My opinions about, politics, American culture, religion, motherhood, and anything else I can think of.
Can I tell you something. Got to tell you one thing. If you expect the freedom that you say is yours prove that you deserve it. Help us to preserve it or being free will just be words and nothing more. Kansas, 1974
The fruits of my labour. Most of dinner tonight came out of the garden.
Good health despite the growing list of aches and pains.
Human language. The means by which we convey information and emotion via the spoken and written word with such a dizzying array of words is utterly fascinating.
A sunny rain free afternoon at the beach. Jewel enjoyed eating the required amount of sand. I had to explain to Sophia how she got tan lines and why they weren't permanent.
Summer flowers. My zinnias are just getting their bloom on.
Enough.
Ripe red raspberries.
Watching the kids diligently search the raspberry brambles for ripe berries.
A good night's sleep. It will happen again some day.
I wasn't going to comment on Henry Louis Gates Jr. getting himself arrested after breaking into his own home and then mouthing off to the police officer who had been sent to the home to investigate a potential break in at the house by a neighbor's call to police. Yelling at a cop is almost always a dumb idea unless you are yelling, "Help me officer!" or "Have a good day officer!" The police report was pretty clear about the incident. Even if you are inclined to believe that police officers as lying abusers of power there appear to have been plenty of witnesses present to speak about what they saw occur.
Having read the police report I was puzzled when the President of the United States chose to answer a question about the incident at the end of his press conference on health care reform last night. I would have thought that a savvy politician would refrain from getting into the middle of such a squabble before all involved had had a chance to speak their piece or refrain from getting into it at all. The question about the Gates incident was a "no comment" question if ever I heard one. Instead the President of the United States, after first admitting that he was biased because he is a friend of Gates, then admitting that he didn't actually know the facts of the incident, and then getting the reported events wrong, none the less chose to claim that the police officers acted stupidly.
Got that? The President of the United States, the President of the officers in question, claimed that they acted stupidly after acknowledging, and demonstrating, that he didn't actually know the facts of the case.
He then followed up with a rambling retelling of the well worn racial narrative of suspiciously frequent encounters between law enforcement officers and blacks and latinos (added on to reflect the new demographic shift in the nation or to reflect who the he was hoping to appeal to?). Frankly I would have expected this from any talking head on the news or the usual array of race hustlers. But coming from the President of the United States it was disappointing. Was the President of the United States attempting to excuse Gates' behavior with his admittedly uninformed response?
I can't say that his response changed my opinion of my President but I certainly hope that next time he'll wait a bit for the facts to come to light before letting himself get carried away from truth and reality by a racial narrative.
The officer who had the misfortune to respond to the call to Gates' residence has said about as much as he can on the issue namely that he is not a racist and there won't be any apology for doing his job. Gates is apparently already considering a documentary on racial profiling. I hope this officer isn't further tarnished by Gates' bad behavior and the rush to judgment in adherence to the racial narrative of the racist cop hassling the black man. It's sad that one need only yell "racist" to get a pass on bad behavior and this President of the United States on your side in the matter.
1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. 6The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. 8All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has been already in the ages before us. 11There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
I remember some years ago the "Behold the power of cheese" ad campaign. One of the commercias said something to the effect that mankind went to the moon, discovered it was made of cheese after all and never went back. I always found that commercial to be amusing. That fateful flight took place forty years ago today.
Back from my vacation and ready to comment on the craziness in the world. So...
North Korea has been shooting off missiles left and right and kidnapping American journalists (remember them?) as a cover for the fact that the dear leader is dieing of pancreatic cancer. They put me so much in mind of a small terrified child that doesn't want to take its medicine.
Like a friend said, this is how you make new racists. Idiots. The follow up story doesn't make anything clearer or sound better. The comments on that second story are a hoot as well. I wonder how much of that bluster those people have in real life?
I found this story about Iraqis being disgruntled that they are still seeing US service men and women on their streets amusing in light of the stories (here's just one) about the bombs that keep going off in their streets.
I've been saying for weeks that the last time it rained this much the Irish starved, a reference to the potato famine of the 1800s that lead to the migration of a large segment of the Irish of the time to American shores. So I felt pretty vindicated when I heard this story on the radio, Growers Worry Blight Could Wipe Out Tomato Crops. Potatoes and tomatoes are in the same family and vulnerable to some of the same diseases in this case potato or late blight. We aren't likely to have a famine though thanks to the wide availability of fungicides and the lack of a meddling government making matters worse. Your produce may cost you a bit more though. Although with food prices they way they have been you might not notice the blight driven price increase among the other reasons the cost of your food is going up.
