The Original Concept
Was what? when I started writing this blog. Nothing much, really. I like writing. It makes me feel slightly less crazy to get things out so I can look at them. Blogging is perfect also, because, quite often, even I can’t read my own handwriting. (And after three attempts, apparently can’t spell it either with any ease).
Meanwhile, it is Monday again. The Partner has MSNBC on, the ever irritating Jim Cramer and his shirt sleeves. All these things they talk about, they’re quite lame, to paraphrase Bob. But, a question. Why does a billionaire steal money? If the answer is simply because he can? It’s worse than we thought out here in the cold. A trip to the local open 24 hours Walgreen’s yesterday yielded the information that people are sleeping at night on the benches outside it now, including one man in a wheelchair and his wife (they take turns, apparently, keeping watch over each other, one awake and one asleep). It’s too deep for tears, just about. And perilously close in every way.
So, yesterday I pushed the Titanic off my chest by cooking. Waffles! Make extra and freeze so there’s something to eat even when you’re too anxious to figure it out in the morning. Enchiladas filled with squash and black beans with a sauce made from tomatoes from our garden. Not only thrifty but nutritious. The sauce is really easy, too. I roasted some tomatoes and an onion first, then put them in the food processor (or just chop up) with more fresh tomatoes and chilis. Whoosh around, then put in lightly oiled pan and sear. Done. The roasted onion makes a big difference, actually, in the sauce. Much better than raw. Garlic minced and sprinkled over filling before final assembly. Also this time I discovered that cubing cheese, if you use it, and putting it in the filling mixture and letting it all rest and come together flavor-wise is better than putting it on top. I liked it better, anyway, and the Partner pronounced it “authentic tasting.” And he would know. He is, himself, VERY authentic.
Meanwhile, the Titanic is back in position and I am trying to create some order out of the mayhem-ish winds blowing our way. We’ll see how I do. I did see yesterday, for sure, that basic kindness goes a long way and helps alot, however. So I’m going to try and remember that in my travels today.
No Solicitors
Well, Gentle Readers, today’s trip over the top and across the edge is about…um…capitalism? I guess. I have a small business, as we may know. A small website. I make botanical topical treatments for a variety of issues and do hands on healing work with people, OK? Pretty simple, just an effort to do some good in the world doing something I know and love. I’m reasonably well educated, well read, and other things. Also? APPARENTLY EVERYONE LOVES MY PHOTOGRAPHS. Judging from the number of downloads from my website. Free, we might add. People? My products are not expensive. If you’re going to rip off my pictures, at least buy something. And, if you’re ripping off my recipes? Good luck duplicating them, not to mention don’t lose any sleep over violating the presumed copyright.
The real point of all this is, however, the following. In the past let’s say three months? I am starting to feel like a fish being pursued by a shark. Solicitations up the freaking YANG. The amount of sales pitches and money people want out of me is simply breathtaking. Coaching certifications for a mere $8k. Marketing enhancements for $500 down and $150 and up per month. Advertise here, advertise there. Pay a paltry $3k and we’ll publish your piece in a book. Why, little lady? We’ll even HELP you do a You Tube piece. Which, last time I looked? Had to be something that, well, a caveman could do. But the thing of it is, all these things take up time. Time to look at, think about, make a judgment on. And what it is coming to seem like to me is this. Marketing and sales are totally out of control. Somebody with programming knowledge sits at their keyboard and thinks, hell, real estate tanked and I can program. Where’s another industry I can put my finger in the ring through the nose of people’s dreams and make a bunch of money? Call someone and say, hey, you could get a book deal this way! We guarantee “x” number of hits to your website every month. Blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile? This little piggy is having a tough time out there making money, doing the simple things I do that have meaning not just to me but, I like to think, in a broader sense, are trying to create balance and harmony in my little spot in this world. And the thought of success? is of course quite heady. One can get a bit excited and carried away. Perhaps even part with substantial sums of money. Or not. But certainly it takes up one’s time, and in a boorish way. A Spanish philosopher once said that a boor is someone who deprives you of your solitude without providing you with any company. I’m starting to feel that way, actually. Boored unto to death. And this doesn’t even count all the outright crooked stuff I get. Do I ship to Malta? Do I want to miss this incredibly important conference in Beijing about candles? Sign up to be our XYZ, time’s running out! Don’t miss this INCREDIBLE opportunity. That part, incredible, is at least honest.
So, yes, apparently you do have to have a website if you have a business. But when you have that? What do you have? Open season, in a way. So, today, I did this. I got yet another solicitation at just the wrong time. So I responded and said, hey! let’s do a trade. You advertise on my site, I’ll advertise on yours. Right. There is a kind of astonishing, to me anyway, presumption operating here that everything has to be shilled and pimped out to be worth anything. Any sales offering has to be couched in the language of banality and haveyoueverwantedto, I know the secret of, and instant results with preferably no work involved. What we need is a serious paradigm shift here. It’s discouraging for us Bears, I’m just saying.
Since I’m Here, Anyway
Certain things have happened of late here at Rancho Boozilla, which have caused a Planning Reorganization. The Girls seem fine with it, but why not? As long as the seeds, kibble, peanuts, cheerios and fruit keep coming, it’s all good. And screechy.
Meanwhile, *I* have had to wrestle with some Big Concepts. Such as, what if everything they told you WAS wrong? What if getting spit out of The System, painful as it is, is really OK since one doesn’t respect it anyway? As girls, my generation anyway was taught that obedience and being good, those were what you did. Obey. Be quiet. This may be a horrible shock, Gentle Readers, but I am not obedient. I am polite, reasonable, think things through. But obey, just because, I do not. NOT EVEN. So it’s been a tough row to hoe, so to speak. And now, now here we are in this….words fail me…society, where money is the yardstick of what is good and what is not. If you have money, you’re good. If you don’t, you’re bad. I suppose the badness extends also to being sick and many other things over which, basically, you may have no control. Like what color your skin is or if your family owns a big part of Eli Lilly or the Gap, or lives on the Rez or the Ninth Ward, or whatever it might be. So we’re back to the Middle Ages and that whole absurd concept of Merit which apparently has been translated to the 21st century, completely intact. But it can make you a bit nuts if, let’s say, you grew up being told that being “good” and “working hard” were going to be a workable life strategy and allow you to get somewhere (where? we weren’t allowed to ask. I wonder why). And it just doesn’t. Being RICH gets you somewhere. And having that be your goal and measurement for success is like saying if you aren’t a star basketball player you are a total failure as a human being. There’s only so much room at the top when you have a vertical system. Also? A long way to the bottom, where coincidentally, since it is then set on a horizontal plane, at long last, there is a great deal more room.
I’m just flummoxed. I see people running around, shopping and tra la la-ing like nothing is happening. But the unemployment rate in California that they acknowledge is over twelve percent. And that’s not counting the people who lost jobs two years ago and are still looking. In Detroit? It’s 28%. In Fresno? It’s 40%. That adds up to an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. That adds up to a lot of people with no work, no money, thus no food or housing ultimately. No unemployment. No allowance for restructuring of debt. No future. Not much of a present. Also, probably they’re just Bad People, right? Bad people who, if they’re “lucky” are working two jobs every day just to keep a roof over their head. Heads that are probably close to exploding, because the employers in their magnanimousness, having laid off lots of other people, have the individuals who still work for them do the work of two people for no extra pay. But the bottom line is still pretty much the same at the top. I always did think the Republican concept of the monetary “trickle down theory” was pretty brilliant. You know, profits at the top eventually “trickle down” to the bottom. They were in fact telling the truth. It’s just the substance they discussed as trickling down wasn’t properly described.
We made an appointment with a specialist, a doctor, in desperation, the Partner and I, during last month’s trial by fire. When I made the appointment I clearly stated we had no insurance. Not hard, since that’s the first thing they ask you. Not, what’s the problem? No. How will you pay. So, OK, I told them, reiterated it when we got to the travesty appointment. We leave, I’m barely keeping myself from yelling, we pay. The woman at the front desk said, gosh, that’s mighty white very generous of the doctor to only charge you $X. I gritted my teeth. (There was also a hangover and mild food poisoning involved so perhaps my energy was low.) Anyway, we go, we pay and again I say is this all? we don’t have insurance, we leave. Also, they wouldn’t take cash, which is fascinating to me. So I used my last check. And yesterday? We get a bill for the remainder of his fee. Since they found they couldn’t bill a non-existent insurance company? OR WHAT? If we hadn’t been out of matches I would have set that effing bill on fire.
Also, I saw that one of my favorite writers, Sherman Alexie, is speaking here tonight. Wow, I thought, yesyesyes, let’s go. Then, I saw how much it cost to get in. $25-30 for two people. No mention of the admission costs going to charity or anything. Alexie is Native American. I just wondered how many local Skins at this point could cough up that much cash just to go hear him read. Obviously there’s something really big I’m missing here. Besides the cash, I mean. In today’s life, $25 or $30 is alot of money to plunk down for something as abstract as hearing someone read a book. Even if I had it, I’m not sure I’d spend it that way. Even though Alexie IS one of my very most favorite writers. Maybe it’s just the people with expendable funds who need to hear what he has to say? The people he writes about have already heard it.
This, Really, IS IT.
How much longer, Gentle Readers, are we going to keep playing along like everything is Just Fine? I would propose the following:
EVERYBODY NOT PAY THEIR CREDIT CARD BILLS FOR ONE MONTH. EVERYBODY.
Of course, since the financial institutions all got bailed out with OUR money, it probably won’t matter. They’re already just fine on the money end. I think it would be very worthwhile to turn the tables, just for a moment all at once. Just to see. I talked to a friend today who isn’t going to pay his mortgage this month because the lender won’t correct the interest rate which is not only wrong and not what he applied for and not what he can pay, but they won’t talk to him about it unless he’s delinquent. Does that make sense? These lenders would rather people go into default. You gotta ask yourself why that is. The news tells us that the recession is over. Indeed, it is. Now we’re in a Depression. Time to perhaps face facts?
Things Change
The other morning as I was looking up at the darkened ceiling, trying to be quiet, so as not to wake the at long last Sleeping Peacefully and Pain Free Partner and the Two Vixens in the living room, I thought about how the things I want to do have changed. I used to be crazy about shoes, and want to go to Venice (Italy, please.).
Now I’d be happy to wear flip flops forever. I’d still like to go to Italy. But what I’d really like to do? Is go watch the bears in the river catching salmon up north. There was a program on TV showing just such bears, and of course I got all excited. The Partner, bravely living as he does in a Bear Infested House (lamps, carvings…sigh.), said, well yes. They’re adorable, aren’t they? BUT. Having been out in the wilds quite a bit, he’s actually encountered bears up close and personal. The cuteness isn’t the first thing he thinks of. Once, he said, he walked into a clearing and had one of those cartoon moments: He, the Mamma Bear, and two baby bears all saw each other simultaneously. He and Mamma both screamed and ran. The babies started to cry, which apparently was rather heartrending. They sounded like babies, he said. Well, what did you THINK they’d sound like? Babies all sound like babies. He tells a good story about a volvo station wagon that got stripped to its’ chassis in a remote parking lot. Imagine the fun! When the owners hiked back from a challenging trip to find? Some curled up metal laying around stuffing and tires.
Anyway all this made me think of the times I’ve encountered animals in the Great Outdoors. It’s an interesting experience because, for me, I know I’m getting some communication but of course, what is it?I often feel that way around people, also, to be fair. But, looking into wild eyes is mesmerizing, on some level. As long as you keep it VERY BRIEF. Once in the Berkshires I was hiking around, ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR BEARS. OK, I was young and stupid. I was at an artist’s retreat, taking a painting break. Fortunately, I expect, I did not see any bears. But what I did see was an extraordinary fox. I was on a path of sorts and the fox was in a small culvert running along side, blanketed in buttercups. I felt my arm get really hot, like a cigarette was burning it. I looked down and saw the fox, gazing calmly up at me. We stood there for a minute, then the fox very delicately stuck its nose into a buttercup, inhaled deeply, grinned (yes it did), looked at me and seemed to smile, and vanished. Squirrels routinely jump into my lap, and once a lizard raced over to me from several yards away and rode on my hiking boot for a while. The time that really stuck, however, was with a coyote. I was lost in the mountains around where my parents live. It was pitch black. I was starting to think I’d have to sleep in my truck until daybreak since I was running low on gas. Nervouser and nervouser. Suddenly something glinted up ahead on the road. It was eyes. I stopped, rolled my window down as a coyote walked over to me, and then we looked right straight at each other. Hello brother, I said. I’m lost. It seemed to me that the Coyote said something along the lines of, tell me something I don’t already know. Follow me. So, the coyote strolled out in front of the truck, in the middle so I could see him, kept looking back at me to make sure I was following along, and led me down one road, through a turn onto another, and finally to the main road I’d missed. I stopped again, said thank you, and the Coyote tossed its lovely head in a, you’re welcome. Now git! kind of way.
Which is to say. The way humans think of what the world is is often quite limited. We are not above everything else here, and it is not our “dominion”. We are sharing it. Those moments when you can actually experience what that sharing IS, are almost indescribable. So, while I used to want to go shopping and all that kind of thing? I thought I’d rather gouge my eyes out than go camping? That all changed, and with that life fell into place in a way for me. Of course the place it fell into is totally OUT of place in terms of the prevailing cultural winds. But it feels so much better.
Lay It Down, Step Back
*sigh* *cough* Well. Hello again. I hardly know how to begin, and gosh! I’m sure Inquiring Minds Want To Know…just how Boozilla is faring. SHE is fine. And waiting for breakfast.
1) I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but? Plaxico Burress getting two years in jail for shooting himself in the leg seems completely ridiculous. Someone can be chopping people up and storing them in their freezer undetected by their Parole Officer, but boy howdy. Shoot yourself in the foot/leg? You are in the cooler, you menace to society. Also, we’re looking at, what? $100,000 over that two year period for his incarceration for a victimless “crime”.
2) I’ve figured out the thing with health care and medicine in this country. Finally. Besides the fact that everyone is so risk averse they won’t even say if it’s day or night when they’re outside and it’s staring them in the face, there is also the fact that you, as the patient, are not presenting with a question to be answered. No, you are an item to be stuffed into the prevailing paradigm whether you fit or not. It’s just the way it is. No point getting upset about it, right? I’ve gone beyond ballistic, seeing as how I actually had to figure something out or watch someone live in total misery. And? I DID figure something out. Which given what I am attempting to do in my work, makes sense I suppose. Still, it was grueling and upsetting and infuriating. However, also a function of the fact that there appear to be just too many people to pay attention to. It’s a game of Russian Roulette, going to a doctor in these circumstances. If their favored best guess about you is in actual synch with you, you are lucky. If it isn’t, you stay sick, get worse, and…well. Good luck. The “clinical” model of having to get a huge amount of empirical (” “) evidence (” “) before arriving at a diagnosis (” “) has its’ strengths. Blood tests can be wonderful. But also, it has a lot of weaknesses. It removes the necessity of paying any real attention to the person in front of you. After all, you have to wait for the “test results”. So, the necessity of compassion, empathy, feeling what the other person is feeling, actually LOOKING at them? Not there. So medicine becomes a cut and dried process when in fact a good deal of it is STILL intuition and exploration. Not to mention perhaps a dash of common sense. Obviously, the best strategy for healing is an inclusive one. You do the tests AND you pay attention. You leave your prejudices at the door of your consulting room. Sure, people lie. Sure, people do things that are completely opposite to their best interests. But not everyone does that. There are alot of medical issues people have that are not, as the literature says, “well understood”. That doesn’t mean they are not real. It just means right now, our medicine people don’t understand them. And that’s all it means.
3) Tomatoes. Have, indeed saved my life.
Small bit of nature
You can see a few speckles on the lower right: Lovely yellow pear tomatoes. Right now, a slender thread between me and sanity, but a good one. Panzanella is quite sustaining, as it turns out. Cube up some french bread, day old is good but just moisten and warm first if it is hard. Finely chop red onion (about a half a good size onion for 1/3 loaf of french bread), chiffonade of two paws full of basil, I like some parsley too, then cut up tomatoes (three or four depending on size) (I like the watermelon shape slices in this). Mix all together, toss with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Divine. Even good left over. Lead me, as it says in the Upanishads, from the Unreal to the Real.
Uh, Lemme See Here
Greetings, Gentle Readers. It has, indeed, been a minute since we last convened here for the Ongoing Saga of Life at House of Boozilla.
Nothing much has changed. The tomatoes are ripening apace, and the possum in the back yard and I are engaged in armed struggle. Which is expected to ensue shortly with the squirrel as the figs ripen. Although, the squirrel and I have a bit of detente so, perhaps foolishly, I feel fairly calm about the figs. As opposed to last year when we hardly got ANY. Sure, there were cleaned and empty skins with all those cute little tooth marks in them. And the bitten-into not quite ripe figs that then had to go into the compost. Still, we live in hope.
The Partner is not much improved, and next week we’ll no doubt have an exciting report on the $350 appointment we’ve made with The Gastroenterologist. I’m doing Major Magic to come up with THAT sum, but nils desperendum.
Meanwhile there has been much to ponder in the Outside World. People are just losing it right and left, aren’t they? Calling the President a liar? My goodness. Try that in Iran, buddy. Or pick something about which there might, maybe, be some question of veracity. Otherwise, did you just want to make yourself look like an ill-bread idiot? Then, poor Serena and Kanye, spouting off. I guess it is hard at the top, too. All kinds of hurtful, really offensive, but courageously anonymous, comments on some of the blogs I read. And, The Joy of Driving, of course. I got totally confused one day because as I pulled out of my parking space and prepared to exit the lot, a woman in a BMW (and I am sorry, but really. BMW should give mandatory driving and comportment lessons with their cars. Seriously.) sat on the right, outgoing side lane. I, in my exposed, pulled out spot, had to quickly review just which side we actually drive on here. Then, of course, someone was racing in on the incoming side, which was my left. The woman in the BMW? I bet you can’t guess what she did. Give up? Yes. She mouthed my least favorite word and flipped me off. I’m like, what are you DOING? to her and PLEASE DON’T HIT ME to the other driver who was also, ha ha, flipping ME off. It strains credulity, to say the least. I wonder if they expected my Subaru to sprout wings.
But, I read this last week, and very especially appreciated the part about those who “live their lives putting out the extra effort not to be an ass…” I think this is the essence in many ways of living a conscious life. Certainly it is in the basic tenets of Buddhism (right action), and in the words of Jesus (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) (Just in case a refresher was needed.). Because there are certainly many out there who seem to put out the extra, we may say even mammoth, effort in the contrary direction. Everyone feels that they, quite simply, just have it the worst. They are entitled. They know it all. Their desires must come first, always. Corollary of course is that you don’t know doodly. There is so much anger and anxiety out there now, it makes going outside a challenging prospect indeed. Where did all this constant looking outside oneself and demanding instant gratification come from? What about growing up and cooperation? Not to mention, delayed gratification. I really don’t understand all this rudeness and the violence of these interactions we’re witnessing now. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t speed up the process of the Ass In Question getting what it wants. It’s like being part of a mass tantrum.
So, meanwhile. Life goes on somehow. And the tomatoes are great.
And Further….
I’m still mentally kicking the Driveway Can around. I suppose the reason I got more than usually irritated by yesterday’s brouhaha was a very human one. I had a hard, really really hard, time digesting the fact that this…this PUSTULE, this excrescence, was taking up air and space and resources, and my great hearted friend is dead. I do, of course, wish that all may enjoy the root of happiness. So there’s work to be done I guess on that Other Part of Me that wishes that many of those all Do Not Pass GO. Ah, meditation. Spiritual Practice. Hurling glass bottles into the recycle bin to assuage the urge to BREAK SOMETHING. This is not easy. Anyway. I got to watch Hellboy last night and that helped some.
Flame Thrower, or Rotten Eggs?
Before we get our selves in a twist regarding the reference above: This is just a fantasy I have about how my driveway should be dealt with. I am officially over the edge about the driveway. The rotten eggs might be workable. I’d probably feel too guilty if I actually incinerated someone. HOWEVER MUCH THEY DESERVED IT.
I was going to write about how it thundered all night long last night, much as it did on another September night eight years ago. Completely out of season and unusual here, but symbolically? Yes indeed. And I was awake for the entire thing because the Partner is still not well.
Then, the phone rang and I learned that a dear friend had died this week. I was going to write about her incredible grace, gallantry, bravery and humanity facing a travail that most would have found too much to bear long ago. I got to see her a few weeks ago, because the Partner’s quick eye noticed her at the grocery store. I got to give her a big hug then, at least.
So, perhaps I will write about those things. When I am not so angry at the stupidity surrounding me. This anger involves- and I bet, Gentle Reader, you will not be surprised to learn….the driveway from HELLLLLLLLLLL. AGAIN.
So, despite on and off rain, there’s a garage sale across the street. Parking across the street and on our side too. So where does an idiot wench, about whom we now write, park? My driveway. Not in the parking place she could have backed into BEHIND the driveway, no, smack dabby dab in the middle. There were three small children in the back, who eventually started screaming at the top of their lungs when I.W.’s partner, after lengthy perusal of yard sale, which was all toys, learned to her dismay and surprise that they didn’t take checks for seventy five cents. But that was later. Having spotted the blockage of the driveway at the outset of this festive encounter, I walked out and asked her, politely, and in my Jin Shin Jyutsu t-shirt for God’s sake, to please not block my driveway. Her response? Was that I was a crazy bitch and she wasn’t moving. They were just going to be a while and I wasn’t going anywhere. She wasn’t moving. I was crazy. And a bitch. Etc. So, I said, you can’t back up, please, and not block my driveway? More of the same. Thank you for being so cooperative and setting such a good example for your kids, I said. She said something unprintable. At this point she noticed all our neighbors were now out staring at her with obvious distaste and an air of let’s get ‘er boys! call the cops! She backed up and managed to take two parking spaces. Several people tried to park behind her, couldn’t because there wasn’t enough room, and left. Our other side neighbors arrived home and squeezed their small car in behind her, narrowly missing the car behind them, which belongs to my other neighbor and is quite the Hot Corvette. He saw his car about to be smashed and entered into the fray. Small car neighbors got out of their car and asked I.W. if she could move her, still idling, car up a teeny bit. Mr. Corvette waded in saying, if my car gets hit somebody dies. Finally I.W.’s Portly Partner wandered back from across the street, kids screaming with no toys, got in the car, flipped me off, and at long last they left.
I confess to puzzlement. And dismay. And? I’m really sick of this. I can’t get out of, I can’t get in to, my own dratted freaking driveway that I get to pay extra rent for because of the Privilege of Having a Driveway. Not even. So I’m thinking that while mayhem will not help anything, of course, and we all have to try , as Gandhi said, to be the change we want to see in the world? A stash of rotten eggs might be perfect. Oh, you’ll just be here a little while? Perfect! WHUMP. Right on the windshield. Really. Because the meter maids never come in time, except for the periodic person who parks there drunk and leaves, so that the car’s still there an hour after I call the police to come because someone’s blocking my driveway. I’m open to better ideas.
*SIGH*
Well, hello again. Somehow the frazzled nerves here at House of Pain are soothed by writing, SO: onward.
One thing I have been meaning to write about and haven’t is: MY PROPAGATION WENT SWIMMINGLY THIS YEAR. I was actually, for the first time, able to propagate a rose bush. I know it is supposed to be easy, and usually my entire paw is green, but up to now, no baby roses. This is an especially wonderful one: Large coral and rose colored, intensely fragrant flowers. I dry them and use in a Persian style spice powder. The other projects, the grape, onion, ginger stalk, succulents, elderberry and scented geraniums are well established and on their way to being Big Plants. I am thrilled. Propagation is one of the joys of my life and given the Challenging Nature of Things at Present……
Which, ha ha, reared their ugly head while I was writing this earlier. So. Also, I was going to report on two things that made me laugh last week. Thing the first: My client in the nursing facility has a prized object, shaped like a cat. A pillow. One day last week, in addition to everything else, the cat went AWOL. I tore his room up, got lots of inarticulate hand gestures in response to my queries about what might have happened, finally got my homegirl up front to let me into the laundry room. So I could go through the dirty laundry from his wing in case the cat was there. Which I did. And, which, yes, is another little piece of hell on earth I got to tour last week. Nonetheless. The two laundry people were standing there goggling at me. I say I’m looking for a pillow, shaped like a cat. Black, round, yellow eyes with a tail. The man there, bless his furry and demented little heart, no doubt just wanted to help. So he said, OH, IS THAT IT? pointing excitedly. Hope springs eternal so I turned and looked. And saw, yes, a pillow.
A pillow SHAPED LIKE TWEETY BIRD. A BRIGHT YELLOW, EIGHTEEN INCH TALL, BULBOUS TWEETY BIRD. Well, no, I said, barely holding it together. Excellent try but I’m looking for Sylvester. (Who, eventually, I did find.) (But not there.)
Thing the second was on dooce. She printed an email comment from a headless, Germanic, anti-vaccination pioneer which…well. I felt like I might have found my long lost sister. I also wondered if all this hasn’t driven me just the teensiest bit crazy. Just. The. Teensiest. Bit.
Meanwhile, watching a program on tv while The Partner lay in quiet misery, (since, of course, there’s no doctor we can see for him because…oh, well) we see that there is no water in Fresno, they’re mowing down almond trees before they die, and the ground is empty, unemployment there is at 40%, and the food lines are so long people can’t even get…..anything. Which, since the San Joaquin Valley produces an awful lot of food? And it isn’t producing it now? What do you think?
I heard a very intelligent person, who is on the grid (unlike me), has a brain and a heart, give an opinion about what she thought was happening, worst case scenario. It really made my blood run cold because it makes a horrible kind of sense. The fine folks who have brought us to this situation AND I’M SORRY YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL WHO YOU ARE, GRAND OLD PARTY , BIG AND MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS OF ALL STRIPES AND THOSE LUCKY FOLKS WHO ACTUALLY HAVE ALL THE MONEY, (sorry about the yelling) are just waiting for everything to collapse, undermining everything President Obama is working potentially toward. Then they can rebuild, again, in their own image, pointing to the failure of the Democrats and of Obama. Endless supply of immigrant labor, check. The supermax prisons they said they didn’t build but did? Ready for occupancy. These days are a real test of my faith, of my convictions about non-violent action. About everything. Thank God for gardening, is all I can say.
