Snow in Metro-Atlanta

The temperature is 27 degrees this afternoon, following yesterday's snow fall. Icy snow still remains on the lawns of the neighborhood though the streets are clear. Yesterday Tom, Mary-Margaret and I walked downtown, taking photos of the snow and of snowmen created by neighborhood children. Grass and other leafy debris added texture to the snow sculptures. We had maybe an inch of snow, with the brown remainders of summer's lawn grass sticking up through the white stuff. With no usable garage here at our new home in Georgia, my art car is exposed to the elements. The Barbies on the roof of the car seemed to be flailing rather desperately in the snow.

Falling into 2008

Two days ago I fell through the ceiling with a black cat under one arm, screaming and shouting "shit, shit, shit!" as my left leg shot through pink insulation and chalky sheetrock.

The Old Year had not ended well nor the New Year begun well.

Just as last year, I celebrated the Christmas season feeling very unwell. Last year, it was ear problems, this year a very nasty cold that led to fever, chills, and weird dreams of Mama cows and baby calves trying to escape a flood in Papa and Grandma Benton's East Gate prairie farmyard . Both the Mama cows and calves sank beneath the muddy waters of that dream, just as I was sinking in a depression of illness.

But perhaps like March, a year that begins ill and blustering will transform to zephyr breezes and happy health.

Two days ago, for the first time in over a week, I felt as if I might actually get well. Then Pluto followed me up into the attic, where I was storing Christmas decorations, and instead of closing the cat in the attic until he was ready to come down of his own accord, I determined to catch him. Fortunately, the hole I knocked in the ceiling is where we might put in an attic fan, and also, fortunately, I suffered only from the first initial fright and later a little tenderness in bruising.

Every New Year brings lessons in life, some of which I have to learn over and over again:

• Allow a cat his way, for he knows it and he's determined to follow it.
• Don't travel at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Enjoy the seasons in one's own small circle, in one's own local community. Traveling is for business, leisure(!) vacations, and emergencies.
• Don't read melancholy biographies of people who suffer from depression and illness when one is depressed and ill.

When Tom and I were looking at used books at The Eagle's Nest in North Decatur just before Christmas, I found a pocket-sized, Oxford University Press World Classics, 1919-reprint of Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte, for $33, and I asked Tom to purchase it for me as a Christmas present--which he did, glad to have his shopping decisions so easily made. Elizabeth Gaskell is one of my favorite nineteenth-century writers, and I had been wanting to read this biography for quite some time. Also, I had just purchased for a gift for Mary-Margaret a book which contained novels by the three Bronte sisters: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey.

But a book on the lives of the Brontes--no matter how wonderfully written--does not make for cheerful reading, and while I thoroughly enjoyed the literary merit of the biography and the voyeurism of reading extracts from Charlotte Bronte's letters, the sad details of the lives of these promising young women who died so young deepened the melancholia I was feeling already from my own illness. Unfortunately, fairy tales don't interest me at this age, anyway, so there was no hope for the melancholia until the fever lifted and the cough dissipated. ("Is this how a consumptive feels?" I thought as I hacked and coughed and heaped covers over my shivering body, night after night.)

But now I've arisen from the invalid's bed, I've fallen from the ceiling, and I've captured the black cat who sometimes does indeed come when his name is called. I've spent a few leisurely minutes today reading poems and essays from Mary Oliver's Blue Iris: Poems and Essays and have recorded from an essay my first quotation for the year:

"For flowers, like people and birds, are travelers, and will leave a garden if they can."

Ten-Year-Old "Consents" to Rape?!

I haven't posted lately because I've been busy with projects and because I've been rather dispirited over the news. Nothing seems to change. The Democrats are in the majority in the House and Senate, yet they seem to be only weakly challenging the administration. There are a few lone voices--voices we've heard all along--but the Democratic leadership capitulates too easily to the fear of being negatively branded by Republican propagandists sometime in the future: fear of being called unpatriotic or weak on terror or [fill in the blank]. . . .

But more on that in the future.

Having earlier posted on the horror of Saudi Arabian attitudes toward women who are raped, I would be remiss if I didn't bring to your attention two recent news items that I found through Broadsheet, stories that remind me all too vividly that sexual oppression and hateful, violent attitudes toward women are not limited to one culture. I hate to sound like a throw-back to the 70s, but, by god, are we progressing at all in our attitudes toward women? The first article is about a rape case in Australia: a ten-year-old girl was gang-raped, and the judge in the case did not send the perpetrators to jail because the girl "probably consented" to the rape. What ten-year-old consents to rape?

The second story is of a young woman from Houston, Texas, who was gang-raped by her colleagues in Baghdad, all of whom worked for Halliburton/KBR. After complaining about the rapes, she was kept under guard in a shipping container. After a sympathetic guard loaned her a cell phone, the woman called her father, who contacted the State Department. People were then sent to release her from the shipping container. Since then Halliburton/KBR and the State Department have worked to cover up the case, evidently. According to what the young woman told ABC News, Army doctors examined her and found evidence of rape--anally and vaginally--but--surprise!--the rape kit disappeared after being turned over to KBR security.

Ah, the vanishing rape kit act! In the 1980s, one of my aunts was raped in Dayton, Texas, and Liberty County officials lost her rape kit, too--very conveniently as they were accusing her of making up her story of her attack. When her experience became locally public, several women called her to describe similar experiences they had had with Dayton and Liberty County police.

Just as I was counting my blessings as a woman that I didn't live in an oppressive culture that holds women guilty for being raped, I am reminded that not too far beneath the surface, similar attitudes lurk in my own culture. When are we going to win this war?

Is That Sexism? You Bet!

Now, I hadn't decided which candidate I hoped would be the Democratic nominee for president. I like the front-runners for different reasons. John Edwards supports women's rights, he understands the needs of the poor, and he has a strong, smart wife whom I admire. Barack Obama is a fresh (minority!) face, with good ideas, a smooth presentation, and a strong, smart wife whom I admire. Hillary Clinton is tough and smart, but I've been concerned about her vote for supporting President Bush in the Iraq war and about her inside-the-beltway connections that seem a little too cozy.

However, the "how do we beat the bitch" question posed to John McCain by a white-haired woman has fired me up. A woman runs for president in the United States, and she's called a "bitch." And John McCain doesn't flinch from the language--using it, instead, to raise a lot of money for his campaign. Then Clinton gets tossed that "diamonds or pearls" question. !!!?

My mind is now made up. It's way past time that the United States had a woman president. I mean, good god, Chile has a woman president; Argentina just elected a woman president; Germany has a woman president--among others. Hillary Clinton for President!

No Rights for Women

These are our "friends" in the Middle East: A nineteen-year-old Saudi woman who was gang raped has been penalized with 200 lashes and 6 months in prison after she appealed her case. Her lawyer had his license revoked and was suspended from the case. The rapists received jail sentences, but their victim was also punished, for being in a car with a male who was not a relative! What a justice system! Here is another article on the story.

Support Women's Rights!

Sufficient (A poem)

I.
Up Winnona Drive leaves sashay with color,
belting out hallelujahs to fall.
Summer’s faded green whirls orange and gold,
maroon warms the cool blue sky.
Bursts of periwinkle blazon the asters
that long stood dull and quiet against the garden fence.
Acorns blanket sidewalks, crushed piles that slip
beneath the feet of unwary walkers.
Caught in this kaleidoscope I catch
my breath and balance:
The pattern shifts again.

II.
Last night’s rain was not enough
to fill the lake for Atlanta’s millions
though the governor prayed for storm.
“Drought,” he said, “is God’s way
of getting our attention.” Then who’s listening?
Not the neighbor whose sprinkler still flails in the dead
of night, nor the man whose lone
water use could serve sixty homes,
nor the governor, who blames on God our own long-term cupidity—
Nor even the heavens, it seems, whose fourteen-hundredths
of an inch flipped off the hope
for an undeserved deus ex machina.

III.
But today the trees are washed and dressed,
transfigured in pagan glory.

Anita, 6 Generations blogger

One Beautiful Day After Another

One beautiful day follows another here in drought-stricken metro Atlanta. The high today will be in the low 70s; we've had frost some mornings. But every day since the last rain in October has been clear, cool, and gorgeous. If it weren't for the water shortage, this would be the perfect fall, and I would be planning and planting my front yard with native perennials, herbs, and vegetables.

To the untrained eye, our neighborhood seems unaffected by the drought. Our lawn, which we have never watered, remains green except for a few small spots of dead grass. Native plants are doing well; heavier water drinkers such as hydrangeas are wilted. The drought poses the most danger because 5 million people in metro Atlanta depend upon a small water source--the Chattahoochee River--and its dammed resources in Lake Sidney Lanier.

Metro Atlanta has been under an outside watering ban for some weeks now as the drought continues to increase in severity. Some folks have responded to the need to conserve water better than other folks. One of our neighbors continues to wash his car weekly and water his plants with city water from his outside water hoses. "Consider your dirty car as a badge of honor," Governor Sonny Perdue has encouraged us. I guess our neighbor doesn't value that particular badge of honor.

Some folks turn in their scofflaw neighbors who continue to water outside. A local news reporter interviewed a woman who walks in her neighborhood every day, rather self-righteously looking for the telltale signs of wetness around the edges of lawns. I'm not going to turn in my neighbor, but it is difficult for me not to feel a little ill will toward him. I've been doling out the water I collected from the last rain, watering in the native perennials I had purchased before the water ban, and I'll soon have to resort to gray water from the shower again.

People respond to crises in different ways. Some think they are above the cares and concerns of ordinary people, as if they have no personal responsibility in civic life. Channel 2 Action News recently researched the water records of Cobb County to discover the biggest water users in that county. One man's home rose to the top of the list: 440,000 gallons of water used in the past month, "as much [water use] as a 60-home subdivision," according to Channel 2. On her website, Dr. Pamela Gore, of Georgia Perimeter College, writes that the average person in Georgia uses 168 gallons of water a day. So that's a lot of water per day for this guy in Cobb County who lives alone, according to one news source.

That kind of reckless use of our resources contributes to the water crisis we're facing here in north Georgia. Photos of Lake Sidney Lanier illustrate that crisis more than these words can. The unfortunate thing is that most of us don't see the dramatic results of our poor use of resources until it's too late: homes are burned on the hillsides in California; water taps are running dry in Atlanta. As long as our grass is green, we don't seem to care if the neighbor's spigots are dry.

UPDATE:
I have edited this entry so that no one can exactly identify the neighbor who continues to wash his car. His outside watering is small potatoes: he probably uses less water cleaning his car than he would if he used the facilities of a local car wash. (Some car washes, however, are recycling their water.) Watering one's lawn wastes the most water in urban and suburban areas. I think we need to change this ideal of the American lawn as being a huge expanse of thirsty green grass. At some point in our history--probably in the 1950s--the American lawn, with its heavy need of water, fertilizer and its requirement of a hatred of dandelions--became every suburban American's obsession. How can we turn around that obsession and get folks to grow native grasses and ornamentals that require less water and attention? This water crisis is not going to go away. We may eventually get enough rain to raise the water in the reservoirs, but Atlanta continues to grow while our water resource does not.

UPDATE II:
"Cobb Top Water Guzzler Say's He'll Try to Cut Back" And, of course, he has hired a PR team to help him

Torture: "It Depends on Who Does It"

I've been following the debate on torture since those first pictures of Iraqi prisoners emerged from Abu Ghraib. That debate has revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration and most of the Republican party. Rudy Giuliani, the front runner (God help us!) for the Republican nomination for president, recently said in a town meeting that the definition of torture depended on "how it's done. . . the circumstances. . . . [and] "who does it."

Well, people who represent us are doing it, and with our votes and our silence, we're complicit. Giuliani recites the old, tired, Republican mantra that the "liberal media" is distorting the facts. It's not "liberal media" that calls waterboarding torture; this method has been considered torture--by people of all political persuasions-- since its first use. Joan Walsh, at Salon, directs readers to a recent editorial in The Washington Post by Evan Wallach, a former JAG in the Nevada National Guard. Wallach gives us a brief history of water torture, including details on how the United States prosecuted for war crimes people who performed waterboarding on prisoners.

In his article, Wallach writes that waterboarding does not "simulate drowning," as so many who try to downplay the details claim: "To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death." Wallach supplies testimony of people who have experienced this form of torture.

So waterboarding is torture when used by the Japanese in World War II against Allied soldiers--but it's NOT when used by operatives of the United States government against suspected terrorists? Would it be torture if Rudy Giuliani were waterboarded? I think Giuliani--and all those other Republican faces who downplay torture--would sing a different tune if he were strapped to a table with his head down and experienced water being poured on a cloth over his mouth and nose until he lost consciousness.

Torture is torture, no matter who does it or who the victim is.

UPDATE: This evening (8 Nov. 2007) on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "a former Navy instructor and an intelligence expert" were questioned about the legality and effectiveness of waterboarding as a coercive technique to extract information from suspected terrorists and "enemy combatants." The transcript of that discussion can be found here, on the PBS website. More about Former Senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance, who, in my opinion, spoke so eloquently against the use of torture, can be found here. A short essay written by Malcolm Nance can be found here--and another here.

Rain, finally

Today is the third day of rain here in parched metro Atlanta. The rain we have received won't make much difference in the lake and reservoir levels, but perhaps it signals the end of the drought. I once read a poem in which hell was described as one sunny day after another: clear blue sky for eternity. We've had a taste of that hell here, with each lovely clear day heralding more shrinking water supplies.

The first day it rained, I collected water from downspouts, storing the water in a large plastic garbage pail for future use in watering our plants during the outdoor watering ban. The second day it rained, I was at work and unable to continue my water conservation plan. The third day of rain, today, I gaze optimistically out the window, hoping that the rain heralds a wetter season and eventual cessation of watering bans. (We are planning, however, to install rain barrels so that I won't have to get wet collecting water in tiny bathroom garbage pails to transfer to a larger container!)

The drought isn't over, of course, and even if Lake Sidney Lanier fills to its banks again, the worry of drought shouldn't be over. Atlanta continues to grow, adding "55 acres of concrete, asphalt, and rooftops" every day, according to a University of Georgia study that has been quoted recently in the media. Concrete and asphalt divert the water, preventing it from soaking into the ground. The concrete, asphalt, and rooftops absorb heat and release that heat into the atmosphere, affecting weather patterns. Unchecked growth and unregulated construction damage the environment and guarantee future catastrophes.

Scientists have been warning us about the effects of environmental degradation for years, but we haven't listened, and our governmental leaders have downplayed the danger. Even today, as wildfires destroy thousands of homes and acres of forests in California, as Central Texas recovers from massive floods, as cities in the Southeast, such as Atlanta, face severe water shortages, our government continues to muffle the clarion call for deliberate and decisive action: the Associated Press today reports that the White House "edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents." (emphasis mine)

And here in Georgia, our Republican governor threatens to sue the Army Corps of Engineers in order to prevent water being released from Lake Lanier for endangered species downstream. "What's more important, people or mussels"? he has sputtered.

Our esteemed leaders just don't get it--or worse, they get it and just don't care, opting for the short term, politically expedient action. We are the mussels; the mussels are us. We are part of this environment, not separated from--nor superior to--the environment. The choice here should not be an either/or, should never have come to an either/or. Our stupid decisions--in political leaders and in environmental husbandry--have put us where we are. And no governmental redaction or suppression of scientific research is going to prevent the consequences.

"The situation is very dire"

We now have buckets and pans in our shower, in a system that's not efficient but that works to collect bath water. When we moved to the metro Atlanta area from Central Texas in June, we left behind an area receiving record floods. We are now in a state of record drought. The red clay of our lawn is hard as rock. Preparing our yard for planting native plants, vegetables and herbs is daunting. Tom took a pickax to this soil destroyed by cotton farming, and though this house was built in the 1940s, I can see little evidence that any previous owner tried to replenish the soil. Even with a pickax and shovels, we could dig no deeper than three or four inches: the soil is that devoid of moisture.We've found free compost, chipped prunings and leaves composted by the county--but there's not enough water to plant.

Until a couple of weeks ago, people in our area could water their lawns or wash their cars three times a week. We don't water grass unless we're trying to establish a native plant, as we did in Texas when we were establishing buffalo grass in our lawn, a native, drought-resistant species. So it seemed to me that the water situation couldn't be too dire since the county was allowing citizens to water their lawns. Then we were put on an outside watering ban about a week or so ago. Now I read that Atlanta's "main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days."

How has it come to this dire situation so soon? I think that our leaders are slow to ask for sacrifices. Our country is run by people who do not prepare for the long term. We've seen that in the planning--or lack of planning--in the war in Iraq. We've seen it in our government's disregard of the signs of global warming. We see it in disasters such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes. We're to blame, too. We're the ones who elect these folks. We're the ones buying the huge trucks, Hummers, and SUVs. We're the ones watering our expansive lawns of grass while Lake Lanier drains to record low levels.

I don't know how our plans will succeed for turning our yard into a native plant paradise and edible estate. We're catching shower water just to sustain the plants we have already.

And we're down to three-minute showers.

How to Eat Your Lawn
Fritz Haeg: Edible Lawn Manifesto
University of Georgia: Georgia Drought

WHY are more Americans hostile toward Christianity?

Three articles in the LA Times connected serendipitously for me today. I began with a post on Broadsheet, where Carol Lloyd discussed an article about a homemaking major offered at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Only women are allowed to take these homemaking classes which are preparing women, according to seminary president Paige Patterson, to become home schoolers. Then, while perusing the online newspaper, I came across an article about Ann Coulter, who said in a recent interview on television that her ideal of a country would be one in which everyone is Christian. Her host, who is Jewish, protested. Coulter added that she believed that Jews could be"'perfected through conversion to Christianity," implying, of course, that Judaism is inferior to Christianity.

Finally, I noted an article on a poll that indicates changing attitudes toward American Christianity. The pollsters noted that while a decade ago "an overwhelming majority" of non-Christians, including those aged 16-29, had favorable perceptions of Christianity's role in society, those perceptions are today much more negative in this age group. Just 16% of the people in that age group felt favorably toward Christianity's role in society. Evangelical Christianity is in particular disfavor, with only 3% of young non-Christians being favorably disposed toward this group that has become increasingly high profiled during the Bush administration.

And why do these young people have a more negative attitude toward American Christianity? Well, they perceive it to be "judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%) and too involved in politics (75%)." The pollsters also discovered that "even among Christians, half of young believers said they too view Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical and too political. One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality."

Here in the LA Times, American Christian evangelicals can discover how their embrace of the Bush administration has turned non-Christians against them. Their foray into national politics has diminished their religious message. Their rise to power, accompanied by the likes of Ann Coulter and James Dobson, has hurt their cause--if that cause is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One of the students taking the homemaking courses at the Southern Baptist Southwestern Theological Seminary says it really doesn't matter what she thinks in terms of a woman's role in society. As a woman, she is supposed to learn how to take care of the home so that her husband will not have to be responsible for any household duties. Is it any wonder that non-Christians have a negative perception of American Christianity?

The "Menacing" Calls

I have tried to stick to my moratorium on responding to outrages resulting from the Iraq war, and so far I'm holding firm. However, I have to respond to an interview with Chris Matthews that I read online at TV Guide. Salon's "War Room" provided a link that didn't work, but I found the interview with a Google search. That interview followed up on some comments that Matthews made at the 10th anniversary party for Hardball. Matthews revealed that the Bush administration tried to silence discussion that was critical of the war in Iraq. He compares the treatment he received from the Clinton administration while he covered the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal with the treatment he has received from the Bush administration while covering the war in Iraq: "And the difference in these two cases was that although I was extremely tough on Clinton, there was never any attempt to silence me — whereas there was a concerted effort by [Vice President Cheney's office] to silence me. It came in the form of three different people calling trying to quiet me."

Matthews describes how it's now normal to receive "an almost menacing call" when he plans to air views the administration or some of the presidential campaigners do not like: "[T]heir people call up and threaten, or challenge, and get very nasty."

That folks in the Bush administration try to quiet people who are critical of the administration or who hold views contrary to the purposes and goals of the administration is not news. What's news to me is that Matthews describes these menacing calls as "the norm." Successful bullying has a cumulative effect--no matter who is doing the bullying. This administration's disregard for the First Amendment makes it easier for others in power to disregard the First Amendment.

Katie Couric also says she received corporate pressure from NBC to be less critical of the Iraq war and the administration in interviews on the Today show: "I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations."

Hurrah for Grandmas.....and menopause

A tip of the hat to Broadsheet, which links to articles about research on post-menopausal grandmothers. Scientists have evidently wondered for some time why menopause occurs in all women at about the same time, "at the half-century mark, give or take four years."Some scientists have conducted studies that strongly suggest that menopause has an evolutionary benefit, providing hard workers for tribes and families: women in their prime not hampered by child-rearing. Grandmothers have the energy to devote to their families, giving their descendants a survival advantage.

That grandmothers provide necessary support to families and the larger community comes as no surprise to most of us. I was just describing this week to my fifteen-year-old daughter what I had learned from my grandmothers. But now that I am grandmother-age, if not actually a grandmother yet, I am cheered by research that finds that "often. . . women in their 60s are as strong as women in their 20s."

5K Run for Rape Crisis Center

We walked over a mile to downtown today for the Dekalb Rape Crisis Center's Take Back the Night 5K run. Tom ran the race and came in first in his age group, and made better time than the last 5K he participated in. His prize? A commuter mug with First Place Age Division on it. The event was fun and for a good cause. My contribution? Clapping and yelling for everyone who crossed the finish line.

An outside exhibition of t-shirts created by victims of rape or sexual violence and friends and family of victims reminded us of the serious intention of the event: to raise money for the local rape crisis center.

Flying like prayer flags in the breeze

Incidences of (reported) forcible rape in Georgia (2006): 2,173.

According to a 1992 study, just 16% of rapes are reported.

A Moratorium

I am now declaring a moratorium on posts about the Iraq war. I'll not put a time limit to that moratorium, but I am going to try for at least a month. I'll write about gardening or family or exercise or local activities or the view outside my window. I will not be ignoring the news, just not responding publicly to it.

Today I purchased more plants at Georgia Perimeter College Botanical Garden: native wisteria, purple monarda, yellow jasmine (which had been identified for me as coral vine, but the tag says otherwise) fringe tree, mountain azalea. If I were president, I would promise a native plant in every yard and tax credits for family gardens.

If we would just get some rain, I could begin my new gardening plans and guarantee a drop in blood pressure--despite the news.

So Sick: The Blackwater Horror

I am so sick of the incompetence, venality, greed, and jingoism associated with the war in Iraq. The latest Blackwater scandal just joins the list of ways our government has mismanaged the war. I read these stories of gun-toting, trigger-happy security contractors slaughtering Iraqi civilians, and I can't help wonder why more Americans aren't disgusted with the choices our leaders have made in beginning and directing this war. Are people incapable of empathizing with the Iraqi mother cradling her dead son in her arms, with the Iraqi taxi driver desperately crawling away from the bloody scene, with the Iraqi husband remembering his wife as a "beautiful woman"?

Or how about the family of the Iraqi bodyguard shot by a drunken Blackwater employee? The drunken 26-year-old was hustled out of the country after the murder.

I don't doubt Blackwater has some competent and ethically-motivated employees, men (mostly) who see themselves as patriots supporting the USA's military efforts in Iraq. At least one Blackwater security guard was heard yelling "No, no, no, no," gesturing to his colleagues to stop the gunfire that killed at least 17 Iraqis. But what we have here is a mercenary army that's been operating under the radar of oversight and a company that that has enriched itself immensely in the horror of Iraq.

The actions of Blackwater security contractors have also compromised military efforts in Iraq.

I recall that not one Iraqi was on the planes that flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon or the plane that crashed in that Pennsylvania field. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11. I recall that the Taliban--which did and does support Al-Qaeda, is regaining power in parts of Afghanistan and that Osama bin Laden is still at large. The Iraq war has been obscenely cheered by neo-con leaders who are forming another cheer-leading section for war against Iran.

Anyone for supporting further incompetence, venality, and greed?

Updates

Military Eyewitnesses to the Blackwater event

New Evidence

Gardening and Water Restrictions

Sunday afternoon Tom, M-M, and I got on our bikes to pedal to several local gardens highlighted in the Decatur Garden Tour. Now, I haven't ridden a bike in years. When we lived in Minnesota, we loved biking on the rails-to-trails pathway from Carlton to Duluth, but I get anxious biking in automobile traffic. Years and years ago when I was an undergraduate at Texas A&M, I biked to campus from married student housing until I got tired of running into pedestrians. Well, I think I might have bumped just one or two pedestrians, but maneuvering through the crowded campus made me so nervous that I finally resorted to walking. I don't know why I get so nervous while biking and having to watch for traffic--pedestrians or automobiles--but I do. However, I've decided to overcome that nervousness and to try pedaling more frequently. I'm becoming more and more green conscious and feel I must walk the walk if I'm going to talk the talk--or put the pedal to the wheel if I'm going to live like I feel. Or something dorky like that.

Anyway, we decided to begin the tour with the garden that had been most recommended to us: Ryan Gainey's garden on Emerson Avenue. We arrived with little difficulty, though I was a little slow in re-acquainting myself with gear shifting on my bicycle. I think I ran only two red lights. Tom and M-M were much more circumspect.

Ryan Gainey is a nationally-known gardener. His personal garden covers three city lots, or two acres, and is a lovely, whimsical place, with numerous outdoor rooms. Although the Atlanta metro area is under water restrictions because of severe drought conditions, the gardens looked great.

Halfway through our tour of the garden, I watched a water hose being pulled back into one of the green houses, water dripping from its end spout. Curious, I followed the disappearing hose into the greenhouse to discover Ryan Gainey on the other end. Two women already there also noticed him and began asking questions about the guest house. "Do your guests stay in these rooms?" one woman asked.

At first, I thought Gainey wasn't going to answer; he was silent for a bit. Then he cordially said that the rooms attached to the green house had once been part of the original barn on the place. A staff member lived there for fifteen years, he said. "When I have guests," he added, "I allow them to stay in my house."

Later that afternoon, I found out that we are now under a complete water ban--no outdoor watering whatsoever. I wonder how people such as Ryan Gainey cope with such restrictions. Since his gardens are part of his business, part of his "livelihood," Gainey probably gets different watering guidelines than the general public as ourselves. Thus, when Tom and I created a flower bed around our mailbox later on Sunday afternoon, we didn't plant the native grasses and verbenas we had bought, opting instead to wait until we get some rain. We didn't want the neighbors turning us in for violating the no-outdoor-watering restrictions. One neighbor walking his huge, black Great Dane stopped while we were digging to tell us that neighbors had rushed out to warn him of the ban when he was washing his car. It was the first he had heard of the new restrictions. Previously, our addresses determined the watering we could do: even-numbered houses such as ours restricted to watering Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays between midnight and 10 a.m..

I'm all for water restrictions in drought and for careful water management even in years of plentiful rainfall. So we're going to create a front yard of native grasses, shrubs, and flowers--with a few herbs and vegetables--that will not require watering once they are established. But we've got to get out of this drought first.

I read an article recently about how large cities--such as Atlanta--create their own weather. The heat from dense buildings and hundreds of acres of pavement actually affect the weather of the city. Thunderstorms that form on one side of the city sometimes divide, going around the city and meeting up again as one thunderstorm on the other side of the city. I've noticed recently that thunderstorms approaching Atlanta from the west will result in just a sprinkling of rain in our area while areas east of us then get lots of rain from the same systems. Other articles describe how this heat-effect from cities can create rain. Well, we desperately need that rain now if our garden is to look as good as the ones we viewed on the Decatur Garden Tour.

M-M took the photographs I have included with this post, most of which she took in Ryan Gainey's garden. To view a larger version, click on the photograph. Note, especially, that bee reaching for a flower!

Faces in Photographs: The Little Rock Nine

Kevin Drum, on his Political Animal blog, provides a link to an article on one of the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford. Fifty years ago, nine African-American teens were the first to integrate Little Rock Central High School. That was also the year I was born.

I have always wondered about the faces in those photographs from the turbulent era of Civil Rights, the quiet, determined faces of the black students, the screaming, contorted faces of the white students. What happened to those folks who screamed racial epithets at their black neighbors? Did they grow up to repent of their actions? Were they ashamed? Vanity Fair provides answers to these questions in an article about two such faces in a photograph.

A Day on Pluton

On Saturday, Tom, M-M, and I headed to the countryside near Franklin, Georgia, where The Nature Conservancy has a preserve of over 100 acres, most of which is a pluton, a rocky outcrop of igneous rock. Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta is a massive example of a pluton. The plutonic ridge near Franklin rises out of the surrounding piney woods, and is covered with water-eroded depressions which fill with debris, creating habitats for mosses, native flowers, and the occasional pine tree.

We had volunteered to participate in a TNC workday. Our goal was to help eliminate Chinese privet, a very invasive exotic species. The privet takes over, edging out less aggressive native plants. After meeting up with other volunteers and the TNC land steward in charge of the day's work, we walked into the preserve carrying pruners, handsaws, and herbicide. We probably put in a couple of hours of work before breaking for lunch.

After lunch, Erik, the land steward, took us on a hike over the rocky landscape of this area of the Piedmont. Flowers--especially Confederate Daisy and Blazing Star--bloomed prolifically in the small depressions where soil had deposited. M-M's quick eye spied a fence lizard and, earlier, a tiny ring-neck snake. The day would have ended perfectly had a yellow jacket not flown up from a burned-out stump hole and stung me on the bridge of my nose!

A Closer Look

Butterfly on Blazing Star

Flowers on the outcrop

Confederate Daisy/ Stone Mountain Daisy

Blazing Star

Habeas corpus

The Senate today failed to pass a bill restoring the right of habeas corpus to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Senate needed 60 votes to pass the bill; 56 Senators voted for the bill. Thus, the extraordinary measures of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 still stand, preventing detainees from access to a speedy trial and from access to their choice of legal representation.

Why should we care? While habeas corpus has been suspended at different times in the history of our country, these recent changes in the law may set precedents that will permanently affect this traditional right to challenge one's incarceration or the incarceration of another, as Jeffrey Toobin suggests in a 2006 article in The New Yorker.

President Bush has said over and over again that terrorists hate our freedom. Well, based on these legal challenges to the basic rights underlying those freedoms, it seems that the Republican party hates freedom, too. Note again the names of those who voted against re-establishing the right of habeas corpus to the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Only six Republicans voted to uphold this traditional right that Americans have long held to be a cornerstone of freedom.

What's Left Over

Years ago, when my grandmother first started getting rid of stuff she no longer needed, she gave me a bag of cream-colored fine cotton thread, a bedspread pattern, and several completed squares of the pattern. This material, she said, had belonged to her sister Lila. Before she died, my great-aunt Lila had given this uncompleted project to my grandmother, hoping that her sister might finish what she had not had time to complete. Grandma completed many handcraft projects, but she never got around to crocheting the bedspread her sister had started. So she passed the project on to me.

For years that bag of crochet thread and crocheted squares sat in several closets in different houses. Finally, I gave some of the thread to Benton, who wanted to learn to crochet. (Hey, it's a family tradition. Some of my uncles learned to crochet, too!) And I began using the crocheted squares as fancy coasters.

Before she died, my mother-in-law gave me needlepoint canvases on which she had drawn designs she had hoped to needlepoint. For years, those canvases sat in closets as I tried to think what to do with them, unwilling to throw them away. Finally, when I began creating my art car, I glued the canvases to the ceiling of the car, along with other left-overs from projects: buttons, quilt scraps, felt, spare crocheted flowers from a small afghan I once made a friend.

It's the dilemma every person faces who does hand crafts of any kind: what to do with the left-overs. People who do hand crafts probably tend to be pack rats, anyway; we hesitate to throw anything away that might be resurrected in a different project.

This weekend, I took out some skeins of yarn M-M and I had bought to make hair for the craft dolls she and I made two years ago to raise money for CARE. The yarn isn't the only item left over from that project, but I thought I would begin with it--transforming the left-overs. The end result can be seen in the photos below. I began with the designs at the end of the scarf; they look like crocheted pot holders. I attached them to the scarf and then crocheted a matching hat. I'm thinking maybe I could begin a line of designs inspired by kitchen items! In the second photo, M-M has turned the ends of the scarf around to expose the "pockets" I crocheted for hands.

Pot-holder scarves--dual use!

Today's Walk

Sculptures, scarecrows, friendly cats, and lonely dogs

Bikes aren't transportation?

While perusing the news this morning, I came across an article in Salon criticizing Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters for saying that bike paths and trails are really not "transportation-related" and thus are unworthy of receiving federal dollars from the gas tax. Did she really say that? I wondered. Surely not!

So I went to the original transcript of Gwen Ifill's interview with the Secretary of Transportation on the Lehrer News Hour. Here is a direct quote:

MARY PETERS: Well, there's about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails.

Now, my son is a student at the University of Texas in Austin. His transportation is a bike. He not only uses his bike to get around campus, but he shops for groceries and runs other errands. He also uses public transportation. He does not own a car. He's probably spewing his morning tea as he reads this quote from our eminent Secretary of Transportation now. (Yes, I'm a graduate of TAMU, and my son is a t-sipper!) Since a bicyclist or two is killed in Austin every year by a drunk or distracted driver, you bet I'm a supporter of bicycle paths and any media attention directed to make automobile drivers more attentive to sharing the road with bicyclists.

My husband rides his bicycle to a nearby MARTA station every week day to catch a train to downtown Atlanta. Tell him that his bicycle isn't "directly transportation-related." And what about all those kids who bike to school?

Can our Secretary of Transportation be any less short sighted?

My Kind of Neighborhood

Just a mile's walk from our house is a community garden, where people can rent a tiny plot to grow vegetables, herbs, or flowers. This morning I walked to the garden, and as I neared the street where the garden is located, I heard a hawk screeching overhead. When I got to the garden, I understood his excitement. The garden's six chickens were loose among the vegetables, the hawk circling overhead.

"Our Level of Confidence is Under Control"

Watching General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker facing the hours of questioning from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, I couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for the two men. Both men looked as if they were in the hot seat--as they were and as they should be. The reports of these two men have been touted by the Bush administration for months as the Holy Grail to understanding the need to keep our troops in Iraq. Petraeus and Crocker were going to provide us with the answers.

Of the long excerpt of exchanges I watched on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, one struck me most forcefully. John McCain asked Ambassador Crocker whether he had any confidence that the Maliki government of Iraq had any hope of meeting the benchmarks the U. S. had set out for the country. Crocker's response? "Our level of confidence is under control."

Tom gave out a sharp bark of laughter when Crocker said this. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, smiling and yet also feeling some sympathy for the ambassador.

Ambassador Crocker parsed his answer very carefully. "Our level of confidence is under control." What a contrast that is to our president's saying that we're "kicking ass" in Iraq. What a contrast to Donald Rumsfeld's opinion that the Iraqis would embrace us as liberators. I think of Molly Ivins, grinning in her grave, not a triumphant grin but a bitter grin. Her words, in 2002: "The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now."

There was no triumphalism in the voices of either of these two men. They tried to paint as positive a picture as they could, but they were far from triumphant.

After the long excerpt from the hearings, Jim Lehrer talked with Joe Biden, Democratic senator, and Richard Lugar, Republican senator. There was no triumphalism here, either.

What do you think, Lehrer asked Lugar, of the plan to keep over 100,000 troops in Iraq to next summer?

Lugar's response? “This [keeping 100,000 troops in Iraq] has a very narrow margin of success.”

Yes, I would say that our level of confidence is very much under control.

UPDATE, 12 Sept.: I've read several news reports on the hearings yesterday and noted that reporters recorded Ambassador Crocker as saying "MY level of confidence is under control"--not "Our."

Commemorating 9/11

Just a few minutes ago, I walked out into the late-morning sunshine to pull dead plants from the window boxes at the front of our "new" (mid-40s model) house. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a woman in her late 60s walking down our street, her little dog forging ahead on its leash. As I crossed the sidewalk to attend to the other window box, the woman asked me, "Where are all the American flags on this street?"

A little confused, I replied, "Uh, I don't know. Should there be flags?"

"To commemorate 9/11," she replied. "Everyone is supposed to fly the flag."

I answered, "Well, I guess people commemorate in different ways."

"Evidently not this street," she said, her voice heavy with judgment, as she walked on, assessing the neighborhood. Cowardly absolving myself from the actions of my neighbors--though I was as guilty as they since I also did not have a flag flying in my yard--I said, "Well, I'm new here." I heard the woman's short laugh in the distance.

Clearly, people judge us by our outward expressions of faith or patriotism. But I was brought up in a strict Southern Baptist culture, and I took those stories of Jesus seriously as a child:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. . . . But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. . . . .When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. . . . But when you do fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen."

This just sounds like wisdom to me, no matter what one's religious or irreligious persuasion. The advice jibes with my own tendency to Stoicism. Flying a flag reveals a person's true heart no more than praying on a street corner. I'm suspicious of people who make a great deal of praying in public; I am suspicious of people who worship the flag.

Anyway, this administration has been commemorating 9/11 every day for the past six years. I think a silent prayer and little bit of humility is in order for today.

Who determines "reliable religious teachings"?

A New York Times article describes the consequences of a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department: banning religious texts in prisons in order to prevent religious radicalization of prisoners. The Bureau of Prisons has created a list of approved works, and, of course, some chaplains and religious groups are protesting the practice of removing the unapproved books from prison libraries. Among works excluded are books by Robert Schuller, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, and Cardinal Avery Dulles, all Christian writers of one sort or another.

Banning books in the name of terrorism: didn't you just know this was going to happen?

The Trees in Front of the View

Today Tom, M-M, and I drove an hour north of Atlanta to Amicalola Falls in order to hike up one of the trails to the head of the falls. It was a beautiful day, sunny but cool in the morning when we left. We reached Amicalola State Park a little before 10 a.m. and began our hike on the hour, heading up the Creekside Trail to the trail to the top of the falls. The hike was easy walking to begin with, the path following the creek through a green understory of mountain laurel and rhododendron and an overstory of mixed hardwoods: oaks, yellow poplar, red maple, and sourwood. Mary-Margaret stopped several times to take close-up photographs of some of the fall flowers blooming even in this drought.

At the base of the falls, however, the trail becomes a mite more strenuous where Georgia state inmates, working with the GA Department of Natural Resources, have built some mighty fine, steep stairs to the top of the falls: 604 steps in all, according to park records. Now I've been hauling around heavy boxes lately in this move, but I haven't done a lot of walking--at least not like I should--and I had to stop for breath a few times up those stairs. In addition, I have a bad knee that I suspect is going to require surgery here soon. I took another dose of ibuprofen before taking the first step up. But the hike was a good climb, where one can enjoy the beauty of the falls from different vantage points along the way and then be rewarded with a lovely view of the surrounding mountains from the top of the falls.

However, I was a little disappointed to see the large parking lot and the well-maintained road that allow tourists to forgo the climb for an easy reward of the view. "Okay," I thought, "the view might be better appreciated by those of us who sweated a little to get here, but the view is also available to folks who would love to walk the path but who can't, such as the elderly and the disabled."

Then Tom overheard one of those people complaining about the view. "They need to clear this stuff out so you can see the view," a woman in her sixties whined, waving her hands at the trees. Yet there from the vantage of a well-crafted wooden pathway with safety rails was the view. Sure, the space didn't accommodate a large group of people, but with patience, one could wait one's turn to have the view to one's self. And just a few hundred feet down a much less strenuous trail than the 604 steps we climbed up were several yards of path where anyone could have plenty of space to view the receding blue of the mountains against the washed-out blue of the early afternoon sky.

Later I thought about how too many times most of us are like that woman, wanting immediate access to something we desire and blaming other people or circumstances that seem to block our way. And yet with just a little patience or a few steps out of our well-worn paths, we could have what we desire--or even something better.

Taking Reponsibility, Looking Ahead in Iraq

Two articles on Iraq recently published online are worth a close read. One looks back to one of the worst errors the United States made in the early days of the war, the disbanding of the Iraqi army, thus dumping 250,000 men onto the streets, angry, armed, and jobless. Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, discusses who was probably responsible for that disastrous decision. President Bush says it wasn't his order but L. Paul Bremer's decision. Paul Bremer has publicly replied that he received the order from Donald Rumsfeld and that President Bush commended the order. But Kaplan shows how all the principal parties, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had decided to disband only the elite Republican Guards, not the ordinary enlisted men in the Iraqi army. So where do you think the finger points for what most believe was the worst decision in the early months of the Iraq war, a decision that led to the chaos and violence? Read Kaplan's piece for one analysis.

The second article is by George Packer, in The New Yorker. Packer, a journalist who supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq but who quickly became disenchanted with the war because of its poor execution, has written extensively on the war in Iraq and has been to Iraq several times. (I highly recommend his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, as well as Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 and Thomas Ricks' Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.) Packer's recent article, "Planning for Defeat", looks ahead to the decisions which will have to be made in the next few months. He rightly points out that these decisions are not ones relegated to one administration or one party. We are all responsible, and our decisions will determine America's standing in the world.

Hold the Popcorn

It seems we have another item to add to our list of foods to avoid: buttery, microwavable popcorn. For years there have been records of workers in microwave popcorn packaging plants suffering from severe lung disease and occupational asthma. The cause has been identified as diacetyl, the chemical used in the buttery flavoring of popcorn. Now a doctor has reported a case of a man with similar symptoms in the general population, a heavy consumer of microwavable popcorn. And one popcorn manufacturer is removing diacetyl from its products. (Did you know that diacetyl is also used in alcoholic beverages? According to Wikipedia, low levels of the chemical make the drinks feel smooth and slippery in the mouth.)

Some bloggers have tried to bring attention to what they think is a serious problem and blame the Bush administration for not holding manufacturers accountable and for not cautioning the public.

Judge for yourself, but I think I'm going to pass on the buttery, microwavable popcorn and return to popping my own the old-fashioned way.

UPDATE

And here are directions for making popcorn the old fashioned way: "Diner's Journal," The New York Times.

Clearing Filing Cabinets

Last week, inspectors for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Unit were cleaning out their files at the United Nations headquarters in New York and came across a startling find: several vials of lethal chemicals locked in a sealed metal container. Of course, since these were lethal weapons inspectors, the U.N. personnel secured the vials until they could identify the chemicals.

The inspectors were going through "125 five-drawer cabinets, containing 16 years of inspection reports." I identify with that kind of tedious work. Before we left Texas, I went through a file cabinet of teaching materials, throwing away student papers I had kept as good examples of writing and extra copies of handouts I had held onto for each succeeding semester. Last week, I finished the job (mostly), sifting through 25 years of files. And while I didn't find anything as toxic as those U.N. inspectors found, I did discover that I've held onto items far too long. Some of my most unusual or interesting finds:

• The paper, name place setting for my grandmother, on the occasion of my bridal luncheon 29 years ago. "Grandmother Dugat" is written on the front of the place setting, in my mother-in-law's handwriting. "Anita's bridal luncheon, Apr. 22, 1978" is written on the back in my grandmother's handwriting. Obviously, this item was something my grandmother kept to commemorate the occasion and then passed on to me during one of her own cleaning-out-the-files sessions.
  

• My best graduate papers and the first research paper I wrote in college over thirty years ago. Although I was going to throw these items away--finally!--Mary-Margaret convinced me not to do so. Against my advice, M-M hopes to become an English teacher, and she is interested, she said, in reading these papers that I wrote on my way to becoming an English teacher. Hmmmmmm.........
  

• A Dean's Honor Award from Texas A&M University's College of Engineering, recognizing me for "Outstanding Academic Achievement" for the fall semester of 1980. Of course, I was never an engineering student at Texas A&M. The award was a clerical mistake. I should have received the honor award for English, not Engineering. But I filed this award away all these years as a caution against taking even official records at face value. Now I'm sending it to Benton, who is an engineering student (though at rival UT-Austin), with directions to throw away the item after he has gotten a chuckle out of the parchment lie.
  

• Three letters written to me by Stanley P. "Choo-Choo" Dyer, in 1976 and 1977. Choo-Choo, as friends and family called him, was the son of one of my father's best friends and a member of the TAMU Corps of Cadets. About four years older than I, he had wanted to date me, but I was already seriously involved with Tom. I read the letters to Mary-Margaret, who teared up and then said, "I am impressed. I don't know any boys who can write like that. Has this generation's genetic material been diminished?!" I assured her that in nine or ten years, perhaps some of the boys she knew would be able to write like Choo-Choo Dyer.

Choo-Choo was a character. He composed great portions of the letters in rhyming couplets, with a description in one of how he ran naked through the woods to worship his god. He also gave the young, very inexperienced me, brotherly advice: "Your heart," he assured me in one letter, "wants things to hurry up and become realities & your brain says take it easy & look things over--your [thoughts] are ruled first by one & then the other. . . .You cry for letters that do say something of life. You want letters that say something of the joys of the person--the dreams, the defeats, a person's self--the truth--Settle for no less--you also maybe cry because you just feel like it--for no reason.... ."

Choo-Choo went on to marry a lovely red-haired woman named Vicki and to father two beautiful daughters, but in his thirties, he died of cancer. My mother and father attended the funeral--I was living in another state at the time--and my mother recounted later to me how Choo-Choo's mother, Patsy Dyer, came up to her to tell her how much Choo-Choo had liked me when we were teenagers. I told all of this to Mary-Margaret.

"You can't throw those letters away!" Mary-Margaret exclaimed.

"Of course, I won't," I said.

And so I placed Choo-Choo's hastily scrawled, partly rhymed letters back into the file cabinets with all those other items with which I can't bear to part. I've given my children directions to burn everything when I die.

But I bet they won't.