Topical storm

This time the rabbit is the Bush administration, incrementally destroying the integrity of the Constitutional papasan chair.

Ever have those days in the news cycle when your post topics don't feel so fresh? I'm there. Lately, I've been meaning to opine on political absurdities both state and federal, but real life just keeps getting in the way of my computer time. Even if it didn't, I doubt I could keep up with the craziness from the rappin', forgettin', 5th-takin' Bush administration, and the Texas Lege is not far behind.

So I offer you a link dump on this fine rainy Friday:

For the day-to-day and hour-by-hour on the Texas Lege, you can't do better than the Texas Observer Blog. The writing is clear, the details illuminating.

Austin is trying to clue in homeowners to the downside of weed-and-feed chemicals. I don't use the stuff myself, and now that I have a clearer understanding of what it's doing to the local creeks, I'm extra glad I don't.

And for those who missed it last month, see Slate's piece of on the effects of climate change on your garden, and how to brace your soil for what's to come.

Have a good weekend! Anyone care to guess whether Gonzales will bail before Monday?

When it rains, it pours into a repurposed olive keg

We're gonna need a bigger rainbarrel.
This is from January 2007; it looks the same today, only leafier

Reader Casey wants to know:

Any tips on setting up and maintaining rain barrels? I don't even know where to start. (Okay, besides the obvious: Obtain a rain barrel. Collect rain.)

With those two steps, you're off to a good start. Really, it's not hard, but there are a few things to consider. First, how are you planning to use the water? I say this because unless you hook up a pump to your collection tank, you're going to want the barrel close to the water's destination. That way you can use a hose and gravity rather than a bucket and your back to move your liquid gold.

Once you have a place in mind -- usually under a downspout or other area where you'll get good runoff -- make sure your site is level and stable. A full 90-gallon rainbarrel will weigh more than 700 pounds. You don't want it falling off its perch or tipping over on someone, and you darn sure won't be able to reposition it when it's full. I've seen people put rainbarrels on a cinder-block base to give them a little extra gravity to work with when draining the barrel, but because of my rowdy kids and pets, I set mine directly on the ground.

So you get the thing sited, and it rains. Now you've got to keep everything out -- mosquitoes (I throw in a a B.t. tablet every now and then to kill the larvae), critters and kids. Make sure the barrel has a tight screen and a secure lid, and make sure your family knows not to drink from it. Hurricanehead was eager to go behind my back and try some delicious roof runoff straight from the keg, but the phrase "bird poop soup" had an instant, repellant effect on him.

I use my rainbarrel (yes, I still only have one, but I dream about having a full-bore collection system) for watering veggies, herbs, seedbeds and -- in the heat of the summer -- the grass around the kids' swingset.

Right now, alas, my barrel runneth over. I really wish I had a big tank. We're on track to get about 3 inches of rain today, or so say the weatherfolk. I can't be sure because the dogs ate my rain gauge.

The best and most detailed information I've seen on rainwater harvesting is the book, Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically Challenged. It goes into way more detail than I needed for my garden projects -- you'll learn how to go off-grid and collect and purify water for drinking -- but it's interesting stuff. Anyone else have rainbarrel tips?

Epitaph for a Peach

A spring blossom from one of my late, great peach trees

It’s been a mellow, living-outside weekend. If I hadn’t just finished it I would probably spend this afternoon in the hammock with Epitaph for a Peach. My friend Angela lent me her copy, saying I would probably "get it." We didn’t define ‘it,’ but I think I did.

The book, published in 1995 and based on an essay nearly twenty years old now, loosely chronicles a year in the life of California writer and peach-and-grape farmer David Mas Masumoto. The main focus is on his efforts to find a market for an older peach variety that’s succulent but has a short shelf life. Guess what produce-buyers are looking for?

Masumoto’s story highlights the tension between what Michael Pollan calls artisanal economies versus industrial ones. When artisanal producers try to play the industrial game, too often they lose out or have to alter their products to find a large market. Most shoppers, it turns out, buy fruit based on its color rather than taste. After all, if you’ve never tasted a really fresh peach, how would you know what you’re missing? Masumoto’s description takes care of that and may give you a bad case of peach-lust.

While scrambling to find a buyer for his peaches, Masumoto is also converting his farm from chemical to organic, trying to get his raisin crop dried before the fall rain can ruin it, and giving his readers a window on the history and culture of Japanese-American farmers in California. I came away with a better understanding of the financial stakes and the emotional pull of small-scale farming and the delight of knowing that, at least for one extra season, Masumoto found a buyer for his peaches.

Find the symbolism

in this inadvertently political short nature video.

Hint: The fluffy bunny represents the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sprung

Victory bunnies Snoopy (back) and Hank take a break from fertilizing the victory garden. While they were happy to pose for this photo, they were not under oath and no transcript exists of this encounter.

A quick garden update before I lapse into sleep: I got apple trees! Two of them, Anna and Golden Dorsett, because those are supposed to grow well here. I will be adding more unusual varieties over the next winter or two, but that's what I've got for now.

Carrots, lettuce, snap peas and snow peas are all up, dewberry vine in full bloom, chile pequin reemerging from the ground. Today, Hurricanehead and I planted seeds for sweet corn (true platinum), black beans and 'royal burgundy' bush beans. The boys are unsure about the idea of purple green beans. Wait until I plant some purple carrots next winter.

I've also got red, white and pink varieties of strawberries going; green, yellow, red and orange sweet bell pepper plants in the ground, plus jalapenos and the chile pequins; yellow and red tomatoes plus a 'Cherokee purple' that's supposed to bear pink and purple fruit. Oh, and red and white onions, beets, radishes, and plain-green green beans. And a fig tree. And dandelions, because how could I not have them?

I'm not done by a long shot. The many and delightful members of the cucurbit family await planting, but I am out of room. I've got six raised beds going and I need at least three more. Maybe next week.

You gardening much yet?

I felted better than I expected to -- now with poetry

Hurricanehead puts an over-sized lid on it.

The bucket hat, it is felted. Thanks to all of you who answered my plea for tips and encouragement. I need to steam it a little to smooth out the shape, but it fits as advertised and looks much better than my previous, accidental felting experiments. Not bad, I think, considering that I felted it in a front-loader (with a load of towels) and blocked it on an upright mixing bowl.

Now for something completely different. I can't be topical today; I spent my day reading aloud and helping the children find answers to their most important questions. (Do wasps have penises?) And I have a great fondness for haiku and other poetic forms so I was delighted to read Dru's argument-haiku idea:

Think about it...the next time you get into an argument, why not argue IN HAIKU. You have to stop before everything you say and create the 5-7-5 flow...and not only that, but you have to say something naturey! If you still manage anger through that, then at least you will baffle, amuse, and/or irritate your fightmate - any one of which might create a less volatile situation in which to argue!

Her own example is great. I'm not in any arguments with anyone at the moment, but I did recently hand a passing neighbor a plastic bag full of the piping-fresh crap his enormous dog had just left in my yard. How would I haiku that exchange?

I don't hate your dog
But crap fouls the light spring breeze
And threatens my shoes.

What about you? Got a bone to poetically pick?

John McCain: dumber than W?

It's official. John McCain is either too stupid or too evasive to be president.

I don't know which is worse, that he doesn't know whether contraceptives (like, you know, condoms) help prevent the spread of HIV, that he said he's never dealt with these issues before, or that his response to the question was to ask an aide to bring him notes on the subject from Tom fecking Coburn:

NYT:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

[...]

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

As Attaturk says, I just hope they don't ask him where babies come from.

I think I found it!

It might not be a seal of approval, but it beats nothing: monk seal at Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument

No one yet has suggested a non-impeachable accomplishment by the Bush administration*. I think I've stumbled on one. My little voyage of discovery started with a dinner-table conversation tonight that left Rocketboy howling in tears.

Hombre's been reading about the Eastern Garbage Patch. It's not the place where must-have Christmas toys come from, although it may be where they end up. The Eastern Garbage Patch, which landlocked Texans Hombre and I had never heard of, is a swirling, Alaska-sized flotilla of plastic crap fouling the Pacific between Hawaii and the mainland US. Astonishing, I said.

This is the point where a loud keening sound came from Rocketboy's end of the table. I thought he'd bitten his tongue, but he said he was scared that people are ruining the planet and maybe we would all die. I tried to comfort him by saying that identifying the problem meant that people could work to fix it. We had an after-dinner talk about scary threats while we weeded a flower bed -- sorting the weeds and saving the "good" ones to recycle as compost.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about the thing Bush didn't fuck up. After the kids went to bed, I did a little research. The garbage patch is a scary place, and not just because six-pack rings can strangle marine animals (bolds mine):

Entanglement and indigestion, however, are not the worst problems caused by the ubiquitous plastic pollution. Hideshige Takada, an environmental geochemist at Tokyo University, and his colleagues have discovered that floating plastic fragments accumulate hydrophobic—that is, non- water-soluble—toxic chemicals. Plastic polymers, it turns out, are sponges for DDT, PCBs, and other oily pollutants. The Japanese investigators found that plastic resin pellets concentrate such poisons to levels as high as a million times their concentrations in the water as free-floating substances.

The potential scope of the problem is staggering. Every year some 5.5 quadrillion (5.5x1015) plastic pellets—about 250 billion pounds of them—are produced worldwide for use in the manufacture of plastic products. When those pellets or products degrade, break into fragments, and disperse, the pieces may also become concentrators and transporters of toxic chemicals in the marine environment. Thus an astronomical number of vectors for some of the most toxic pollutants known are being released into an ecosystem dominated by the most efficient natural vacuum cleaners nature ever invented: the jellies and salps living in the ocean. After those organisms ingest the toxins, they are eaten in turn by fish, and so the poisons pass into the food web that leads, in some cases, to human beings. Farmers can grow pesticide-free organic produce, but can nature still produce a pollutant-free organic fish? After what I have seen firsthand in the Pacific, I have my doubts.

As someone who recently decided to forgo beef (unless it's grass-fed), pork and chicken in favor of fish, I found this to be a fairly large bummer. But back to W.

In June 2006, Bush designated a huge coral-island chain as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. This is supposed to protect the wildlife, but the monument sits on the edge of the Eastern Garbage Patch. Just before Christmas, Bush signed a bill to bolster efforts to clean up the mess, which is estimated at about 3 million tons of plastic. Is it enough? I doubt it. But it might be unimpeachable.


*Yes, he brought my grandmother back from the brink, but that was outside his official duties as Chief Executive.

The better question is what can't they be impeached for

Buzzflash asks what, exactly, Bush and Cheney should be impeached for, besides the Big Two -- Iraq and 9/11.

It would save a lot of time if we identified the things this administration should not be impeached for and submit the rest as evidence. With the latest Gonzales blowup, the new FBI scandal, Walter Reed, and whatever else you got, George W. Bush and his outlaw crew have proven they have what my dad refers to as "the fecal Midas touch." My shock-and-outrage meter doesn't even ping anymore. Nothing -- nothing -- this administration could do would surprise me.

So, in the interest of efficiency, is there anything they've done that's legally (and, for degree-of-difficulty bonus points, ethically) correct?


[crickets]

An official pronouncement

My kids were mercifully ignorant of Beavis and Butt-head until we visited their Uncle Will. We'd gone to see his new son, and after about ninety seconds of watching Baby O sit in his bouncy seat, Rocketboy and Hurricanehead were ready to move on. They wolfed down their lunch of queso, chips, and brownies -- a lunch which secured Will's Fave Uncle status -- and wandered over to the TV and a stack of movies, one of which was Beavis and Butt-head Do America.

In case you don't recall, the unspoken rule of the young is that when you read something you're not normally allowed to say, then you are allowed to say it. At least, that's Rocketboy's take, and he chirped, "Butt-head? Butt-head! Hey, let's watch this Beavis and Butt-head thing! Butt-head!"

"Butt-head, butt-head," Hurricanehead added.

"Thanks, Will," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Oh, shit," he said, prompting delighted squeals of "Uncle Will said shit!" from the kids before he retreated from the room, his position as Number One Uncle now set in stone.

Hombre got the boys under control and busted one of his patented sly moves:

"It's actually pronounced buth-ed."

Did I mention that Hombre is sly? Rocketboy likes setting others straight even more than he likes potty talk. Every time his little brother popped out with "butt-head" for the next few days, Rocketboy corrected him, "It's actually buth-ed. Beavis and Buth-ed."

For a few days, Hurricanehead believed him. But one afternoon I heard this from the back of the van.

"Butt-head," Hurricanehead ventured.

"It's Buth-ed, I told you."

Long, thoughtful pause.

"No, I think it's Butt-head."

"It's Buth-ed."

"It's Butt-head."

"It's not! Dad said it's Buth-ed."

"It's Butt-head, butt-head."

"You're a butt-head," Rocketboy snarled before recovering his professorial mien. "But it's Buth-ed."

It was a battle between received wisdom and fresh observation right there in my car. This, I thought, is how paradigms are shifted. Hurricanehead's declaration of butt-head was like Luther nailing his theses to the church door, like Galileo, like Darwin, struggling against the institutional certainty that was Rocketboy and the infallibility of buth-ed. Except that, being sibs trapped in a moving vehicle, they fought to a draw, with Rocketboy declared a butt-head and his little brother, against all reasonable evidence, a buth-ed.

Sodom and Gomorrah sittin' in a tree

That is the way it went down, right?

50% of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah
were married.

I wonder if they took one of those purity pledges as tweens and saved it for the wedding night?

"I'm Sodom, and I'm worth the wait!"

(via Shakes Sis)

Blog tweakage

I've been playing with the layout a little. Please let me know if you have any problems with it, as I'm totally winging it and may have inadvertently messed something up.

We've got a long way to go, baby

It's Blog Against Sexism Day. I got about three hours of sleep last night (thanks, kids!) so here you go. Yes, it's from Salon, and no it won't kill you to sit through the site ad.

The private war of women soldiers

Many female soldiers say they are sexually assaulted by their male comrades and can't trust the military to protect them. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis," says one woman. "It was for the guys on my own side."

Reading about the culture that lets this keep happening, I agree with Liz that I wouldn't encourage my daughters to join the military -- if I had any daughters. With things as they stand now, I wouldn't want my two sons in the military either, soaking up a sense of violent entitlement. I realize that not all units are like the ones described in the article, but sweet Jesus. What happened to discipline?

Post titles don't get any better than this:

Ten out of Ten Bears Prefer Beef Fat to Menstrual Blood

Camp at will, ladies. The bloody bear-bait myth has been debunked.

(via the 33rd Carnival of Feminists, which rocks)

What would baby Jesus eat?

And could he have done it in public without somebody getting in a knot about it?

Okay, Texas, if we're going to be all about red-state "family values," we need to clear this one up. In theory, the state supports breastfeeding mothers, and Texas law allows a mother to nurse her baby anywhere she is "authorized to be." The problem is that prudish business owners can just "deauthorize" a mother for nursing and make her stop feeding her child or have her kicked out. As a matter of human rights for mothers and children, this needs to change.

State Rep. Jessica Farrar from Harris County has introduced a bill that not only would prevent business owners from "deauthorizing" women because they are breastfeeding but also would make interfering with a nursing mother a civil offense punishable by a fine. The comptroller's office would be required to clue in business owners so they can't plead ignorance. I, and lots of mothers with hungry babies and a desire to move about freely in the world, would dearly love to see this become law.

Right now the bill, HB 1154, is with the Public Health Committee. Those of you reading this within the confines of Texas are urged to enjoin, cajole, plead, exhort, or encourage your state rep to support this bill, especially if your rep is on the committee.

You can find an action guide at Parent:Wise Austin, to whom I tip my hat for their piece in this month's issue about breastfeeding issues before the Lege.

Good for what ails you

Hurricanehead attempts to free a Lego astronaut from the food court at Space Center Houston.

Every spring I think the fam has dodged the last viral bullet until fall. Then we come down with some random hacking crap. For the next while, I'll be under a blanket on the sofa with a snotty, red-cheeked toddler and a big kid whose eyes are glazing over as he watches "The Rescuers" for the fifteenth time.

In the meantime, I wholeheartedly recommend a real live discussion of radical feminist theory over at Twisty's. In this day and age on the internet, it's delightful to see a flame-free, intelligent discussion going down. It's almost enough to heal the sick.

This post is not yet rated

Cinelaggard that I am, I finally saw This Film is Not Yet Rated over the weekend. I had no idea we had a secret censorship cabal in this country -- leaving aside the Bush administration, of course. I'm not a huge movie fan and never gave the issue much thought. We don't do prior restraint of the press or book-banning at the national level (although those darned local agitators are always up to something). I just assumed film ratings were there as a handy guideline to which films you should try to sneak in to see if you're under 17.

Oh, but the ratings system is, per Kirby Dick's nicely done documentary, so much more than just a yardstick for kids and their parents. It's also de facto censorship, overseen by an anonymous, unaccountable board full of middle-aged people whose kids are mostly grown -- plus clergy -- who seem to consider violence less offensive than sex, and plain-vanilla hetero sex less scary than anything creative or gay. I never knew about the connection between a film's rating and its ability to find a distributor, advertising money, etc., but the bottom line is that an NC-17 is the kiss of death, marketwise. To get a more palatable rating, filmmakers have to hew to whatever suggestions the ratings board makes -- and at the time the documentary was made, there were no set guidelines for ratings.*

There's a lot here to chew on: the way the military censors films that are made using its resources (Want to shoot a scene on an aircraft carrier? Hand over your script for approval!), the way violence against women "skates," as Kevin Smith puts it, with the ratings board, and the conservative mores of the board that help keep our culture the weirdly violent, sexually repressed funhouse it is. And for that last reason especially, I recommend it. You won't find it at Blockbuster, though, because they don't carry unrated films.


*It looks like the MPAA is planning to tweak the system in light of the film. It'll be interesting to see how much change actually happens as a result.

Dylan Hears a Who!

Hombre's been trying to turn me on to Dylan for the last, oh, sixteen years or so. This might finally be what does it; there's a rendition of "Too Many Daves," the story that got me to stop sneetching.

Thanks, H!