Friday Stew

Several things are on my mind this evening. Hope you don’t mind me bouncing around a bit.

First, El Presidente

Leave it to O’Bama to smoke Muammar Gaddafi. Go figure. First it was Osama bin Laden, now Gaddafi. If I were Bashra al Assad, I would keep my movements secret, at least from the American president. Mr. O’Bama has shown a keen taste for knocking off rogue heads of state, and their lieutenants. Remember just a few days ago, O’Bama pulled the trigger on Anwar al-Awlaki who was an American citizen. That raised all sorts of questions about a citizen’s civil liberties and rights. Nevertheless, the President steeled his resolve and ordered the hit. You can’t but wonder if O’Bama is doing it because of electoral politics or some sense of historic mission or because he is psychologically trapped – forced to use the power possessed by the Commander-in-Chief while all the time despising the mission of the military. Regardless, I applaud the President. Doesn’t change my mind about his unworthiness for the job but I do admire him for acting with firmness regarding terrorists.

[Some of you may be offended by my use of O’Bama for the President. Accept my half-hearted apology in advance. My use of the fraudulent name honors his lack of qualifications for the office.]

Second, The Winter Garden

A good variety of vegetables are booming in the garden, despite the cooler temperatures. I’ve never grown rutabaga but it seems to like where it is. I had to thin it by pulling up hands full of it. The collards look great. The cabbage is beginning to spin. The broccoli, English peas, spinach, beets, and turnips all are doing well. But, the best thing I am currently doing is growing Romaine and leaf lettuce in the greenhouse. What a treat to have a place to sprout and grow stuff. Just for the fun of it, I sprouted three dozen tomato plants, all heirlooms. I am learning how to use a greenhouse so these are my test cases.

I spent the last couple of days plowing the new garden spots. My plan is to break up the soil only enough to kill the grass then plant winter wheat as a cover crop. I’ll come back next spring and plow the wheat under then plant. There are actually three new garden spots. The biggest is the Melon Field, 36 x 130, designed for watermelons, cantaloupes, honeydews, squashes (writ large, meaning all sorts of squashes, including pumpkins), cabbages and okra. The existing kitchen garden will feature mostly beans, peas, onion, eggplants and peppers. In addition to the Melon Field, there is the Flower Garden, 36 x 36, because I really, really like cut flowers in the house. I also am making a specific bed for spuds. From February to May, Irish potatoes will be featured with sweet potatoes going in the ground in May and coming out in October. All in all, the additional growing space is exciting. It even raising the possibility that I might evolve into a regular capitalist if I can ever reconcile myself to sell food.

And, finally, Good-bye Iraq

I spent two years in Iraq. I am proud of that service. I made many friends there and think I advanced America’s best foot forward to the Iraqis. The President announced today that all American troops will exit Iraq by year’s end. The only American presence in the country will be the Embassy in Baghdad. That is most unfortunate. The Embassy is as dysfunctional as any too-big-to-get-it bureaucracy. Did you know that the Embassy in Baghdad is the largest US embassy in the world? It is bigger than the embassies in China, Germany, France, even England. The Embassy saw Iraq only in terms of Baghdad. It is out in the country that the vitality of Iraq is real and palpable. I pray for Iraq daily, the people I know specifically and the society in general. I have deep fears of Iranian interference. The governance is fragile but I trust a genuine desire for democracy and freedom. It is too soon to write the history of the Iraqi adventure. I am confident that decades from now, Iraqis will describe the Americans in terms far kinder than the language in use today.

Farm Photos

I took some photos around the place today about stuff I have discussed recently here.

There is a picture of the new cat. She is a cute little thing and is quickly assuming dominance over the house.

There is a picture of the new chicks. They look like a bunch of adolescents now but, trust me, they were balls of fur a week ago. The red tint of the photo is from the heat lamp under which they live. It will remain a part of their world for another month or so. I can see them developing some character. I know they eat like crazy and make a mess of their water.

The last photo is the newly created greenhouse. There are two types of lettuce growing in pots – romaine and leaf, sometimes called red, lettuce, three fig tree sprouts that I have been nursing along, and some marigolds, daisies, and some wild flowers I have grown from seeds, plus a tray of tomato plants that I sprouted from seeds. My next project is to install a heating source to protect the plants from the occasional cold weather that intrudes on our paradise here.

Occupy Wall Street

I am in sympathy with the kids occupying Wall Street. I know that most of them are dunder-headed anarchists and that to live in a world of their design would be sheer hell. But, when I think of the crimes against society committed by the bastards on Wall Street, I get angry. Billions of dollars of taxpayer money funneled to bail-out schemers and slicks whose speculations and market manipulations caught up with them. They did not deserve a rescue. The Congress and President initially provided $750 billion to cover the exposed asses of the criminals on Wall Street. It was not enough to save the economy. I recognize that our fine Federal government deserves much blame for the market disaster through which we are now living. It was the President and Congress who compelled banks to loan to folk who had no hope of repaying home loans. It was the President and Congress who rolled up trillions of dollars in debt. It was the President and Congress who sat back and let the jackels eat our babies. I curse them. And, here and now, urge you to vote for candidates NOT in power. Turn the incumbent sons-of-bitches out. Fire them as they deserve. But, let us not forget the sorry dogs on Wall Street who wrecked the economy in order to pad their portfolios. They deserve prosecution. And since that is not likely to happen because of the fine Federal government we elected, then we are left with occupation. Go for it kids. If I could suffer through a night sleeping on the ground, I would join your protest.

Every day I hear NPR report on the happenings on Wall Street. Is there anything more inane than a news reader saying that the reason the Dow Jones went up or down was because of European debt or unemployment figures or Japanese earthquakes or any of the countless reasons used to explain why the market did what it did? Well, all of that is bullshit. Here is the reason the market goes up or down: THE BASTARDS FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE A BUCK. So, if the Dow falls a few points, it means the bastards figured out a way to make a few pennies from sliding stock prices. Likewise, if the market goes up, the bastards figured out how to make a profit off upward movement. The bastards on Wall Street care about the Greeks only as they relate to their ability to realize a profit, even if it comes from Greek misery. The bastards care for the unemployed only in context of how the number plays into stock valuation. After all, unemployment if just a number; the bastards could not care less if there are every day people standing behind those numbers. So Japan gets smacked by an earthquake. To the bastards, how will the "event" impact profitibility and supply trains? If the market reacted on a daily basis in the way the news readers at NPR say they do, then the bastards on Wall Street act like my chickens. The hens live in a constant state of terror, afraid of every fresh breeze, any movement, the slightest noise. They really do act like Chicken Little, with the sky falling at any moment.

I hope that is the way the bastards on Wall Street live. I hope they live in constant fear. I hope they drink Maalox by the gallons. I hope they sleep fitfully, waking often and always in a cold sweat. I hope their lives are haunted by fear and worry. The one thing the bastards on Wall Street don’t fear is exactly what they deserve: prosecution.

I don’t think Occupy Wall Street is a Howard Beale moment in US history. It will, however, be an amusing footnote in a dissertation in the future by an insightful doctoral student studying the collapse of the American Empire. I can see it now. When faced with naked greed and self-aggrandizement by the bastards of Wall Street, the fine Federal government rushed to indemnify the thieves from their crimes. With a laugh, the fine Federal government passed the bill on to the American people.

After thinking about all of this for a while, I am left with only one thought: we deserve exactly the government for which we voted.

New Life Forms

For reasons unknown to me, I have been particularly busy these last few days. Before I realized it, I had bush-hogged the whole place, brought down the wrath of the civilized world on dastardly privet lurking in the shadows, plotted and channeled run-off ditches in the garden and, to top off the day, plowed up a melon patch, flower garden, and spud bed. All of that in one day. What makes it even more remarkable is that when I started out this morning, I had only a vague idea of how the day would unfold.

I have new life forms on the farm. I resolved I would get cat after Lily went missing several months ago. It is not that I am a big cat fan but, truth is, if you live in the country, you need a mouser, even if your roommate is Mr. Clean or the Pine-Sol maid. My best intentions were hanging around unfulfilled when one day I caught sight of a stray cat streaking from behind the chicken house to the woods just west of the garden. WitchWoman recommended that I put out some cat food in hopes of enticing the feline to make this her home. As usual, I followed the recommendation. Long story short, there is a cute little cat now on patrol in the house and on the grounds.

Tinker and I went in on some new chickens. I bought 18 Golden Orpintons. Tinker got four Rhode Island Reds and four Pearl Leghorns. For now, all of them are in one of my chicken houses. When they arrived they were nothing more than balls of fur. After a few days, they are developing feathers and starting to look like chickens. I check on them several times each day to make sure they have water, food and heat.

In order to make room for the new chicks, I had to move the four hens and one rooster (Ferdinand) who lived in the upper house (upper only in that it is closer to the house) to the lower house. The lower house has a dozen hens and a rooster (The Other Guy). Well, the moment I put Ferdinand in with The Other Guy, they started fighting. That went on for several days. I knew that the fight was over when I found The Other Guy hiding behind the feed bucket. Ferdinand had whaled on him properly. Nature can be tough sometimes.

Here is the point to all of this. Since inviting the cat into the house, I have seen no evidence of mice. It is as though just having the cat here intimidates the rodents. Then, you see the battle between Ferdinand and The Other Guy with the outcome being supremacy in the hen house. (Let me add that all the hens from both houses are long of beak with no interest in raising broods of chicks. In other words these guys are fighting over strutting rights for an audience that is ambivalent.) Just makes me suspect that Nature imposes her own kind of Order onto the Chaos of everyday life. My friend Rog (a physicist) would argue that Chaos rules. I am not so sure. Rats and roosters seem to support my suspicion that there is something to Natural Order.

Boy Kicks My Ass, Deservedly So

Every so often I write something that is so hopelessly sappy that I deserve to have my ass kicked for writing it. Well, Boy never hesitates to apply the required treatment. What follows is him opening a can of Whop-Ass on my last post. Thanks, Boy. You know I love you.

Quote The Boy:

I write masterpiece comments to your blogs but for some reason they won’t post. I wonder if others have that problem. When I try to post these wonderful tomes I write they simply disappear. So, I’ll try to recreate my post to your last blog.

So, once you mattered. To whom did you matter & what did that mean? Matter to family? In our culture, mattering to family typically means creating income to be spent by our “loving” family members who are too busy with their own lives to pause to consider how someone else matters to them. Matter to your lover? All that should matter to a lover is the warmth created in their heart by simple contact, emotional or physical, not our place in the corporate world. Matter to friends? The fact that you have learned out to “matter” to yourself, the fact you have found joy in planting a new crop, creating the world’s best tomato, lingering over a cup of coffee, taking the dogs for a swim & sitting down exhausted from tilling your soil means you matter to us because you have proven Tom Wolfe wrong.

You have been to funerals, more than you wanted to attend (except perhaps when an enemy or two met their overdue demise). Did you ever observe an ATM machine in any of the caskets so the deceased could access their monetary wealth? I have never witnessed that phenomenon so I think it means that true wealth is in the heart, not the 1st National Bank.

You are living on your Golden Pond. You are exploring what life really means, or at least should mean to people. Perhaps instead looking behind your present state when you “mattered” in your own self esteem, you need to look forward to how you matter in the future. Perhaps, as Thoreau did through his golden pond experience, your inner significance may be best achieved by sharing what life joys can be found in the simpler things through your phenomenal writing ability. After all, the majority of us are too busy “mattering” that we miss living.

Thoreau figured all this out long before we were created:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
“I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.”
“I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth anyone's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.”

“Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you,
opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”

Convert your blogs into columns to be shared with the world. The county seat of Heaven is located in Welch, Alabama.

Taking Stock

I am not feeling too good about myself. Mostly, I have not worked a real job since I left Iraq in May 2010. I have drilled through the money I had set aside. Bought the farm from my brother and now find myself without a lot of options regarding fiscal flexibility.

That part is actually pretty good since being without debt in today’s economic environment is a positive thing. I am working on a job with a not-for-profit group, the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network (ASAN). I joined the group when I relocated back here. My good friends Jim and Judy are involved with ASAN. It did not take very long to figure out that the group needs an executive director. So, I put myself forward as a candidate. I recognize that if I am going to be paid by ASAN, I will have to figure out how to do it.

Farm-wise, the place is doing fine. I have been busy the last couple of days putting up (as in canning and freezing) peppers and tomatoes and pears. Previously, I put beans and peas in the freezer. The sweet potatoes are about to be harvested. The fall garden is planted and most of it has emerged thanks to 1.7 inches of rain this week – collards, rutabaga, beets, cabbage, spinach, sweet peas and garlic. I am also preparing the newly renovated greenhouse for a planting of herbs and tomatoes. I am thinking of plowing the melon, flower and corn patches now, applying compost and letting it rest over the winter in anticipation of spring planting. New chickens are on-order and will arrive on 26 September – 25 Buff Orpingtons. After cleaning out the houses, the current brood of hens went on a laying frenzy, producing about eight to ten eggs daily. I am one person. I cannot eat that many eggs so I am giving them away, a dozen at a time. As I write this, there are five dozen eggs in my refrigerator. The lake is about four feet low, evidence of the long and sustained drought that has impacted east Alabama. We’ve had about 25 inches of rain this year – our normal is in excess of 50 inches. I also had the great pleasure to contribute my meager resources to the whimpering American economy. I had to buy a new water well pump. After a mere thirty years, the pump when tits-up. I was so pissed that I vowed not to replace it. After three days of no shower, a sink full of dishes, and nasty hands, I relented. Tinker came down and helped me install the new machine. It works fine. I am also on a decluttering jones in the house. What cannot be moved to some other location is donated to the Salvation Army. Amazing how nice the house looks when you can actually see the walls and floor. I am picking colors out for a painting party. Everybody is invited.

Truth is, this is as good a life style as any son of bitch could ever hope to live. And, that is the problem I am having. This is so damn good that it cannot be moral or legitimate or genuine. I get up when I wake up. I go to bed when I am tired. I linger over strong coffee in the morning. I take the dogs for swims everyday in the steadily shrinking lake. Sometimes I have a glass (or two) of wine with lunch. I set my own agenda and work until I don’t want to anymore. There have to be huge problems with all this. There is a strong possibility that I will not make lots of (perhaps, any) money doing this but it is the most rewarding “job” I have ever had. Still, I don’t feel good about myself. I am a product of conditioning that required an income, a family and debts. As much as I loved the Blessed Rebecca, I am a bit pissed that she made me believe in all that shit. Truth is, I have never really cared much for money (to qualify, I love to spend but otherwise, so what?). As far as my family, I am divorced. That should tell you something. My son lives in Europe and I have seen him once in six years and I rarely hear from him. My daughter is on the west coast and never answers her phone. And, as far as debt, I live without it, praise be to God. To owe is to not sleep until that debt is satisfied. Debt is the original four-letter word.

I was once a City Manager. I was once a Professor. I was once a Diplomat. Once I mattered.

Missed Events

My friend, Kev, was married last weekend. I did not attend even though I was invited. Part of the reason I stayed home was that he is at Yale. For a boy from Alabama, Yale is purely intimidating. Mark my words, Kev will be Secretary of State one of these days. I hope. Brilliant kid with wonderful insights. The other part of the reason is that WitchWoman and I are working out the after-shocks of the tornado in Joplin. To add to the confusion, her mother broke her hip and is now in a nursing home. WitchWoman did have an offer accepted on a house in Kansas City. She closes on it in November. How that works into our relationship, I am unsure. She is naturally drawn to her kids. And, now, there is another grandchild on the way. Makes perfect sense that she would want to be near them. It is a long way from Kansas City to Welch.

As for me, I plan to stay here in Alabama, even though I may be losing my ass in doing so. I have been unable to land any sort of job. I even offered a non-profit to work for free. They will get back to me. I guess the economy is as bad as I hear on radio or else I have a greatly inflated self-image.

Sweet potatoes are coming out of the ground next week. Stuff coming out of the ground includes collards, rutabagas, beets, peas and spinach. The cabbage plants are doing well under the protective shield of wire baskets to keep the deer from eating the tender sprouts. Tomorrow, I will spend most of the day making pear preserves.

Today I completed the roof from the new greenhouse. By this time next week, I should have a few items sprouting. The objective is, of course, to produce the perfect tomato.

Speaking of which, I have the best recipe for tomato sauce I have ever tasted. It is so easy. In a large pot, sweat a finely chopped onion, a green pepper and three or four garlic cloves in olive oil. Add a quart of canned from-the-garden tomatoes (or a big-ass can of from-the-store diced tomatoes), a fat tablespoon of tomato paste, a palm full of dried basil, a bay leaf, salt and pepper, a slug of red wine. Simmer for about an hour or so. Delicious. I use it for spaghetti and lasagna.

I wish I had gone to Kev's wedding if for no other reason than to give him this great recipe. But, I didn't. Life got in the way.