Family, Garden

A Fruiting Body?

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21  bar steady 0mph NE windchill 21  Samhain

Waxing Gibbous Dark Moon (I’ve been wrong on this for several posts)

Kate’s home and likely will be for a while until we get her neck dealt with in one way or another.  She’s read.  She’s sewed.  She’s cooked.   She’s helped out in the orchard work.   Not enough for her sturdy Norwegian work ethic. Her neck is bad enough that work just makes it worse, but when she rests it subsides enough that she itches to get stuff done, a tough place to be in for such an active and alive person.

A bit more garden work to do.  Stake the trees in the orchard.  Put protective sleeves on my 2-year old, toddler trees.  Put down black plastic on the forest edge and the shade garden area.  Still, the end is in sight for this growing season.

This is said sotte voce: I may be a daddy!  My dalliance with the peppers and egg plants seems to have begun to bear fruit.  I can’t tell for sure quite yet, but it sure looks like both plants are with fruit.  If so, I’m gonna be pleased.   I’ll post pictures when I know more.

Paula and Lindsay come tomorrow morning to do some rejiggering of our site plan.  Our work with them feels collaborative and I like that.

Tuesday evening is an event put on by our financial planner, talking about the current market situation.

Wednesday AM, most likely, Kate will have some more diagnostic tests for her neck.
Wednesday night is the Sierra Club political committee evaluation and celebration meeting.  I hope enough folks show up to help us get a good sense of what happened.  How many of our endorsee’s overall got elected.  Why did the four campaigns we targeted win and why did two fail?  What should be a time-line for next year’s political committee?

Thursday morning we see our financial adviser. Thursday afternoon Anastasia, Allison and I will judge the Northeast Minneapolis Art Show.  Friday night we’ll go to the opening.  Friday AM I have two tours and Kate has an appointment with the neuro-surgeon.

A very busy week.

Family, Weather +Climate

A Pain in the Neck

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23  bar rises 30.24  omph NNW  windchill 22  Samhain

Waxing Crescent of the Dark Moon

Change is the future invading the present…  Alvin Toffler

Ready to head outside for some more garden work.  A clear, bright day with a chill in the air.  Good outside working conditions.

Lost sleep last night.  No reason.  Just woke up at 5:30AM and could not get back to sleep.  Oh, well.

Kate got the report back on her cervical verterbrae and the news is not good, though not much different than what we expected.  It highlights the severity of the problem with which she’s labored for so long now.  Now, a few more tests and an appointment with the neurosurgeon.

Life.  It goes on whether you are ready or not.

Aging, Family

Hunkering Down

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33 bar rises 29.77  N 6mph windchill 28  Samhain

Waxing Crescent of the Dark Moon

The October financial storm gathered under the Blood Moon.  Obama’s election comes during a waxing Dark Moon.  Just interesting is all I’m saying.

The red car in the Sandhills of Nebraska.

red-car-trip061450.jpgPicked up the red car from its most recent series of procedures.  This time it got new front constant velocity boots.  They protect the main bearing from wear caused by road debris.  Two new aluminum wheels should solve the slow leak problem the back tires have experienced.  Various bulbs and other smaller matters–oil change, too–thrown in for the trip.  Each visit it comes closer and closer to Theseus’s ship.

Kate continues to suffer with her cervical vertebrae pinching a nerve.  She’s so stoic, so careful.  Right now she’s stopped taking the prednisone which helped because she wants the imaging studies to be unaffected.  She can’t find a way to position herself that doesn’t hurt.  Like hell.

Got tools for protecting the trees in our new orchard.  Later today or tomorrow I’ll install them and begin to put down the black plastic and straw to kill weeds along the forest’s edge.  Much cooler weather now, but it is still a good time to do this kind of work.

This week will be the last for working outside for a while.    I’m ready to hunker down and get some reading and writing done.

Politics

Live Electoral Coverage 2008

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November 4th   Live Election Coverage

6:00 PM  CST

MSNBC has called Vermont and Kentucky.  Obama   McCain

Chris Matthews says Indiana too close to call…bodes well for Obama.  As a Hoosier, I remember when Indiana went Democrat with regularity.  It was a labor state and labor voted Democrat.  Then, Governor Wallace.  He took a third or so of the vote.

Several strong African American commentators like Bishop of Potter’s House Ministry and Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post.  Feels good to me to have a strong Africa-American presence.

I know it may be my projection but it seems Chinese Americans carry themselves in a different way since China has risen in world prominence.  More confident, more sure of themselves in their difference.  It also seems to be happening to African-Americans.  Validation comes in different ways,but it is beautiful to see.

7:00 PM

Pennsylvania projected for Obama.  MSNBC. 

McCain has begun to underperform Bush 2004.   This looks good for the whole race. 

Howard Dean has begun to talk about healing from the last 8 years.  I agree.  The whole country felt different today as I drove home from Hopkins after doorknocking for Get Out The Vote. 

Interesting shots from Grant Park.  Filled with black faces.  Just 40 years ago, in 1968, Chicago had streets filled with vietnam war protesters.  Now African-Americans will celebrate the distance between then and now, between 1964 and now, between 1864 and now.

At this point Obama has 78-111 electoral votes.

7:45 pm  As of now my home county in Indiana, Madison, has voted Obama by 52% with 71% of precincts reporting.

Given the western states of California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii and the Upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan combined with Pennsylvania I predict Obama the victor.

General

Check Me on Wednesday

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“I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.” – Walt Whitman

Predictions:

Obama wins 51.6% of the popular vote and at least 320 electoral votes.

Franken squeaks by Coleman.

Bachmann Tinklenberg  —  too close to call.

Madia Paulsen —  too close to call.

Dems do not make it to 60 in the Senate.

If I have to give a reasoned opinion, I don’t have it at this time of night.  These are not hopes, though, but based on reading and poll watching over the last two months.  Which means, of course, that I could be completely wrong.

Here is a cogent analysis. You can read more by clicking on the link or going to Pollster.com.

November 3, 2008
One Day to Go and McCain Is Between Barack and a Hard Place

By Steve Lombardo

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will become the first Democratic Presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to win an outright majority of the votes cast on Election Day — and with it a sizeable majority of electoral votes — making him the next President of the United States.

We make this projection knowing that the gap is closing both nationally and in key states; it is our sense, however, that this trend would have to continue for another 10 days for the election to swing back to McCain.

The following is our rationale for going with Obama:

* The economic recession/financial meltdown dominated the headlines from mid-September to mid-October. The war in Iraq remains enormously unpopular. Bush’s approval ratings are near an all-time low for modern Presidents. And the GOP brand is weak and fractured. As a result of these factors, a majority of this hugely dissatisfied electorate will be voting Democratic to change the direction of the last eight years.
* October was the worst month for the stock market in 21 years. Yes, last week was an improvement, but the month of October was unkind to John McCain and the GOP. Last Thursday, the government reported that the economy contracted from July through September – the first time consumer spending had decreased in 17 years.
* With this environment as a backdrop, Obama will pick the GOP lock on the electoral college by winning six states George W. Bush won in 2004–Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia–en route to an electoral vote rout.
* This election was always about Obama and McCain was never able to paint him as either “unfit” or “unprepared.” Nor was McCain able to give people a clear reason to vote for him.
* In an ironic twist, it was Obama who defined McCain in a negative light rather than the other way around. They started by claiming that he was “confused” four months ago and then painting him as “erratic” in the last 60 days. Of course, team McCain and the candidate himself contributed to this. It will be interesting to count the gross rating points that went behind contrast ads on both sides. My guess is that the Obama campaign might win that count as well.
* Terrorism and national security virtually disappeared as election issues. These two issues dominated a large part of the national dialogue in 2004 and helped give Bush his re-election victory.
* New registrants, young voters and black voters are going to break with historical pattern and vote in disproportionately high numbers, giving Obama huge margins in certain states and propelling him to victory over an exhausted and disengaged GOP base.
* The Democratic ground game will prove to be vastly superior to the Republican operation (money can do that).
* The turnout will be between 58%-60%, which would be its highest level since 1960. If the total number of voters exceeds 130 million (meaning more than 61% of eligible voters will have voted) then the Obama win could be an electoral landslide because the Democrats have a built-in six-eight point advantage in terms of party identification.

Politics

I Made a Mistake. Alan.

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One of the ancient trails that got us into this mess:  greed.

Sometime a while ago, I listened to Alan Greenspan’s account of his years at the Fed.  Three things struck me about it.  First, he was a personal friend and long time follower of Ayn Rand.  Second, he was a libertarian.  Third, perhaps because of one and two, he trusted in what he called peer review instead of regulation.  That is, he believed financiers entering into contracts would do their due diligence, vet the loan applicant and act in their own and their shareholders self-interest.  Talk about idealism and objectivism.  When I heard that back then, I thought, OMG, this guy is naive.  Yep, he was and in the passage below from a NYT article, he admits it.

“…in a tense exchange with Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the (House Committee of Government Oversight and Reform) committee, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.”

NYT, 10/23/08

Garden, Our Land and Home

Crash Under the Blood Moon

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46 bar falls 30.22  6mph  ENE  windchill 43  Autumn

Last Quarter of the Blood Moon

It looks like the most violent moments of the credit crisis, stock market crash will have come under the aegis of the Blood Moon.  Coincidence?  I think so, but it’s still metaphorically powerful.

All the trimmed hemerocallis in the back have been tucked away in piles to decompose for the good of the land.  The umbrella for the patio table has been deconstructed; it broke during a powerful windstorm in August.  We will use the skeleton of the umbrella as a tutor for some climbing vegetable next spring, probably beans.

There are no more major fall clean-up tasks.  The orchard has fall tasks, but I’ve only begun to learn about them, so I won’t do any of them until we come back from Colorado.

I also need to clear a fifteen foot edge on the woods, then cover it with black plastic and  hay.  That one I’m going to let nature start by killing back the existing plants.  Once we have some snow on the ground I plan to burn two large brush piles in the way.  A couple of other areas need black plastic or newspaper and hay, that I may start tomorrow.

Kate and I have our business meeting now.  Tomorrow we have to get packed, finish up the usual pre-trip stuff.  Later.

Family, Great Work, Politics

An Old Political Junkie

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Made more phone calls.  Liked it not at all, but I agreed to do them.  Now I find out they won’t need me to make calls on November 4th.  Darn.

An old political junkie like me has more information available than I can possibly digest.  The internet brings more and more and more, at finer and finer levels of detail.  When I have the time, I love to read the data, down to the precinct level if I can find it.  Other folks like baseball stats, for me it’s election numbers, political analysis.

Political analysis brought my dad and I close together when I was young.  We would sit up late watching conventions and election returns.  Political analysis pushed my dad and I far apart when I was 19.  Opposition to the Vietnam War and long hair  did not sit well with him.

Tired.

Great Work, Politics

I Say, Not Until We’re in the Grave, Baby

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Life has sped up since September.  Tonight I  drove in to represent the Political Committee with Bethann.  It could have been a long drive for little result, but the dialogue was good.  The ex-com had an interest in the committee’s work.  It pleased me to see that the table held more gray hairs than youngsters, so I felt at home.

The meeting took longer than the 3 minutes Margaret had planned for our report, but I think it was time well spent.  The ex-com got to listen to our logic and get a sense of the criteria we used to make decisions.

Bethann hails from Pittsburgh.  She finds the Minnesota culture a bit reticent, not forward or assertive enough.  Hard to tell for me after 30+ years here.  I went native a long while back.

A sore point for me these days.  I’m tired of baby boomer bashing.  Those who criticize us did not live in the world we grew up in.  They do not remember the days of forced and enforced segregation.  They do not remember the days when women were second class, assumed ditzy and inconsequential.  They do not remember the days of queer bashing.  They do not remember the days of back alley abortions.  They did not face the draft for a war as egregiously stupid as the current war in Iraq.

Why don’t they remember these things?  Because the baby boomer generation, led by some progressive activists just a bit older than we were, embraced the need for change.  We lived the struggles.  It was our marriages and relationships in which the sexual revolution came to life.  It was our solidarity that helped push people of color and same-sex relationships into the cultural mainstream.  We fought the draft so that others would not need to fight it again.

Yes, we instigated the culture wars.  Yes, the conservative revolution led by Ronald Reagan was a direct challenge to all we had accomplished.  But note this, it was a reactive  challenge, a challenge made necessary by the scope and depth of cultural change in the 60’s and 70’s.  The nation needed a cooling off period from the hot, intense life on the streets and in the bedroom.

Those sensibilities remain with many of us.  We fight on, stuck in the confrontational politics of our youth, insensitive to the changes that have happened.  It is this anachronistic flavor to the baby boomer generation that feeds the ongoing felt need to put us in our place.  Well, I say, not until we are in the grave, baby.