Friday, May 16, 2008
5 Ideas for Creamed Corn
Not that there are many readers around to witness it, but I'm in a sort of blog decline.It's been triggered by an endless primary season and enhanced by a series of disasters that I can't do a damn thing about.
Suddenly these little posts seem especially impotent.
Add to that the spring fever that envelops me at this time of year. We are currently waiting for the arrival of our greenhouse, a long
anticipated event. I had one in California and used to consider it the ultimate playhouse. Everything seemed to fall away once I was inside, fiddling with my seedlings and such. You can't control the response of the Myanmar... or Burmese... government to offers for international aid. Hell, you can't even control the name of the damn country. You can't keep the children of China safe from the movement of tectonic plates. But you can water your seedlings.So I'm feeling withdrawn from the blogosphere at the moment. The most fun I've had blogging recently was on our library blog, doing the lost and found fashion show. It reunited one kid-patron with a hat!
The greenhouse is making its way across this nation of ours in a big ol' truck. The suspense is killing me.
Friday, May 09, 2008
They're Bats
Something's killing the bats in New York state and Vermont, and we're concerned.Bats winter over in caves and abandoned mines and return to their outdoor spots in spring and summer, where they perform the valuable service of eating zillions of insects, largely mosquitoes.
It's scary to hear that scientists are finding caves full of dead bats, tens of thousands of them, in what are their usual overwintering places. I can't imagine going through a Vermont summer without their help.
Nobody knows what's responsible for these mass deaths. The bats have powdery white stuff on their cute little noses, obviously Not a Good Sign.
I'm tempted to blame the whole epidemic upon global warming, but that's not scientific... just my usual progressive paranoia.
In any case, think good thoughts for the bats. I went out and bought extra mosquito coils, since I live near one of the bat-caves.
Think good thoughts for our bat-friends. We need 'em.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Difference Between Elitist and Classy
How ironic that Obama's competitors try to smear him with the elitist label. Any port in a storm, I guess.Let's see... the son raised by a single mom and grandparents. The community organizer. The child of so-called mixed parentage (peony and crocodile?).
What makes Obama elitist? I don't get it.
I suppose that the fact that Obama, committed to practicing a new brand of politics, won't stoop to the semi-slander of his opponents, current and future. (I do consider the sort of mud-slinging to which Hillary semi-subscribes to be instructive for the general election, by the way). He doesn't seem to have the sort of petty outbursts and name-calling in his psyche that we see over and over in elections. His oratory is certainly superb, but in my experience the elitist may have the style, but not the substance.
An elitist community organizer would probably try to lead his clients through a progressive dinner based upon the recipes in Bon Apetit.
An elitist politician would tell us that s/he can do it for us, rather than step into the role of a facilitator who will help us all to figure out how to do it together. (For what it is, exactly, flip through the many issues on which Obama and Clinton agree.)
I remain committed to the Democratic candidate who can help us to beat McCain, whose straight talk was derailed about four years ago.
But damn, Barack Obama does have class.
And being classy isn't the same as being elitist.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
A Dance to Remember
We Democrats are still so busy dancing our primary dances that it's hard to remember that the Republicans have already moved on to the Big Prom.The most exciting pairing, of course, is John McCain and Pastor Hagee, who have been effortlessly gliding around the church fellowship hall festooned with balloons for some months now.
Sen. McCain is unabashed in his appreciation of his dream date, and Pastor Hagee is probably pretty stoked about being escorted to the dance by a genuine hee-ro.
They are an attractive couple, even if some Keystone Staters missed Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul enough to write them in, inevitability be damned.
I'm just glad to see McCain dating someone with meat on his/her bones after that bony beer heiress he married.
Just goes to show these alpha males need their variety.
