces together. He’s taken into custody by the bureau while he’s praying. He neither attempts to escape or to deny what he set in motion. The man is assassinated while in custody by someone from a fictional (I hope) CIA task force that is supposed to be a successor to the all too real Operation Phoenix from the Viet Nam era. Collateral damage from the shooting? An FBI agent who got in the way. A new father whose son’s christening is juxtaposed with the last two radicals moving down a street of shops, throwing grenades through the doors. Scenes of hope contrasted with scenes of despair. And as number of burning shops multiplied mom made the remark “and this is what’s happening over there.” These days this is not a good movie to watch just before bedtime.

When it becomes all too obvious that the evidence found at the shooting was planted the director of the bureau takes it to another member of the administration, that’s when he learns of the possible CIA involvement. The problem now? The CIA can’t operate within the US without permission from the president. What did the president know and did he give the order? I wish I could reproduce the escalating confrontation between the beleaguered president and the increasingly furious FBI director. The director argues that when we adopt the methods terrorists we become terrorists ourselves, that we have no right to deprive ourselves and our children of our hard won protections under the law and most importantly his first duty is not to defend the administration but to defend the law. In the end, he falls silent with an expression of eloquent despair.

In the end the camera follows him into the newsroom of the editor/friend who has been dogging his heels for a story. He throws a manila envelope on his desk with the statement “you wanted a story, here it is” and walks out. That is where the story ends and you are left to wonder at the final outcome. What did the president know and when did he know it? Is the CIA representative left to hang out to dry since he trusted the word of the president’s aide or did he actually receive written permission to task a CIA operation within our borders? Does the aide fall on his sword to protect the president? Does the director decide the hell with it and resign?

I finally realized that the bureau director and terrorist leader had as least one thing in common. Both are willing to sacrifice for what they believe. One to destroy, the other to protect.

As for we have now? This bunch wouldn’t know a dishonorable action if it came up and bit them on ass, or somewhere more sensitive.

SATURDAY'S MEME

2007-04-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’ll come out and play this evening.

What is your favorite thing to wear? Slacks and a sweatshirt. T shirt when the weather is good.

Last thing you ate? Toasted cheese sandwich and cream of tomato soup.

Nastiest thing you’ve ever eaten? Liver

I say shotgun, you say? Wedding.

How many US states have you been to? Washington, California, Idaho.

How many of the US states have you lived in? Oregon.

What is your favorite romance movie? Return to Me.

Favorite type of food? Home made soup and fresh bread.

Do you care if your socks are dirty? Afraid so.

Have you ever cheated on a test? Yes

Has anyone ever sang or played for you personally? No

Do you like Bush? He’s worse than liver. I'd sooner try sushi.

Have you ever gone white water rafting? No way. I get seasick looking at pictures of waves. Ever see the film Hunt for Red October? The scene where they're floating the life rafts off the sub turns me green every time.

Have met a real redneck? “fraid so.

How is the weather right now? Raining, again. Off and on all day.

Where was the last place you went besides your house? Work. I was going yarn shopping this morning but we finished the big bookcase move instead.

What are you afraid of? I have one of those little shadowy creatures too. It lives in the closeet and peaks round the corner. I’m not too fond of ladders either.

How many pets do you have? Three cats. The whisker sisters. Lucky, Misty and Bandit.

What’s one thing you’ve learned? “ If you’ve already fallen off the cliff, you might as well try to learn to fly.”

What do you usually order from Starbucks? Nothing… I don’t do designer coffee.

Have you ever fired a gun? No. I have learned to use a bow and arrow though.

I read this over on Russ’s blog. He ran out of steam before he got to the end, so these are the questions I know about.

JUST A THOUGHT

2007-04-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

Ran across this on the web.

I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the
pig likes it.
--Cyrus Ching (industrialist well known for his efforts to treat his workers decently)

I believe this describes how we all feel when we try to confront shock jocks like Limbaough and Coulter. They have no shame. They are sure they're right. You can't get a good grip becuase of the mud. And they enjoy the notoriety. Too bad we can't get an ignore these people movement going. Treat them like a three year old with a tantrum. "Go ahead an hold your breath until you turn blue. As soon as you pass out you'll start breathing again. And in the meantime I'm enjoying the quiet."

I wonder how many buyers actually finish books by folks like Ann Coulter before they toss them under the tv. Trouble is she's already got her money and is laughing all the way to the bank.

FINDING MY GROOVE

2007-04-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

Has it been almost three years since I started hunting and pecking? Actually I type a little better than that. (shrug) I put politics at the end of the title but a lot of my best (I think) most passionate entries early on were politically themed. And not just because it was the year the Current Occupant was returned to the White House.

I’m still passionate about politics but I’m realizing more and more how tightly both parties have locked up the system for their advantage, not ours. We’re outside the glass doors pounding and not making any noise that can be heard inside. The specific scandal may change but the words; well the words from the talking heads pretty much stay the same. That said, this administration has to be the most two faced, duplicitous, lying, conniving, deceiving, obfuscating, inveigling, misbegotten, sorriest, excuses for “public servants” it’s been my extraordinary bad luck to run across in my life. And you’d have to go back to the administrations of Grant and Harding to come close. And both of them were Republicans, God/dess save us.

No, I think the changes are going to have to happen at the most basic level. There are things we have to rethink, maybe redefine. I haven’t figured out that part yet. And I probably won’t be the one who figures it out. I may end up being one of many. Sort of like the railroad crews who worked together to straighten out the tracks. But if we all keep tapping away in the same direction………..

So. Big little word, that. I find my focus shifting. I find I’m repeating myself. The events change but I suspect I’m not the only one who finds herself thinking “here we go, AGAIN.” Thwwbp! :-P!! Bush is a symptom. Not the disease. Even Karl Rove isn’t anything new. He cut his political teeth helping get Nixon reelected. It’s been decades coming on and Ipray my nephews will have the wisdom to do better than we have.

What to do. Keep writing, certainly. I can’t seem to shut up. A little less time on politics and a little more time nurturing our little piece of sacred ground. Maybe a little more on how the more things change, the more they stay the same and a little less on the current example of just how the same things are. Work, gotta pay the bills somehow. Read, bake, knit, hug mom, take pictures and share them, pet the cats, hug my mom again, wish I could hug Lisa more often, bake some more, try to help rebuild the tattered connections between all of us. Give somebody a smile whether they smile back or not. Sing (in the shower, don’t want to scare the cats). Hug my nephews whenever I get the chance. Hug all of you. I wish.

MISS CROP TOP ET AL

2007-04-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

The cartoonist's name is David Horsey. Another goodie from the Go Comics website. This one also appeared in the local paper. The irony is truly wonderful.

Actually the first thing that crossed my mind was "hey miss Crop Top, your arms aren't broken, get your butt in there and clean the bathroom." Same for helpless with the baseball bat. Sheesh.

ANOTHER MEME

2007-04-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

Found this one on Russ and Cin’s blogs. Thought I’d give it a try.

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Not that I know of.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? I know it sounds like a cliché. I come close every time I read the damn paper it's that or scream. Misted up pretty bad on the 6th, it would have been the folks 62nd anniversary.

DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Not much. It gets worse every year. It's not quite bad enough to mimic a doctor but it's getting there.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? None really. Love really sharp, good cheese.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Lucky, Misty and Bandit (cats) and various scrounging squirrels in the yard.

IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I doubt it. Likes do not attract.

DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? Too much.

DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Nope. Do still have my appendix.

WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Not on your (or my) life.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Oatmeal with raisins, cranberries, and walnuts.

DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Not usually.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Sometimes.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Deep, dark, chocolate.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Do they look me in the eye when they talk to me and does the smile go all the way to their eyes.

RED OR PINK? Deep, dark burgundy.

WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Are you kidding, I’m perfect. Seriously, I spend too much time in my own head.

WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My dad.

WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Robe and jimmies. Blue robe and green nightgown.

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? Polish sausage hot dog. Haven't had a hot dog in ages.

WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? My copy of the mini series Masada.

IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? I only get one? I want enough to make a rainbow.

FAVORITE SMELLS? The yard after it rains and the sun comes out.

WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE. Sister over in Umatilla.

FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Sorry, not a sports fan.

HAIR COLOR? Silver brown.

EYE COLOR? Brown

DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Nope, I’ve graduated to bi focals.

FAVORITE FOOD? Chocolate.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy endings if they are believable. Since I prefer history oriented films and mini series I don’t run into very many of them.

LAST MOVE YOU WATCHED? Good Night and Good Luck.

WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? See the entry above about night gowns and bathrobes.

SUMMER OR WINTER. Can I have both? In January I look forward to July. In July it’s the opposite.

HUGS OR KISSES? Hugs, from a few people. I don’t like hugs from people I don’t know.

FAVORITE DESSERT? Chocolate.

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW? Switching back and forth between Thermopylae-the Battle for the West and Brother Juniper’s Bread Book. Man is that a combination or what?

WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? The one at work has a wolf on it, the one at home is black.

WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? MASH reruns.

FAVORITE SOUND? Rain on the roof.

ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Neither. Never really been a rock fan. I do like Celtic type music.

WHAT IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Los Angeles. An aunt and uncle and their family live down there.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I bake a mean loaf of French bread and I knit a very cool prayer shawl.

SHOCKED, JUST SHOCKED

2007-04-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Don Imus's sponsors, network and corporate remind me of the police inspector in Casablanca. He's "shocked, absolutely shocked" to discover that gambling has been occuring nightly at Rick's place. Of course he's being handed his most recent winnings at the time. LOL

I guess they thought ol' Don had been inviting the vicar over for tea all this time. Yeah, they'd been discussing croquet over tea and crumpets.

And I'm really Gandalf the Grey in drag.

DOGWOOD

2007-04-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

The dogwood blossoms are well open. And we had some rain this morning so it really brought out the color.

Close up of the blossoms.

You can even see the little raindrops on the blossoms. Got some good use out of my digital camera and tripod this morning. And after downloading how many sets of pictures onto the computer it finally sank in, duh, you make your own cd's. So, I spent some time putting together a compilation for the sister who live in eastern Oregon and hasn't had a chance to get over since we've made the big chages. How long have I had the camera and computer? Like, duh. read the options on the side once in awhile Jackie.

Tags: DOGWOOD, PHOTOGRAPHY, GARDENING

MORE TULIPS

2007-04-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

These red beauties have been getting taller and taller every day. They're actually dwarfing the daffodils.

We have just a few of these variegated ones, they don't seem to be very hardy here.

The white and magenta is absolutely striking against the green autumn crocus foliage. These are actually about two thirds the size of the big red ones. Lovely to come home to in the evenings.

Tags: TULIPS, PHOTOGRAPHY, GARDENING

FREEDOM?

2007-04-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Current Occupant of the White House (I refuse to call this man president) and his advisors continue to claim that we live in the freest country on the planet. Is that true? And what would our ancestors think of the freedom we do have?

We do accept certain limitations on our actions. Most of us obey the speed limit (most of the time), keep most of our clothes on (most of the time and this time of year it’s a necessity) keep certain “recreational activities” indoors where they won’t upset the neighbors and scare the livestock and most of us accept that walking down the middle of a busy freeway at high noon in our birthday suits is probably Not A Good Idea.

But, what of the freedoms that we do seem to have?

The freedom to what the current administration attempt to politicize justice in this country. Claims of voter fraud seem to translate as try to make sure the other party doesn’t win. Competent US attorneys are forced out and replaced with yes men and party hacks.

Voter lists in key states have been purged of minority voters under the guise of making sure that voters with felony records can’t cast a vote.

Precincts in at least one key state, Iowa, had more voting machines in suburban precincts than they needed and not enough in inner city precincts that were expected to vote democratic. And enough of the machines didn’t work that potential voters stood in line for hours only to be told to “go home, we’re closing the polls.”

The freedom to be a minority voter in rural Texas and find a sheriffs’ cruiser parked near the polls on election day. That little tit bit was in one of Molly Ivins last columns. A hundred and forty years since the end of the Civil War and more than a generation since civil rights and voting rights bills were passed by Congress and signed by earlier presidents and there are still parts of the country where it isn’t safe for minority voters to exercise the most basic right of citizenship. Oregon’s vote by mail looks better all the time. And I just had a really nasty thought. There’s been talk of privatizing mail delivery. You can’t tell the race of a voter from the envelope the mail in ballot is in, but there are parts of the country where you can infer it from the mailing address. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

The freedom to watch contamination spread from the meat supply to farm produce. Those of us who have switched to a largely vegetable diet to avoid contaminated meat and fish get caught in a double bind. Just treat everything as if you’re in a third world country and either cook it or wash it very well. But what happens when one of our freedoms comes to include paying increasingly high prices for clean water?

The freedom to pay low prices for products so poorly made you have to replace them twice as often.

The freedom to watch the contractors that produce these shoddy products move from country to country in search of increasingly cheaper workers while American workers who produced products you’d be proud to own lose their jobs.

The freedom to discover that certain corporations deliberately steer their low paid help to emergency rooms and Medicaid for their care while either offering no insurance or pricing it so high that their employees can’t afford. In other words, we’re subsidizing part of their labor costs with our taxes and insurance premiums while they reap the profit.

The freedom to be herded into “free speech” zones in the name of security whenever our elected hired help comes to town

The freedom to vote for whichever candidate the moneychangers figure they can get the best deal from.

The freedom to attend the church of your choice but discover that only certain groups appear to have a pipeline to the elected hired help.

The freedom to watch the religious right tail wag the political dog.

The freedom to vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice. There wasn’t much the 2005 session of Oregon legislature could agree on, but they did agree on this, by the time they were done is was much harder for a third party or independent candidate to get on the ballot.

I guess I could go on until I ran out of room but I think I’ve drawn a pretty clear picture. I’m not feeling very free right now, is anyone else?

NEW SHRUB

2007-04-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

We pulled the clematis out of the front. It's a beautiful plant but we pulled the trellis when we had the house redone and didn't want to replace it, plus you have to cut it back for the fall and which takes time and leaves you with a stack of debris to get get of. We're trying to move away from things that need trimming.

We already have a couple of Japanese andromeda. They are great shrubs this time of year. The white clusters of blooms, green foliage and the new leaves coming in with the red are spectacular this time of year. And they stay green all year round.

Close up of flower clusters.

We headed out to the nursury intending to get another of what we already had, because frankly we didn't know there was anything else out there. Surprise, surprise they call this one Valentine.

Spectacular red blooms and dark greean foliage. The new leaves come in with a red tinge but I'm not sure if it will be as red as the other. It may bloom a little later too.

Another close up of the Valentine.

COMBINED JOURNAL

2007-04-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to post this on Cottage too, just I don't miss anyone.

Awhile back Lisa suggested a sort of combined blog involving several of us. Each of us contributing what we could. We all thought this was a good idea and that’s really as far as it went. The best reason being that is was Lisa’s idea and she’s been working seventy odd hours a week. And that’s just at the café, that doesn’t include house keeping, cat supervision and finding time to spend with her wonderful husband.

And congratulations Lisa and having three great days back to back. Hey, what’s fifteen bucks less on day three? That is so wonderful.

Sooooo, I’m going to make a suggestion. At least to get the ball rolling. Most of those who read Lisa’s Coming to Terms stop by my journals once in awhile. One of us, me maybe I’m open to suggestions, could propose a topic, we’d have a week or two to work on the idea if it’s something we’d be interested in, send the entries to that person and they would post them in a separate journal. I’m going to jump in with both feet and suggest mirror sites, one on AOL and one on Blogger.

I suspect our interests are very similar, and it would be fun to see how each of us would handle a topic.

Obviously I’ve been turning this over and have some ideas that might be interesting to kick around.

Certain politicians and pundits speak about a “culture of life.” What does this mean when we support companies that try to insert a terminator gene into plants so they can make more profits selling seeds? Of even the whole concept of factory farming plants and animals. Drug companies and their advertising.

If we don’t believe in war how do we remain faithful to our beliefs when we’re faced with those who are willing to kill their own people to oppose us?

If we’re fighting a war for oil, what does it mean to use precious fuel to bring fresh produce and seafood in from the other side of the world? Would you spend time and money to go to a restaurant that served only local products and cuisine?

Most of us have a Christian background. What does the Great Commission mean you? Do we look for similarities in beliefs and work from there or do we believe in converting everyone to our beliefs. Now, there’s a patch of quicksand for you.

If you could plant the ideal garden, what would it be?

What do you think of when you hear the word family?

Is there a book or books that mean a lot to you? Is there a special reason?

The same with movies.

Do you bake, or have time for some other craft? Why do you do it?

As a matter of fact. Why are we doing this in the first place? Why do we write? My first journal is nearly three years old and some of you have been doing this longer than I have. So, what are we doing here?

So, what do you think? I’m not trying to run the show but I do work a job with nice regular hours and I don’t have kids. I do believe it’s good idea and I believe all of us could do something really great if we could just figure out how to get the balloon off the ground.

SPRING PART 2

2007-03-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

Whoooo, this shot edited out a little larger than I thought is was. The tulips are up now, but it's been cloudy all day so they haven't opened up yet. At least when I've been home to see it. The shrub with the beautiful white clusters of little bell flowers is an andromeda. The new leaves come in red and then turn green. The lavender is just beginnng to put on some new growth. The green leaves at the back are autumn crocus. You get leaves in the spring and blossoms in the fall. There's still plenty of opem space this time of year, I'm just careful where I point the camera.

Same plants, different angle. The dafs are beginning to come off the peak. They don't much care for getting rained on, bows them down a bit.

The pink dogwood is just starting to bloom. There was barely any color last week. The blossoms should be fully open by next week and ready for some close ups.

A pot of perky blossoms up on the porch. I think they look pretty happy.

KEEPING TRACK

2007-03-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

Jim Morin draws cartoons for the Miami Herald and took home a Pulitzer in '96.

I haven't written much about Gonzalez flap. What can I say. The best argument for telling the truth is that at least you can keep track of the stories your telling. But, I believe that like so many problems we're having now, this has been coming on for decades. Best to lance the boil now, before it gets even worse.

There was a guest column in the Oregonian Sunday by Jacob Tanzer, a former Justice on the Oregon Supreme Court. I didn't read the column but it was referenced in an editorial in the same paper today. Tanzer recalled his days as a trial attorney during the Kennedy administration. Tanzer was called on to investigate a union leader who was a Democratic supporter and probably was instrumental in getting JFK elected. He pursued the case, the union boss was convicted and Tanzer received a commendation from the attorney general, Robert Kennedy.

I find myself wondering more and more what the world would be like if Bob Kennedy had taken another route out of that hotel in '68. I do wonder.

RING MY CHIMES

2007-03-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

These do ring my chimes

The color green. It’s the color of spring and there are infinite shades right now. Between the new grass in fields I pass on the way to work, through the new leaves on all the trees, to the pines, cedars and spruces in the neighborhoods, there are more colors of green right now than I have words to describe them.
Seeing the moon on my way home from work while the sun is still up. A little round I learned at camp kept going through my head as I drove. Mr. Moon, Mr. Moon you’re out to soon, the sun is still in the sky. Go back to your bed and cover up your head and wait until the day goes by. Ok, so I was in the fifth grade at the time. LOL
Squirrels. Ok, so they’re pretty much rats with fluffy tails. But, it’s fun watching them search through the yard for seeds, hang by one foot from the seed feeder, chase each other around the house, and basically torment the cats.
Yarn shops. So many colors. So many textures. So many different kinds. From so many places. And I want it all! Whoops, I’m slightly delirious here. More about knitting later. Much more, if some things I want to write about pan out.
A used book website called Alibris. 97% of the time if their network doesn’t have it, it isn’t out there. I’ve tapped into used booksellers as far away as Australia. I think that was for a copy of Twelve O’clock High. Also the little notations, salutations and book plates in the used books. Darn I wish those books could talk.
Tea. Sorry, coffee is just coffee, no matter how you dress it up. Green tea, black tea, tea from Assam, tea from Ceylon, tea with lemon or without, tea with spices. Jasmine, Irish Breakfast, Darjeeling, gunpowder green, walking through the tea section is like taking a trip around the world. Tea, hot and streaming on a cold, foggy day. Preferably accompanied by a warm cat and a good book. But, you must choose the book carefully. You have to be able to manage the book and the tea with one hand. Use both hands to manage the book and quit petting the cat will get you the LOOK. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s a little like suggesting that a confirmed teetotaler kick back with a beer and a shot.
And how can you have tea without muffins or scones. At least on Sunday morning. Warm from the oven, or at least the microwave. Never underestimate the power of a microwave to make three day old muffins taste almost fresh. Fresh enough to go with that tea and the Sunday comics and the cat, anyway. “Mom, you really weren’t interested in reading that silly ol’ paper right this minute were you? I’ll just sit on it and keep it warm for you while pay attention to more important things. Me, for starters”
Discovering that just about everything we planted last fall made it through the winter. Including the crape myrtle. It was looking pretty iffy for awhile but it is showing leaf buds at the base up through the middle. It may be smaller than we anticipated when we get done trimming out what died back but it’s looking good.
The ducks and geese at the local parks. They come in with such a gossipy clatter and a splash. Talk about an entrance. Then they either swim around the pond or amble across the grass chattering the whole time. Makes you wonder what they’re talking about. The quality of the bread offerings they’re bumming off the humans, perhaps. Reminds me of the after church coffee klatch when I was a kid. Everybody standing round, talking, eating, catching up with the week.
With a bow to Russ, all of you. (Big hugs all around)

There, that should balance that earlier entry a bit. Trouble is I’m doing this on my lunch hour. I have the tea but no cat and no book. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

TEN THINGS THAT DON'T FLOAT MY BOAT

2007-03-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

I won’t go so far as to say I hate these things, but they really do irritate me, fail to float my boat, don’t ring my chimes, tick me off, whatever, just fill in the blank

1. Talking heads that talk and talk and talk and don’t really say anything. Or take five times longer than they need to get to the point. This is especially irritating when I’m very tired or getting over a bug (and very tired from the bug). The more they talk, the more the words ricochet back and forth in my skull.

2. News that isn’t. I think I’ve mentioned this one before.

3. Hunters and fishermen who begrudge every fish, deer or bird caught by the predators who actually need to hunt to survive. How dare those greedy sea lions catch “our:” salmon. I’ve got a newsflash for you folks. We may like to eat them, but we don’t need to eat them to survive. If the fish runs are crashing don’t blame the sea lions, go look in the mirror.

4. And on the same subject, restaurants who advertise “we fly our fresh seafood in from Alaska (or wherever) daily. We’re fighting a war in the Middle East over oil. Yeah, I know the spin is we’re bringing democracy to the huddled masses but it’s the oil stupid. Using an increasingly scarce resource to bring fresh fish to my local restaurant does not float my boat. And the more I read about pollution levels in seafood the less likely I am to eat it anyway. And I guess I'd have to add trying to grow free ranging animals like fish, cattle and poultry under factory conditions. I hate to sound like a luddite, but animals aren't meant to be raised under these condtions. Now we're facing e-coli in vegetables as well as meat, antibiotics that don't work anymore, and disease carrying farmed seafood. Pass the beans and rice please.

5. Religion. Yes, Russ I’m with you on this. Religion and faith are two different things. In fact they are so different I’m not sure they’re even in the same universe. Faith is that still small voice within, that “feeling” that the puzzle is being solved even if you don’t have all the pieces yet. It’s recognizing what’s the same in so many different traditions. Religion is, well to me it’s what you get when human beings start mucking about trying to make sure all the pegs fit into a certain number holes whether they’re the right size and shape or not. And God/dess help you if you have more pegs than holes. It’s what you get when people try to reduce the infinite to what we can perceive and describe with our five very limited senses. I could go on and on and on………

6. Cauliflower. Yeah, I'm with you on this too, Russ. There are so many other great veggies out there. Mom made a wilted spinach salad last night that was to die for, if you'll pardon the expression. But, cauliflower does taste a lot like cabbage. I wonder…….? Cheese, tomatoes, bacon, buttered bread crumbs. Sorry, this isn’t working, Big blank here.

7. Drivers that ride my bumper until I get out of the way and tool on down the freeway at the speed we were going in the first place, if not slower.

8. Which brings us to drivers that are incapable driving anywhere near the speed limit unless they have someone to follow. Otherwise they go slower and slower and slower until you try to pass and then they fly like eagles.

9. Phone solicitations of any kind. If I want satellite TV I’ll let you know.

10. PBS begathons that run heavy on musicians I’ve never heard of and self help gurus that I've also never heard of. There was one show last week on the benefits of yoga. We spent ten minutes listening to talking heads talk about yoga over shots of people doing yoga. But nobody was talking about what the people were doing. You want to do a program on yoga, fine, let’s do yoga, not talk about it. Ditto on the rest of the talking heads during pledge week.

So there's ten things or so that I may not hate, as in raise your blood pressure to lethal levels, at least not most of them Except for the religion/faith thing it's more the death by a thousand cuts or the Chinese water torture sort of thing. Just drip, drip, drip, drip...............

Play About Iraq War Divides a School - AOL News

2007-03-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Top News- Play About Iraq War Divides a School - AOL News :

The really interesting thing about this story is that the play is the result of an assignment to create a play. The principal not only shut down the play in the school setting but is accused of trying prevent it from being performed off campus.

My own opinion is heck let 'em do it. If some folks don't agree, let them write their own play and put it on. The students included material from many voices, what I read online looked pretty balanced to me. Oh, there is a link in the story to on website with a final version of the play.

It could have even been turned into a series of plays. Each one from a different point of view. It could actually be a tool to heal the divisions between us. Thing is too many people not only don't want to be exposed to a point of view they don't like, but they don't want anyone else to hear it either. And that is what really makes me angry. You don't want to watch a program, don't. The TV has an off switch. You don't have to read the book, you don't have to go to the film, you don't have to go to the play.

I think the argument I find most offensive is that the students are too young or inexperienced about the war to put this material. After all young adults a little older than these students are fighting and dying on both sides in this war. Some of these students may even be planning to join the military after graduation themselves. Who else has a better right to give bring the voices of all involved to life.

WEEKEND SNAPSHOTS

2007-03-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

Juncos, siskins, chickadees and the rest of the feathery crews working the seed feeders and the yard below them.. A little corn, a few sunflower seeds, some thistle seeds, and assorted wildbird seeds make for some happy neighbors.

Squirrels checking out the same buffet, Working their way around the yard from spot to spot. I think they can hear sounds from inside the house. You can tell the newbies at the feeder because they stop, listen and check out the house to see if anyone is coming to interupt the feast.

The creamy white daffodils glowing out in the yard as the twilight deepens.

It rained last night so the tulips haven't opened up yet. I think they will be red. in the groupings with the daffodils.

Contemplating the corner with the bergenia and violets and going hmmmm. Dwarf pampas and other grasses? Possible.

Cats in their various favorite spots. Lucky on the sewing machine by the window watching the world go by outside the bedroom. Misty doing her Snoopy vulture imitation on the back of the recliner. Keeping track of everybody and everything. A foot or a head appearing by the table as Bandit divides her time between grooming and kitty tv. Hind leg, ear, head, other leg, another ear, the head again. The up on the window sill for a little while to watch the birdies. Repeat at needed.

Rain in the morning, blue skies in the afternoon with some nice March breezes and fluffy white clouds in between.

The pink buds on the dogwood beginning to open so that it looks like it's blushing. Patches of purple and white violets here and there.

The boomerang bug. It's not the official name for this bug but there is a virus going around that is a real asshole. You think you're getting over it and then it comes back. Rats. Missed two more days of work last week. And then you get to spend a week or so coughing your head off. by Friday I was ready do just about anything to get a good nights sleep. We're getting better, but I think it's going to be a long week.

And a disappointed Duck gets to join up with Russ's PO'd Jayhawk. Oh, well. Them's the breaks.

SPRING, SPRING, SPRING

2007-03-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

The heather is still blooming well. We have white, pink, and darker pink. Now that the weather is warmer and we're getting more sun I expect it will begin to fade. It's real pleasure to have the heather blooming during the dark, leafless months.

Assorted early blossoms. A little patch of violas, that's the little blue/purple/white ground cover. A white ground cover, not sure which. A few birght yellow daffodils and the flowers in the front. Mom calls them rock hyacinths. But, the leaves aren't hyacinth like. They look almost like swiss chard actually. LOL But, the flowers are really pretty. Lighter pink with a darker center. They don't need a lot attention, water, or fertilizer. The snails don't even seem to like them all that well. If anyone recognizes them, please let me know what you think they are. The darker green ground cover in the back is bearberry or kinnikinnik. We planted six three years ago. So far three and a half have survived so far.

This is a hot, hard to water corner so anything that can survive being ignored for days at a time will do very well.

Ever notice that yellow daffodils are the same color as the forsythia blooms. My route home has a forsythia hedge that looks like it's about thirty feet long and a good ten feet or so high. Very, very spectacular. And very, very yellow.

Some of the three dozen or so cream and yellow daffodils in the front yard. They are in three groups, just behind the lavender and new shrubs. There are an equal number of tulips in the plantings. They should be blooming within a few days, with luck. Pictures coming soon.

THEY'RE HERE!

2007-03-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

It’s been a kick reading the postings on the AOL stories about the flap over the US attorney firings. The entries I get the biggest kick out of are the folks that are shocked that congress is trying to get Karl Rove to testify under oath. How dare they? I mean, just who do the members of congress think they are? They act like they have a right to know what King George and his chief jester, whoops, adviser, have been up to. Silly people.

I’m betting you have a good idea what’s running through my mind. It’s the same refrain we got when we questioned the long lines at the airports, the national database for driver’s licenses, the wiretaps, the sifting through bank records, the ignoring of international treaties and agreements, and on, and on, to the point of nausea. It’s “hell Karl, if you don’t have anything to hide you don’t have anything to worry about.”

All this what’s gone around coming back to bite the administration in the ass is making me dizzy.

CROSSING OUR FINGERS

2007-03-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

Up until the end of January this is what the house looked like. Sort of peach, with a sienna trim. Mom and I crossed our fingers and signed on for a promotional siding offer. I think it turned out pretty good.

The same guys who installed the siding for the company dame back and did the trim and someother finish work. They did they best they could with the sixty or seventy year old wood around the windows. The trim looks a little rough close up but getting to energetic with the sand paper would have been lethal.

We had lattice on the porch, We'll put a nice pot and a hanging basket up there for now. Get a little privacy but a little nicer maybe. Taking things on faith here for a retired cook and a gal who works in an office but I expect it will work out.

WHILE THE SHIP SINKS

2007-03-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

The cartoonist is Jim Borgman. It was in the local paper too. For the record I would like to see Gonzalez get nailed to the wall for basically being an idiot. I mean you have the choice of "my assistant did it and didn't tell me" or "I thought it was a great idea to can prosecutors we appointed because they weren't loyal enough." What the *&()^&. But with the administration going down with a slow leak in the boiler room it's like take your choice. If he hangs on long enough he can step off the plank right into the water.

SNACKING ACROBAT

2007-03-18T15:02:00.000-07:00

We had the siding replaced on the house in late January. We just got the trim redone and had to move the crooks that hold the feeder to get at the windows. Decided to leave them where they were moved to and got this shot through the window. I'm not sure if he can actually swallow while he's standing on his head or if he's shelling the seeds and stuffing them in his cheeks to finish on top. But, sometimes I wish I was that flexible.