Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Dormant grass.
Susan introduced me to the notion of "grass dormancy." Something I never thought about but will research later.
Monday, August 25, 2008
David Maraniss
He was interviewed on C-Span today and said something like this:
People who have degrees from Harvard & Columbia or own seven or eight houses aren't necessarily elitist. It looks like the presidential campaign debate may center around issues like this and if that happens I feel sorry for the American public.
Oliver and Gus listen to a lot of radio with me these days but show no signs of being worried about anything they hear.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Started reading a new book.
“The Great Derangement: A terrifying true story of war, politics, and religion at the twilight of the American Empire,” by Matt Taibbi
From the Introduction:
Taibbi writes that his research led him to see that….
“The [American] lawmaking process had evolved over time in such a way that almost all of the important decisions could be made behind closed doors by a few key players in both houses, without debate or discussion and certainly without any real input from the voting public. …Congress spent most of its daylight hours naming post offices and passing resolutions to honor sports teams, while the important stuff it did--like gut the Clean Air Act as an “emergency” response to Hurricane Katrina--it did in late-night meetings of mostly anonymous committees, out of the (at least potentially) prying eye of the press and the public.
“…both parties, Democratic and Republican, were equally guilty in what really was a conspiracy to run the government without outside interference. The only way the public could protest all the handouts and earmarks and fast-tracked tax breaks and other monstrosities was to vote for the other party--and the other party, it turned out, was inevitably whoring for the same monied masters.
“… I began to notice what I quickly realized was a phenomenon directly related to the mess in Washington. There was a consequence, a flip side to the oligarchical rigged game of Washington politics: apparently recognizing that they’d been abandoned by their putative champions in Washington, the public was now, rightly it seemed, tuning out of the political mainstream.
“…But they weren’t tuning out in order to protest their powerlessness more effectively; they were tuning in to competing versions of purely escapist lunacy. On both the left and the right, huge chunks of the population were effecting nearly identical retreats into conspiratorial weirdness and Internet-fueled mysticism.
“…. I began to see the outlines of the grotesque black comedy that had taken root in this country since [9/11]. …One day I tried to imagine the whole thing from the point of view of Osama bin Laden. Here he had gone through all the trouble of attacking New York City, and how did the victim nation respond?
Well, its government responded by counterattacking the wrong country and passing a whole host of insane laws that had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism; its president responded by encouraging its citizens to buy Chevys and go on vacations. Then, when it came time to ask why the attack had happened, the president announced that it had happened because the terrorists, well, those folks hated our freedom. Examining this rationale, the mainstream press did not denounce Bush’s reasoning as the preposterous horseshit it was, but instead tripped over themselves en masse in a desperate attempt to find new ways to compare their leader to Winston Churchill. Months later, bin Laden himself had been forgotten, and the country moved on to denouncing the real enemy, culminating in the banning of French fries from the congressional cafeteria.
“The people, of course, soon recognized that they had been egregiously lied to by the executive and by their supposed allies in the Fourth Estate and began to seek out the REAL explanation for what had happened.
“On the right, huge masses of Christians began to understand that New York had been attacked as divine retribution for America’s acquiescence in the effort to allow homosexuals to marry.
“On the left, they had a different explanation. According to the more educated, sophisticated set of Americans, the Americans who knew how to appreciate The Wire or a good Coen brothers film and who in their informed secular worldview felt smugly superior to those half-baked hysterical crackpots on the religious right, Islamic terrorism was actually a clever cover story. The actual culprit in 9/11 was none other than our own president, George W. Bush, who had effected a brilliant diversion in bombing Manhattan using Saudi patsies with links to Sunni Islamic radicals, in order to start a war against the nonreligious Iraqi state of Saddam Hussein. Naturally.
“From bin Laden’s point of view, the whole situation had to be immensely frustrating. He pulls off the crime of the century, of the millennium perhaps, and the victim America turns out to be so wrapped up in its own intramural bullshit that it can’t even give him credit for it. America turned out to be, in a way, psychologically immune to attack; its government was too corrupt to fight back, and its people were too crazy to comprehend their position in the world. We were a nation gone completely mad, blind to everything outside our borders, with our effective institutions co-opted by crooks and thieves and our citizens piddling away the last days of their influence reading sacred tracts and spinning absurd theories about the grassy knoll, WTC 7, and the international Masonic conspiracy.”
From the Introduction:
Taibbi writes that his research led him to see that….
“The [American] lawmaking process had evolved over time in such a way that almost all of the important decisions could be made behind closed doors by a few key players in both houses, without debate or discussion and certainly without any real input from the voting public. …Congress spent most of its daylight hours naming post offices and passing resolutions to honor sports teams, while the important stuff it did--like gut the Clean Air Act as an “emergency” response to Hurricane Katrina--it did in late-night meetings of mostly anonymous committees, out of the (at least potentially) prying eye of the press and the public.
“…both parties, Democratic and Republican, were equally guilty in what really was a conspiracy to run the government without outside interference. The only way the public could protest all the handouts and earmarks and fast-tracked tax breaks and other monstrosities was to vote for the other party--and the other party, it turned out, was inevitably whoring for the same monied masters.
“… I began to notice what I quickly realized was a phenomenon directly related to the mess in Washington. There was a consequence, a flip side to the oligarchical rigged game of Washington politics: apparently recognizing that they’d been abandoned by their putative champions in Washington, the public was now, rightly it seemed, tuning out of the political mainstream.
“…But they weren’t tuning out in order to protest their powerlessness more effectively; they were tuning in to competing versions of purely escapist lunacy. On both the left and the right, huge chunks of the population were effecting nearly identical retreats into conspiratorial weirdness and Internet-fueled mysticism.
“…. I began to see the outlines of the grotesque black comedy that had taken root in this country since [9/11]. …One day I tried to imagine the whole thing from the point of view of Osama bin Laden. Here he had gone through all the trouble of attacking New York City, and how did the victim nation respond?
Well, its government responded by counterattacking the wrong country and passing a whole host of insane laws that had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism; its president responded by encouraging its citizens to buy Chevys and go on vacations. Then, when it came time to ask why the attack had happened, the president announced that it had happened because the terrorists, well, those folks hated our freedom. Examining this rationale, the mainstream press did not denounce Bush’s reasoning as the preposterous horseshit it was, but instead tripped over themselves en masse in a desperate attempt to find new ways to compare their leader to Winston Churchill. Months later, bin Laden himself had been forgotten, and the country moved on to denouncing the real enemy, culminating in the banning of French fries from the congressional cafeteria.
“The people, of course, soon recognized that they had been egregiously lied to by the executive and by their supposed allies in the Fourth Estate and began to seek out the REAL explanation for what had happened.
“On the right, huge masses of Christians began to understand that New York had been attacked as divine retribution for America’s acquiescence in the effort to allow homosexuals to marry.
“On the left, they had a different explanation. According to the more educated, sophisticated set of Americans, the Americans who knew how to appreciate The Wire or a good Coen brothers film and who in their informed secular worldview felt smugly superior to those half-baked hysterical crackpots on the religious right, Islamic terrorism was actually a clever cover story. The actual culprit in 9/11 was none other than our own president, George W. Bush, who had effected a brilliant diversion in bombing Manhattan using Saudi patsies with links to Sunni Islamic radicals, in order to start a war against the nonreligious Iraqi state of Saddam Hussein. Naturally.
“From bin Laden’s point of view, the whole situation had to be immensely frustrating. He pulls off the crime of the century, of the millennium perhaps, and the victim America turns out to be so wrapped up in its own intramural bullshit that it can’t even give him credit for it. America turned out to be, in a way, psychologically immune to attack; its government was too corrupt to fight back, and its people were too crazy to comprehend their position in the world. We were a nation gone completely mad, blind to everything outside our borders, with our effective institutions co-opted by crooks and thieves and our citizens piddling away the last days of their influence reading sacred tracts and spinning absurd theories about the grassy knoll, WTC 7, and the international Masonic conspiracy.”
Gus. With cathedral windows quilt.
Note horrible scratch on floor. Classify under "things I see only when I take pictures."
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
About lawns. And look who came over the fence for breakfast. Cute little bastards.
I found a simple guide to lawn care.
http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2004020829016580.html ("Organic Gardening FAQ Page")
This is my summary:
1. Spring: sprinkle food on the lawn. Food can be coffee grounds ("Any ground seed or bean is good as an organic fertilizer including used coffee grounds.").
2. Summer: do nothing unless there's a drought, then water.
3. Fall: sprinkle compost and food (coffee) on the lawn.
4. Winter: do nothing.
I have lots of coffee grounds and lots of compost so if I decide to start taking care of the diminishing lawn, this is how I'll start. (Unfortunately, every time I read over the FAQ page I find something I don't understand: eg, on the latest reading I realized that I can't tell when compost is supposed to be applied to the lawn.)
Friday, August 15, 2008
Hummingbird moth in my garden today.
I didn't take this picture (credit goes to http://karennovak.wordpress.com/ -- whose blog looks interesting & I'll get back to it another time). But I did follow one around with my camera. They move a lot faster than butterflies so the only shot I got was very blurry. H/she will come back maybe?
I've been thinking that I don't like August gardening.
But I think it's because of the post below (no gardening voice).
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Sunflowers I didn't plant.
I've got sunflowers that must have popped up because I put black oil sunflower seeds in my bird feeders. Of course the only ones that grew were those that grew under deer-proof netting.
Oh deer.
Early this morning these were nice, full, healthy hostas. At 10:35, I discovered the mother deer and her twins nibbling at them. Somehow they got over my fence, obviously not high enough, and had a late breakfast. Now I'm trying to decide if I should just take down the fence and let them roam freely through the yard, as they always have in the past.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
It's supposed to be high tomato season but all I've got are green golf balls.
A farmer at the Takoma Park Farmers Market told me last Sunday that I probably over-fed my plants in the spring. I did add a topping of compost to all my plants, and they all got nice and leafy and produced lots of flowers. All seemed well. But I've noticed that not many fruit have appeared even though there are many flowers. So now I know. Next year I'll put the seedlings into the ground with no added food.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Another view of Susan's deck. She made many of those pots.
Kiwi vine along the bottom of the deck railing and up the trellis. She has a monster plant that twines for miles, it seems, around her deck and down the stairway.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Fabulous no-lawn yard.
My gardener friend Susan has just finished getting rid of ALL her lawn, front and back. It's converted to beautiful groundcover. Top is front yard (look at all that great creeping jenny in the background), bottom is the back yard. I forget the name of that beautiful bean plant.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
finally back to quilting
My great-great-aunt Millie, who I never met and died sometime in the early 1950s in rural far western Maryland, pieced about 30 classic fans using obviously retired dresses, aprons, shirts. My great-aunt Helen, a classic farm-woman from the past, gave me the pieces about 20 years ago. I put 12 of them together in this baby-sized quilt that I'm hand-quilting for Callum, a sweet little 8-day-old baby who looks (from pictures I've seen) like a frog when he sleeps.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)