FRIDAY PHOTO

This was the best of the morning's pictures. It was about seven and the sun had just come out from behind the tree across the street. Some sun loving coleus, and geraniums. There's a sweet potatoe vine in there too, but I need a different angle. Better luck tomorrow; or whenever.

I've been so busy digging I've forgotten to record the results. Mixed bag so far. A few peppers, enthusiastic tomato VINES, our first zuke, some lettuce and a Frankenstein lemon cucumber that's doubled in size in the last couple of days and appears to be heading for the border. LOL

Insanity

I spend very little time watching, reading, or listening to the political discourse these days. For awhile, just after the 2008 election, I was under the mistaken impression that things would improve; that the inanity was somehow going to dissipate with the presence of an intelligent, well-spoken man behind the desk in the Oval Office. We all know that didn't happen, don't we?

We all know that, if anything, the right has become more shrill and more inane in its proclamations and accusations. Including taking every disastrous, unpopular result of eight years of Bush Administration policies and immediately projecting them on to President Obama. The Economic Crisis? Obama's fault. The Bail-out? Obama's idea (No one mentions the free bailout money the Bush Administration dished out shortly before Bush left office. It's like it never happened…) It's Obama's fault that he has been unable to wave a magic wand and create new jobs for everyone who lost theirs as a result of a runaway financial system left unregulated by the Bush Administration. The Gulf Oil Disaster has been characterized as "Obama's Katrina," even though it was most probably the result of at least eight years (prior to Obama's election) of rule by a Big-Oil Puppet King. Last week, Michael Steele decided to add the war in Afghanistan to the list of Obama's transgressions. (We are supposed to forget this war has been going on for eight years and Obama's only been in office for two…)

And then there's Sarah Palin.

If I let myself think about it, I would still have a nearly irresistible desire to put my house on the market, pack my bags and my animals and head for some remote backwoods in Canada to live out my life in blissful political ignorance (with better health care…)

But I don't let myself think about it. In fact, I just can't go there, because it's all so flagrant and hopeless, this hype/attack/demonize/destroy political method that has taken hold of our country. For the past two years, I've been (metaphorically) trying to function with my fingers in my ears and humming really loud. I almost get to the place where I can choose my own reality—that I'm actually living in a country (a world?) governed by grown-ups. And then something happens that rudely drags me out of that rarified space and douses me with a bucket of cold, green, slimy reality.

Something like that happened last week. I was behind the counter at the café, and an old gentleman walked up to the counter and asked where the offices for the phone company were. (In fact he asked for the wrong phone company…the one that covers most of the county but NOT our little town. Evidently, he finds it inconvenient to read the name at the top of his phone bill…) Maybe it will just be easier to relate the conversation:

LOG (Little Old Gentleman): Do you know where's the office for (wrong phone company) around here?

Me: We don't have (wrong phone company.) We have (right phone company.) And their offices are right across the street.

LOG: I went over there. But there's nobody there.

Me: I know. They don't have a customer service office over there anymore. You have to call the customer service number on your bill.

LOG: Well, I done that. And she keeps sayin' all these things that don't have nothin' to do with what I want. (I assumed this meant that he got lost in electronic phone menu land and didn't hear an option that appealed to him…)

Me: Yeah…sometimes those phone things can be kind of frustrating…

And then he launched into the story all about how his phone bill was fouled up and he got it fixed once, but he can't find the right people to help fix it this time. Went on and on for about five minutes, while I was politely trying to extricate myself from his tale of woe and get him to move on so I could wait on the customers in line behind him.

Me: Well, you just have to call that number and see if you can get to the right person.

LOG: Yeah… But ever since that Obama got in, ever'thin's been messed up…

That's right, folks. This Old Gentleman was going to blame Barack Obama for his woes with the local telephone company.

That's how far the poison has spread. How ingrained and integrated into our society this insane bullshit has become. That some little old guy in Nameless Small Town, USA believes that anything bad, anything negative that happens to him personally is the direct fault of the President of the United States. And, by god, he is going to cast his vote for the other side next time around…because the phone company messed up his bill.

I turned away from that suddenly insane exchange with the Little Old Gentleman, with my fists balled and an almost overwhelming desire to go and beat my head against the nearest wall…

 

Photo Friday

It's been so very long since anyone celebrated Photo Friday. It has, in fact, been a long time since I played with my camera. Weather has been crappy, cares of the world have bent my shoulders to the ground...and all that.

So, anyway, here's a picture. Of an astoundingly neat petunia I found at one of my favorite plant shops in Eugene. I don't usually go for petunias, because they are so susceptible to being attacked by "green eaters" around mid-summer ("green eaters" being cabbage butterfly larvae that are particularly fond of petunia flowers...)

But this one was so very cool, I had to have one. And I actually got it planted in a pot before it died!

So here's the mug shot:



Yeah, it's huge. And, yeah...the flowers are deep pink, with purple veins and edged in green.

Pretty neat, huh?

the awful spill...

I came across this poem about the oil spill, written by John Wareham, who was nominated for a Pulitzer for his book Sonnets for Sinners (worth checking out):

TONY AND THE PELICAN

I want my life back, cried the BP chief,
oblivious to the pelican’s grief,
as gushing fool’s gold plumed the living reef,
and fearful creatures stared in disbelief.
Oh, noble, formerly feathered albatross,
now embalmed in crudest ooze from hell,
please kindly note the oilman’s aching loss,
and help restore his life, which once was swell.
Oh, majestic, magic, winged creature,
cauterize that oilman’s fulsome portal;
unfurl your powers and return his leisure;
absolve his sins and become immortal.
An act of such mercy from avian ranks
will for sure secure the head honcho’s thanks.
So slip your sickening golden glue and soar,
then summon all your strength and dive full-bore
into the aching sea to quell the gore
that gushes from the wound within the core.
If only you, my slickened friend, could pray,
what awesome incantations you would witch;
you’d melt the gum that binds you to the clay,
free all frightened creatures from tarry pitch—
then be lauded by lobbyists all day long,
and parade the town in an open car,
confettied by teeming ticker-tape throngs,
and courted by corpulent commissars.
Instead, alone, with anxious, pleading eyes,
you merely scan the tide, and wait to die.
 John Wareham / June 2010

Thalassa, Thalassa!

Hard to believe that two months have flowed past since April's poetry challenge had me writing a poem a day.  May and June have been busy with my last classes of my ESL career (as I see it from here, but you never know) and with rage, grief, and constant reading of news about the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. I have been on Facebook more often than not, reading news, posting items on my own page, sharing feelings about this event with like-minded friends. I don't know what this social networking is for others, but I see it as the reason the Internet was invented.  I have found a community of interesting, sensitive, compassionate, politically savvy friends via this medium.  They are people I know in the Real World, mostly people with whom I had long ago lost touch, as well as people I know only in the Virtual World, some for many years, some for the past months only. Having this medium to vent feelings, gather and share information, has kept me from going completely mad during the past two months since Deepwater Horizon first blew.

If you have read any of my poems on this blog (blog I refer to is my poetry blog, Poetic License), you know I write about small quotidian bits of life - birds, gardens, weather, food, the conjunction of any of the above - and this Gulf disaster is far too big a subject for my heart to encompass, for my brain to form words.  I think about it all the time, I wake in the night imagining the loss of the marshes, the plight of the birds, turtles, sea mammals.  I go to the river, the Rio Bravo, or Rio Grande as we call it now, and send my prayers for all of the creatures floating down the redbrown muddy currents to where it empties into the Gulf.  A very valuable new friend found on Facebook is a writer named Julia Whitty.  She has written quite a few books, and is also an environmental writer for Mother Jones.  Her blog, titled, like her most recent book, Deep Blue Home,  is on my daily reading list.  She has a lovely habit of posting poetry on Sundays, and this one stopped my breath, went straight to my aching heart:

THE SEA CHEWS THINGS UP
by Cleopatra Mathis

    When I woke, the waves had gone black,
    turning over the macerated
    curd of the ocean bottom, heaving its sludge
    onto the beach. Some storm far out, I thought,
    had ravaged the sea, stirred up its bed,
    sent the whole mess flying to shore.
    At my feet I found a grave of starfish,
    broken and gnarled among the fleshy
    snipes and heads. Every shade of death
    covered the sand. It looked hopeless
    in the pale day but for the birds,
    a congress of gulls, terns, and the rarest plovers,
    calm for once, satiated, a measure of
    the one law: this sea will claim it all—
    feed them, catch them, grind their complicated bones.

(Crossposted from Poetic License.)

Hands Across The Sand

If you live, work, or play anywhere near a large body of water you may run into some crowds tomorrow around eleven a.m. your timezone.  That's when the event being called Hands Across The Sand is taking place on beaches and shorelines all over the world. From the Grist article about the event: 

Saturday could bring the biggest public demonstration yet about the Gulf oil gusher, when Hands Across the Sand gathers people on beaches around the world at noon to hold hands in support of coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife, and fishing industries.

Organized by surfer and Florida restaurant owner Dave Rauschkolb, the dispersed event looks to be aiming for a surfer zen vibe, as opposed to the angry demonstrations against BP that have arisen in New Orleans and elsewhere. (The precedent, fellow young folks, is the 1986 Hands Across America chain.)

Even here in the desert we will be participating.  Here in Albuquerque we will be holding hands on the Bosque Bike Path that follows the Rio Grande, and on the old Alameda Walking Bridge across the Rio.  The Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and is therefore a wonderfully appropriate place to share in this protest.  I don't know if I can pull off a "surfer zen vibe," but Gail and I will add ourselves to the numbers gathering to make our voices heard across this planet.  I know it's late notice, but if you feel that we need to begin now (actually we needed to begin thirty years ago, but we'll take what we can get) working for a clean energy future that doesn't include ill-regulated freeform off-shore drilling, then check the Hands Across The Sand website map for your closest location.  All hands on deck, or on the sand, the bridge, the edge of the pond in your local park. (Cross-posted from Quid Nunc.)

Perfect!

Kathy posted this on facebook today. I love it. Too bad I couldn't make it any bigger without it getting totally pixel-y on me....



WWJD? He probably wouldn't text while driving...

EYES CLOSED HUMMING REAL LOUD

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

On or about June 5, 1944 General Dwight Eisenhower scribbled this note and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He never had to use it and it was found years later, still in the jacket pocket. Since the little sheet of paper shows the editing he did as he wrote, many historians believe he probably wrote it as he traveled from base to base to visit with the airborne troops as they readied to board their planes for the invasion of France.

Worst case casualty estimates for the airborne troops was up to seventy percent. The man believed it was important to look into the eyes of the men he was sending into harm’s way. Contrast this with the Deepwater Horizon survivors who were asked to sign liability waivers as soon as they reached shore.

Contrast this with the “nobody told me anything, I apparently haven’t displayed any curiosity whatsoever about how the company I’m in charge of drills for oil, I wasn’t on the Deepwater Horizon rig before the disaster, so these events are not my responsibility” testimony of BP CEO Tony Howard in Washington DC yesterday. It may be catty, but I picture the man in his office eyes closed, fingers in ears, humming really, really loud.

In another note, Rep. Joe Barton R-Texas (recipient of over $1,400,000 in oil and gas contributions since 1989 ) first apologized to Howard at the beginning of the hearings for the “shakedown” by the White House that forced BP to set up an escrow account to cover damage claims from the spill, then withdrew his apology later in the day. It appears he was strongly encouraged to do so by members of his own party. As in “eat crow now or risk losing your seat on the committee.” Again the précis of the news story is my own, but it gets the gist of it.

After all the ‘Pubs are hoping to pick up as many seats at possible this fall. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as the supporters of “leave industry alone to regulate itself” face the voters. At least the escrow fund may help the alleviate some of the capitalize the profits, socialize the cost of cleaning up the messes we’ve seen in the past.

Cross posted in Walking With Hope.

SHALLOW END OF THE GENE POOL

Woman Hit By Car Sues Google Maps Over Directions

(May 31) -- A California woman is suing Google after she was hit by a car while following walking directions provided by Google Maps. Lauren Rosenberg claims Google Maps led her to walk from one Park City, Utah, address to another via Deer Valley Drive, a rural roadway also known as Utah State Route 224.

In a lawsuit filed in district court in Park City, Rosenberg claims Google is to blame for a car striking her on the road, an accident she says has cost her $100,000 in medical bills."As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant Google's careless, reckless and negligent providing of unsafe directions, Plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous highway, and was thereby stricken by a motor vehicle, causing her to suffer severe permanent physical, emotional and mental injuries," the complaint reads.

Rosenberg is asking Google for the cost of her medical bills plus loss of earnings and punitive damages. She is also suing the driver who struck her, Patrick Harwood of Park City. In the complaint Rosenberg says Google should not have instructed her to walk along Deer Valley Drive, which does not have sidewalks and pedestrian paths. Rosenberg alleges the roadway "exhibits motor vehicles at high speeds" and "is not reasonably safe for pedestrians."Google Maps issues a warning about its walking directions that is visible on PCs but not cell phones or PDAs, saying: "Walking directions are in beta. Use caution -- This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."


Yes, my title is more than a little on the snarky side. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a WTF or a YHTBK (you have to be kidding.) Yes, the directions on Google sent her to a road with no sidewalks or bike paths. But, YO!!!!!!, where were your brains woman? Fast traffic plus no side walks plus narrow shoulders equals danger with a capital D. I'm surprised she hasn't included the state in her lawsuit for not posting NO WALKING signes.

If the route hadn't been updated since a lake appeared on the landscape would she have tried to walk on water?

I've long believed that there's a finite amount of intelligence in the universe.....and it 's getting spread thinner and thinner all the time.

Am I Supposed to Feel Sorry For This Guy?

Working as many hours as I do, I'm largely cut off from television news, and I wouldn't listen to a radio talk show if you chained a set of headphones to my ears and held a gun to my head. But I do get the opportunity to browse the headlines in the Oregonian when I pick it up off the sidewalk on my way in the door of the cafe in the morning.

I know newspapers are having a really hard time staying afloat these days. And I honestly think it's a terrible shame. It's possible that print media was the last place you could obtain actual news if you went looking for it. But since papers have decided to turn themselves into "news magazines" in an attempt to retain readers, there's nothing much besides a whole lot of fluff splattered between the first and last pages. And there's no such thing as a "news" piece written without a ton of very obvious editorial intent.

So the other day, I spied this story on the front page of the paper:

AT & T Customer Goes To Jail After Shooting At Thieves' Car

...in which some jack-ass with a concealed weapon permit and a loaded .38 in his pocket decided to play "NCIS" and shoot out the tires of the getaway car of some thieves who had run out of the local cel phone store with a couple of hot I-Phones.

He missed. God knows where those shots went, or could have gone. And since when does one resort to deadly force to recover $700 worth of electronic gadgets? The Gresham Police hauled his ass off to jail. And everyone is outraged, because this ballsy guy was "just trying to do the right thing."

I have to say, we live in a crazy world. Every time the police around here actually have to kill someone, there is a monstrous investigation, the cop gets suspended until the investigation is complete, editiorialists from every nook and cranny put in their two cents about how the police misuse deadly force. A cop can hardly taser or bean-bag someone without being painted as an accomplice to the Rodney King assault. But let some Joe Blow on the street with a concealed handgun and an over-developed fantasy life take pot-shots at a petty thief, and he's painted as some kind of folk hero.

I guess this qualifies as my

"WTF"

for this week...

Why I Really Love Oregon's Senior Senator

I grabbed something to read off the newspaper table at the cafe, while I sat down to scarf down my (excellent!) cream of broccoli soup. The reading material of choice just happened to be our local newspaper, published once a week. What I was actually looking for was whether any of my competitors were advertising, and what they were advertising. What I found was a wonderful gem of an opinion piece written by Oregon's senior senator, Ron Wyden.

Looking for a link to post here, I found it at the Washington Post:

Bipartisanship Shouldn't Be a Political Death Sentence

I'll tempt you to go read the whole thing with quotes like this:

Ideologically, Bob and I couldn't be more different. He's pro-life. I'm
pro-choice. He voted for the Iraq war; I didn't. If Bob has ever seen a tax
break he didn't like, I am unaware of it. But one thing Bob and I have in common
is our fundamental belief that we were elected to do more than just get
reelected, that once elections are over we have a duty to try to govern even if
it means working with people with whom we don't always agree.

And this:

Working in a bipartisan fashion can lead to watered-down legislation, yes, but
principled bipartisanship can also lead to a value-added, better result.
Personally, I believe that both sides can get much more of what they want by
working together than by simply trying to prevent the other side from gaining
ground. By working with those with whom we don't necessarily see eye to eye, we
are forced to work harder, to test our ideas and to consider solutions that we
may never have thought of on our own. Moreover, if Democrats and Republicans
ever stop fighting each other, they might finally find the strength to defeat
the interest groups that all too easily exploit the partisan divide.

Please go read, and have your faith renewed that there is at least one man in Washington who "GETS IT." (Well, there were TWO, but one has lost his job because of it...)

After reading this, perhaps I've decided not to leave the country after all. At least there is one human being--who happily represents my adopted home state--who does not have his head up his political ass (wish I could say as much for the state of Utah...).

As long as Ron Wyden represents me in Washington, I'm good...

EXPERIENCE; WHO NEEDS IT?

I’m not sure if this is WTF entry, just some observations now that the primary is over out here in good ol’ Oregon.

Oregon Republicans are fielding a former pro basketball player for governor; at least he has a degree in political science with a minor in economics. Near as I can tell, he hasn’t done anything with them but he does have the degrees. At least the ‘Pub running for Ron Wyden’s senate seat is a law professor. No political experience but I assume he knows something about the law.

And the local candidate running for Defazio’s congressional seat appears to be a real prize. He appears to be a right wing nut scientist from Cave Junction. He doesn’t believe in global warming, markets his own line of home school products, seems to believe that Creation Science is a good thing and markets survivalist books from his web site. The one thing all these candidates have in common, loudly trumpeted, is their total lack of political experience.

If you follow the “lack of experience’ argument to its logical conclusion I’d expect one of these candidates to show up at Lisa’s café looking for a good mechanic or checking out the local garage when they need a surgeon. After all experience isn’t everything, right?

Note: The candidates are a little thin on the Democratic side too. Although it’s been repealed the one item both parties could agree on a few years ago was making it harder for anyone who wasn’t a democrat or republican to get a spot on the ballot. Hell of a way to run a railroad.