In the Garden of My Memory

Years ago I created an art car on which I was inspired to paint and illustrate an original phrase that came to mind when I was thinking of my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat and all the women who have to re-create their worlds when war, natural disasters, bad relationships, stunted aspirations, or a myriad of disappointments change their lives: "Because she remembered her grandmother's garden, she planted her own. Flower by flower she remade the world." This is now a phrase I live by. Actually,  that idea directed my life--often literally--before I was aware of it, for in all the moves we've made to improve our circumstances, the one thing that has remained constant is the energy we put into creating a garden immediately when we've settled.

As I noted in this post of January 17, I set for myself several art, craft, gardening and writing goals for the year to see me through the presidential election and beyond. The stupidity of the election cycle can be so astounding that any thinking person keeping up with the news has to find a way to balance illusion and fantasy with reality, venality with generosity, amoralism with ethics. Work helps, but I am unemployed since I left my last job a year ago to move to the state where my husband had begun some months previous to my moving a more monetarily-rewarding job than I could acquire. So sustained gardening,  craft, and writing do that balancing act for me now.

One of my projects is the altered art journal that I described briefly in that January 17th post. I keep all the materials on an antique table in my study and work on the journal as I find the time from other projects and as inspiration strikes. It's the work of an amateur, but it gives me joy. The journal has become not just a record of 2012--rendered in paint, collage, poems, even sewing, embroidery, and crochet--but a memoir. The journal entry of this week focused on gardening, and I created two tiny, hand-stitched booklets to place in seed-packet pockets that I glued to the pages. In each booklet I wrote an essay about the flowers of my childhood and my gardening memories.

This is one of those essays, with minor editorial changes:

My earliest memories of gardening have almost disappeared into some inaccessible compartment of my brain, but I remember hoeing weeds in our garden in Old River, Texas. Mostly, however, I remember my father working in the garden. When I was very young, he had a couple of plow animals that he used to cultivate his garden, donkeys he called Jenny and Jack. I remember standing barefoot on our front porch, watching Daddy hitch up the plow and head the donkey on a straight run through the garden to create a row for planting. Sometimes the donkey didn't comply, and Daddy would begin to curse. This is where I first learned curse words though I didn't use them myself until I was much older.

I also remember gathering okra and eating the fresh, raw pods as I delivered a batch to the kitchen for cooking. Our household was a traditional one, and we girls did most of the housework while my brother, six years younger than I, did many of the outdoor chores when he was old enough to take them on. I would have much preferred hoeing in the garden, I think, to washing and folding clothes. One summer when I was a teen, I decided that the grass growing around the cement blocks under our house was unsightly. We didn't have a weed-eater, and there were places a lawn mower couldn't reach. I spent several days in the hot Texas sun hoeing that grass away from the house. It was work I initiated and thus work that I liked.

One of the funniest and yet not-so-funny experiences from my teenage years occurred one day when I was picking field peas with my grandmother Ruby Scott Benton. Grandma Benton was a short, fat woman; she was in her sixties at the time and suffering from ailments associated with her weight. She could not lift her feet very high off the ground, and when she tried to step over a row of peas, she fell flat on her back in the sandy soil. I was horrified, but Grandma started laughing, and then I did, too. She looked like a June bug waving its limbs around, trying to roll over to right itself. Grandma Benton was a very even-tempered woman, easily moved to laughter, and it was easy to be happy in her presence.

The first garden of my own was one my husband and I planted when we were students at Texas A&M University at College Station. We were living in married student housing, and the university owned some undeveloped land behind the apartments which the administration designated as a gardening area for married students living in university housing. In the spring, someone would disk the property and divide the land into small garden lots. Married students could choose a plot to garden. 

Tom and I worked very hard in that first garden. Tom would load up our Ford Ranger with free chicken manure from the Ag Center, and we added that manure to our garden to amend the soil. We also weeded assiduously. I remember getting down on my hands and knees to weed, trying to make that garden as weed-free as possible. We were rewarded with such beautiful plants and bountiful vegetables that our gardening neighbors began to comment on the lushness of our garden. Some of them assumed--and told us--that we had "lucked out" in getting the best gardening spot. So one year someone beat us in choosing that patch which we had amended with manure, and we got one of the least desirable plots on the edge of the disked land. I have a photo of myself in that garden that Tom took. I am standing near a row of corn as high as my head, smiling triumphantly. We had proven, if only to ourselves, that our dedication and hard work could turn a plot of land that no one else wanted into a productive garden. 

That might have been the year that someone stole all our vegetables, leaving behind the knife with which he had done the deed.

When Tom and I went to Nova Scotia last September to visit the land where my ancestor Abraham Dugas (Dugast) had lived in the 1600s, we learned how the Acadians had turned marshy land into productive farm land by building dykes to drain the land. They also farmed all up and down the Annapolis Valley and the shore along the Bay of Fundy. Google search "best farmland in Nova Scotia" today, and web pages will pop up describing Kings County, Nova Scotia, as having the best agricultural land in the province.

But perhaps the Acadians were too successful in their farming and gardening. They, too, lost their produce to a neighbor--the British government, which confiscated all their property and exported them to other British colonies. Stripped of their farmland wealth, the impoverished Acadians had to start over in foreign lands. Some made their way to Louisiana, carrying with them a love and skill of gardening. 

Perhaps my Acadian/Cajun genes explain in part my own love of gardening. And a natural disposition to be wary of those in power and those envious of the success--however slight--of others.

Briefly....

So glad this guy's not going to be President: "Gingrich Walks out During Interview with Student Reporter," in Slate. I mean, really, petulance doesn't wear well in a leader. Imagine four years of stunts like this.

But here are the people who disagree with me: The Atlantic's video of the day. Bully for them.

As Kevin Drum says, not much of anything new was added to the George W. Bush and the National Guard story in Joe Hagen's article in the  May edition of the Texas Monthly , but, distilled, it does deliver some cautionary reminders:

• The rich, powerful, politically-connected are not like you and me, and don't forget it. If drafted, their children don't go to war, and they don't have to flee to Canada to avoid deploying. While someone less fortunate serves and dies in their place or lives the rest of his life in a foreign country, they get safe assignments and (finally) grow up to be President.
• Career politicians (often, and selectively, perhaps) look out for other politicians, even those in the competing party. This is how they bargain; this is how they accrue power.
• Powerfully rich and influential people can destroy lives or hinder the aspirations of others more admirable: Walter V. Robinson, Boston Globe reporter: "...the only [2004 presidential] candidate who ended up with a serious credibility problem about his military service was John Kerry, who had absolutely nothing to hide or be ashamed of."

Useful reminders.

Faith, Hope, and . . . . Anticipation

Nothing exemplifies faith and hope as much as a garden, I think. To begin gardening is a step into faith....faith that one can do the job, faith that the weather will be beneficial, faith that the outcome will bring pleasure or, at least, sustenance. One plants those dry little seeds hoping that they will sprout and that predators won't decimate the crop. Of course, one hopes a garden can generate charity, too: we all love our neighbors as ourselves when the cucumbers over-produce. On the other hand, charity withers when one spies a worm on a tomato leaf.

And oh...what anticipation as one daily observes the sprouts growing and bearing fruit.

Here are a few photos I took in the garden today that exemplify all of these emotions--and more.

Anticipating eating the Creole tomatoes

Nasturtiums for beauty and salads

This is how I feel in my gardens.

Thai basil sprouts (Queenette)

Uh oh....daily maintenance required

beautiful but not wanted

kumquat ripening

just-set satsuma fruits

sweet oranges

young sunflower sprouts

a dwarf gardenia

crooked-neck squash sprouts

more basil sprouts--lettuce leaf or Genovese

tiny arugula sprouts

Despite the pointed bamboo stakes, Persephone finds a shady spot.

The Worth of Physical Labor

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, temperatures and rainfall were much above normal here in Louisiana. Consequently, in February and March, I found myself working against weather to dig and to plant the flower and herb beds that I had planned during the winter. I spent most of March digging, weeding, planting, and embellishing the landscape, as illustrated by the accompanying photo of the bamboo backdrop I created for my Japanese lantern. The previous owner of this property planted a line of bamboo along the property line (more or less) at the back of the three lots that we have purchased, and I cut the bamboo to make this screen, an edging to a flower bed, and stakes for our tomatoes. My labor in the bamboo patch had dual purposes: to create material for my gardens and to remove what bamboo was leaning over and touching the roof of our workshop. The pest control guy told us that termites could travel from the overarching bamboo limbs and damage the wooden walls of the workshop. 

Unless I choose to create another flower or herb bed, the most laborious part of gardening is over for the season. Now I'm in maintenance mode: watering sprouts, protecting sprouts from birds, weeding (which I do a bit at a time every day), gathering the fruit when it's ripe, and enjoying the beauty of blooms. 

I relished the physical labor, for it got me out of the house, away from online commentary and the stupidity of the campaign season. One has less time to brood when one is working hard.

Legislators must have better pay to resist temptation, but teachers who are "called" will work for anything

I've pretty much given up on keeping tabs on stupid comments in this election cycle, but as a teacher from a family of teachers, I just had to record this claim from Alabama State Senator (Republican) Shadrack McGill:

State Sen. Shadrack McGill defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators....[snip]

McGill, R-Woodville, said a 62 percent pay raise in 2007 - passed first by a controversial voice vote and later in an override of a veto by then-Gov. Bob Riley - better rewards lawmakers and makes them less susceptible to being swayed by lobbyists....[snip]

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.

"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.

"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity."

David Clemons, "McGill: Consequences to Raising Teacher Pay," Times-Journal, 1 Feb. 2012

So--legislators must have better pay in order to resist the temptation of bribery, but teachers are going to teach even if they are paid little? Who elected this man to office?

Self-Righteousness, Resentment, Anger...and the Girl Scouts

As I type this post, my door is open, and I can hear doves cooing, the kwirrr of a red-bellied woodpecker, and the rising "turreee" of towhees. It's a warm January day in south Louisiana. When I went outside to fill the bird feeder, I saw a black swallowtail butterfly fluttering around the yard. The peacefulness of this place provides for me such sharp contrast to what I hear and read about the political culture at large. Every day I thank whatever higher power there is--if she cares--for this respite from the anger, self-righteousness, and resentment that I confront in the news every day. There seems to be little room for grace and mercy these days--except for those who helped muster in this sad state of affairs. Somehow,  folks who loudly, vocally (and often aggressively) identify as Christian are ready to vote for a man who helped create the poisonous political culture we now live in and are ready to pronounce him "redeemed" from his sin of adultery.

Well, I don't care if he married three women, but I do think that how he treated those first two women says something about his character, and I also believe that how he condescends to others says something about his character, as well as his readiness to make those nasty connections to racial resentment and hatred: Obama is the "food stamp" president;  to Juan Williams work is a "strange concept." And anyone who isn't "you" is "elitist." Come on. We know exactly to what prejudices those comments pander.

But I'm not here today to talk about the Newt, really. What really bothers me is how self-righteousness, resentment, anger and pitiless judgment affect those of us who can't afford a half-a-million dollar credit at Tiffany's to help us cope with life's little meannesses.

Take the Girl Scouts, for example. Who cannot like the Girl Scouts? Well, those folks who think Girl Scouts shouldn't have reproductive counseling and sex education or allow transgendered children within their ranks. The Girl Scouts are very "pro-girl," in that they have from the inception of the program provided girls with the power to become whatever they can be in a changing culture. Some folks want those girls back in the kitchen making the cookies and not in the boardroom managing the marketing of those cookies.

Oh, and if you are transgendered, the Girl Scouts East Louisiana troop doesn't want you. In fact, some parents are so afraid of the POSSIBILITY of getting cooties from a transgendered child that they will take their kids out of the local troop even when that troop publicly announces it will not accept transgendered children and no transgendered children have even applied to join the troop. No, the refusal was just not "fast enough" for those folks:

But Susan Cramond, a troop leader who had two children in the group that met at Northlake Christian School in Covington, said she and other like-minded parents felt Louisiana Scouting policy-makers should never have had to discuss the transgender issue in the first place. Cramond said when she first contacted Louisiana’s Scouting leaders to ask whether a transgendered child could be accepted into a local troop, she didn’t get the quick and unequivocal “no” she was hoping for.

So Cramond and fellow troop leader Susan Bryant-Snure, a Lacombe doctor, informed other parents. She said they collectively decided to abandon the Girl Scouts and seek affiliation with American Heritage Girls, a similar organization that describes itself as a “Christ-centered leadership and character development ministry.”

Bryant-Snure said by banning transgendered children, the Louisiana board eventually made the “right decision; they just made it in a way that made us nervous.”

[Bruce Nolan, "Transgendered Girl Scout in Colorado Causes Stir in St. Tammany," The Times-Picayune, 22 January 2012.]

I guess the American Heritage Girls are sweating in the kitchen baking those cookies they hope they can sell more quickly now that so many like-minded folks are boycotting Girl Scout cookies.

Yep, this is where we live now....in a state of mind so rigid that just the possibility of otherness causes panic. Think I'll sit here and listen to the doves.


h/t: Mary Elizabeth Williams, "The Right's Latest Target: Girl Scout Cookies," posted in Salon, 23 January 2012.

A New Year...New Projects

About mid-December, I became so disheartened with politics that I quit blogging. Now that corporations are people and vast amounts of corporate money can be slathered on politicians and wannabe politicians of choice, what possible impact can one small voice in the wilderness of the GOP-dominated South have? Not much, I thought--and think. When I began this blog, I was really thinking of my children, of being for them a role model of writing, thinking, and engagement with the world around us, especially since we had just up-ended our comfortable life by moving to another state and a huge urban area. Now the kids are off on their own (mostly; we continue to support them. I hope to God they can support themselves in the near future), and their own pursuits engage their time and energy: university studies and research, part-time jobs (volunteer and paid), activities with friends. Also, well-known bloggers who are also reporters are writing about issues with far more skill and knowledge than I have. Let them carry on, and I'll read and ponder, keeping my thoughts to myself.

But here's another reason for me to blog: keeping my thoughts to  myself too often results in those thoughts spinning around in a kaleidoscope of ideas that never coalesce coherently. Writing helps me to think. And writing publicly (even though the real public of one's blog may be one or two people) encourages me to choose my words more skillfully and think through my ideas a little more carefully. That discipline is worthwhile to me.  Also, online blogging provides me with tools I wouldn't have in personal journalling. I can insert a photo in seconds or a link to something I've read--or get a quick bit of information with a Google search. So I've decided to maintain this blog for a while longer, but I may not write regularly and I may, despite my best intentions, just pass on what I've read, what I think is worth reading, with little original comment.

However, here at home, I have started a journalling project which I hope to carry throughout the year for my own enjoyment. I am creating an altered-book art journal, which will combine craft, art, and writing. I saved my husband's huge Organic Chemistry textbook and am altering it into a personal journal in which I will practice my art skills (minimal at this point) and writing. The photo at the beginning of this entry is of the altered cover of that book. I am now beginning on the opening pages. Here are photos of the book before and as I began altering it into a journal:

And here is a photo of the inside-cover spread which I am working on now:

 

As  you can see, it's a collage of images from other sources: a print of a painting that friends of mine bought in China years ago while teaching there; a cut-out from a copy of a larger geometric ink drawing of one of my husband's great-aunts, words cut from magazines and journals, photos of flowers cut from gardening catalogs, a couple of line drawings from a dictionary--nothing original to me except the juxtaposition of these various cut-outs on this inside cover and some daubing on of alcohol inks and matte gel medium. The drawing of the shovel and hoe on the front cover IS my original art, very elementary. But over time and with practice, perhaps my art will improve. Certainly, I am learning already how to use media that I've never used before in my art and craft projects.  

And I continue with my ongoing projects of gardening and making things: 

Some things remain the same from year to year, some of which constancy is heartening, and some of which is disheartening--like the continuing spiraling downward of our political discourse and democratic process. Making things and growing things will help keep me positive in the long election year ahead of us.

Another Quote for the Campaign Season

"If Gingrich is nominated, it won’t be because of his ideological clarity – he’s Flip to Mitt Romney’s Flop. It will be because he’s seen as the most likely to bully and humiliate Barack Obama. And that’s what GOP politics has come down to today." --Joan Walsh, "When Obama Underestimated Newt," posted in Salon, 11 December 2011.

Stupid, Mean and Condescending Stuff

First up, Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and presently a Republican presidential candidate, has this to say about food stamps and obesity: "'If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?' Santorum asked." Joann Glamm, "Santorum: 'Town crowds are getting a little bigger," LeMars Daily Sentinel, posted 6 December 2011. 

Here are some answers, Rick Santorum, to your question, from study done by Prof. Patricia Smith, professor of economics at University of Michigan-Dearborn:

• "..[F]ood stamps’ contribution to obesity among the poor is minor, accounting for only about 5 percent of the cases of obesity among poor Americans."
• “'Food stamps may enable women to buy more calories or the once-a-month distribution schedule may lead to disordered eating patterns, tempting women to feast on calorie-dense comfort foods when benefits arrive at the beginning of the month and then fasting at the end of the month when benefits have run out,' Smith explains."
• "Smith also finds compelling evidence that poverty contributes to weight gain by limiting the poor to neighborhoods with reduced access to nutritious lower calorie foods, fewer facilities for physical activity and greater exposure to stressors such as crime and pollution."
• "In addition, childhood abuse, family violence and disability can increase both the risks of poverty and obesity, according to Smith."

And, evidently, obesity is increasing in upper-income groups, too: "Obesity Rising Among the Rich", CBS News Healthwatch, 2 May 2005.

So get your facts straight and your heart in a better place, Rick Santorum.

Next up, Concerned Women of America opposed Senator Jeanne Shaheen's amendment to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow military women access to government-funded insurance for abortions. Since 1981, women who serve in our military have been denied government-funded insurance for any abortion that didn't "endanger" the health of the mother. In other words, women who serve our country are refused insurance in their medical plans for abortions caused by rape, when pregnancies caused by rapes are a big problem in the U.S. military.

"Women already have access to abortions at a military facility in instances of rape or incest. However, American taxpayers have not been forced to pay for those abortions," Concerned Women of America gripe in a letter signed by their CEO and president, Peggy Nance.

Oh, please....our taxes provide medical insurance for civilians who work for the federal government and for rape victims in federal prisons, medical insurance that pays for abortions caused by rape or incest. Why provide less for women who serve in the military?

But the most grievous sentences in Nance's letter are these:

"Pregnancies under such circumstances need an extra measure of compassion and support. We need to remember that these women are victims of a heinous crime. But our priorities should be placed on preventing these crimes, punishing the perpetrators, and not covering up a crime by merely dealing with the physical consequences. Women deserve better than simply being given abortion as a 'cure-all."

So condescending to women who find themselves in "such circumstances"!

Women who find themselves in "such circumstances" should be the ones to decide what course of action they should take--and they should have the means to do it, the insurance to cover the abortion if they so choose.

Oh, and a vote on the amendment was blocked in the Senate.

What gets me is that the same people who would refuse abortions to women under ANY circumstance are often the same people who fight against providing sex education and access to birth control. bleh!

Kids Can't Pray in School? Give Me a break!

So Texas governor Rick Perry has a new ad out in which he makes these assertions:

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

“As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion, and I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again. I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.”

My children attended Texas schools for almost four years, from 2003-2007, and I also attended Texas public schools in the 1970s, so I know something about Texas schools. Not much seemed to have changed from when I was a kid in public school and when my kids attended Texas public schools thirty years or so later. Someone still prayed in public, over the loud speaker, before the football game, and school events were often preceded with a prayer. I particularly remember one event for students and parents in which the speaker went into a long description of her personal conversion to Christianity and credited Jesus Christ for overcoming an illness. Her whole presentation was an example of proselytizing, if there ever was one, and it ended in "in Jesus' name, amen."

Not every school is as egregious in its flouting separation of church and state, but Rick Perry is lying when he says that children can't pray in schools. Children can pray anywhere. Does he really think that people's mouths have to move for God to hear their prayers? As Jesus himself said,

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6: 5&6)

So I guess Christians are the ones who should be in closets.

As for the comment about gays? Well, that's just prejudice and hatefulness. And there's nothing new about that, either.

I'm so tired of the lie that President Obama is waging a war on religion and that liberals are attacking "our religious heritage." Examples, please? 

Last year I attended a Christmas party--with Christmas tree and presents--at a U. S. GOVERNMENT facility, attended by U.S. government employees. Guess how the event began? With a public prayer from an employee who is also a Christian preacher. And, yeah, that prayer ended "in Jesus' name, amen."

So I'm standing there, thinking that this is no place for a sectarian prayer, but I'm also thinking that some of the people there with their heads bowed and eyes closed think the U. S. government is waging a war on--oh, not just any religion, but--the Christian religion.

Give me a break.

Update
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a few words to say about Rick Perry's ad: "Rick Perry and the Politics of Resentment," posted at The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2011.

Some Quotes from Phil Nugent (on the Republican party)

"For Republicans, at this stage of the game, picking a candidate is all about the personalities involved, and what they most want is somebody whose personality is calculated to piss off or appall the people they hate."

"...[I]t is wrong to classify the contemporary Republican party as "conservative". because true conservatism, whatever its lapses, is a reality-based school of thought that respects learning, scorns flattering appeals to the stupid, and seeks to actually conserve some things besides low tax rates for millionaires and the right to call anyone who doesn't agree with you a "class warrior" if your opponent is wearing a tie and a "smelly hippie" if he is not."

"In the meantime, the man seen as the most rational and in-touch of the Republican presidential candidates, Jon Huntsman, is seen as unelectable within his own party because he's not stupid, while the other one who has been known to claim to believe sensible things is regarded as a contender because he's now willing to claim to have repudiated all those sensible beliefs. Mitt Romney is supposed to be the responsible Republican front-runner, because he says enough crazy, stupid things to be acceptable to voters within his party, and also because the media and the party professionals believe he's actually a smart guy who's just pretending to be stupid until he has his hand on the Bible and is reciting the oath of office. They're openly signaling to people on the fence that it's okay to vote for Romney, because everything he says between now and Election Day is a bald-faced lie: he really knows better! This can't be good for the children." 

All three quotes above from Phil Nugent's post, "O, Stuporman," on The Phil Nugent Experience, posted 19 November 2011

Of course, now that Jon Huntsman smells blood in the water (Mitt Romney being overtaken by Newt Gingrich in polls), he's backing off his previous smart and educated pronouncements, too.

Unlimited Detention of American Citizens

I am not an admirer of Rand Paul, but I think he has done the right thing in voting against the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that allows  "the U.S. military to pick up and detain, without charges or trial, anyone suspected of terrorism, including American citizens, and to restrict transfers of prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay." Unfortunately, the amendment didn't pass. Read Dahlia Lithwick's article for a fuller discussion of possible consequences.


Once again, I am reminded of the importance of diversity and independence of thought in our governing leaders. Just because one disagrees with others on one issue doesn't mean there is no room for agreement on other issues. I think this is important to keep in mind when we are tempted to demonize those who don't agree with us. Our world views intersect in more ways than we might imagine.


Here is the roll call of the votes: U. S. Senate Roll Call Votes, 112th Congress, 1st session; on Amdt. # 1107  to S. 1867


h/t to Dahlia  Lithwick and to Steve Benen.

Quote for the End of a Difficult Year

Massive financial crashes always produce some inherent unfairness. For some reason, though, we were willing to overlook that unfairness when it was Wall Street that came begging, but became obsessed with it when all the rest of us came begging.

This is how 2008 radicalized me. It's one thing to know that the rich and powerful basically control things. That's the nature of being rich and powerful, after all. But in 2008 and the years since, they've really rubbed our noses in it. It's frankly hard to think of America as much of a true democracy these days.

--Kevin Drum, posted under "How 2008 Should have Radicalized Us All," Monday, 28 November 2011.

Police State?

Yes, I begin this post with a question mark, but a number of news stories over the past few months have made me wonder if I should follow such a phrase with an exclamation mark. The Occupy Wall Street movement has certainly brought the police force out in numbers in cities around our country. Yes, in Oakland, CA, a few fringe folks in a recent peaceful demonstration turned more violent, but the OWS movement is committed to peace. So why did the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security personnel infiltrate the Nashville, Tennessee OWS? 

Nashville's The Tenneseean obtained e-mails that reveal that State Highway Patrol troopers were taken off their highway duty to infiltrate Nashville's OWS. And one policeman revealed his own attitude in one of those e-mails: “If they start camping, I’m confident that a public health issue will soon develop...Then the Health Dept. can shut it down and we all look like the good guys.”

One Occupy Nashville protester wonders:  "My question in response would be : ‘Why are they messing with such a peaceful protest in such a warlike manner. Why declare war on peace?'"

This is what I think is the answer to that question: Too often it seems that the police have a pre-existing bias against groups that assemble to protest peacefully, especially if those groups are full of young people or minorities. And that attitude has been aided and abetted by Homeland Security. Ever since 9/11, police departments around the country have been highly weaponized, and I think this encourages a certain mindset--a tendency to use excess force in dealing with ordinary situations, of seeing the public as "them," even when the "them" is not much of a threat.

Just recently, a sheriff's office in Conroe, Texas, obtained an unmanned Shadowhawk helicopter that could carry a weapons payload. Yes, that's right--an unmanned drone with the potential to carry weapons. Why does Conroe, Texas, need an unmanned, weaponized drone? Nearby Cut-and-Shoot isn't that much of a threat, is it?

The drone can also look into people's backyards and has infrared capabilities to see into homes.

Police might have the best intentions, but even the best intentions can deteriorate into untenable consequences that challenge our civil rights--or worse.

Updates

• "But many law enforcement experts said Thursday that the officers' tactics appeared to be a severe overreaction." (Berkeley)-- "UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned," Will Kane, Demian Bulwa,  SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 November 2011.

• "Portland Pepper Spray Incident Generates Iconic Occupy Photo," Las Angeles Times, 18 November 2011.

• "Pepper-Spray Brutality at UC Davis," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic,  19 November 2011.

• "#OccupyMissoula--Police Dropping Off Drunken, Hostile People," posted on Plutocracy Files 19 November 2011.  (h/t David Crisp)

• "How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police," Arthur Rizer and Joseph Hartman, The Atlantic 7 November 2011. (h/t James Fallows)

• "Turning Patrolmen into Soldiers: How did we let this happen?," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic, 21 November 2011.

Alone but not Lonely

This morning while struggling with the beginning of a scarf I'm crocheting for hire, I heard a hawk call, very close. I keep my binoculars in a basket near the sofa in our sunroom, along with Peterson's Eastern Birds, so I grabbed the binocs and headed out into the chill that a cold front had brought to south Louisiana. There was the hawk, circling in the sky, then plunging downward to perch upon the broken limb of a dead tree. Early this summer, a pair of hawks nested in the same area and watched over their juvenile's soaring and diving in this little patch of woods near a creek, just minutes from the paved parking lots of big box stores of the nearest town of any size.

I live in an old cottage in a small town, on a road that ends near a creek. My husband and I have bought two lots on this road, and we would buy a third if the price weren't so high and we weren't worried about what the economy will be like under the next president. These days, I want space between me and the next person; perhaps I'm becoming a misanthrope. Someone who saw photos of our house told me our house and property looked like a "retreat," and it is. It's a retreat for me--a retreat from a life where I had spent my working hours (not just in the office and in the classroom)  trying to help other people write better, think better, and understand the world better through reading, writing, and thinking; a retreat from a world where we are considered "consumers" rather than "citizens"; a retreat from those paved parking lots and all the stuff we're encouraged to buy to "keep our economy growing."

I like it here, especially in the fall and winter, when the air is cooler and drier, and especially here at my retreat, where I am alone most days, but not lonely.

I know that I should get a job; I'm only fifty-four (nearly), but I have yet to decide what I want to be in my old age. I know that I don't want to teach. I don't have the patience for it anymore. At one of the last universities where I taught, a student wrote on her evaluation of my teaching that she hated that I made her read about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 or about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. As part of a research project, my students read an essay by Philip Gourevitch about the genocide, the public documents of a government review at the 10th anniversary of the horror, and contemporary news articles about the genocide in Darfur. This was at a Baptist University, where one would think the student population would have a deep concern about injustice in the world, but my student did not want to know and said so. Just a couple of years before, when I was teaching at a university in Georgia, my students viewed a collection of online photographs taken of people north and south of the Mexican/US border and then wrote about what they saw. One student told me that one difference between the people south of the border and north of the border was skin color. "Americans are white," she said.

No, I had more patience then, though it was wearing thin.

Here I watch the hawks, pet my cats, weed my gardens, and hope...hope that the economy doesn't tank any worse than it has already, that the person who gains the White House in 2012 won't lay off thousands of federal employees or dismantle the EPA or  de-fund education (I really don't want to be surrounded by more people such as the two students I've described above) or take away support from PBS (one of the few sources of real--and entertaining-- information these days, and much of it online) or abolish Net Neutrality. I guess that means I hope that a Republican doesn't win.

And I work at figuring out what comes next, in the afternoon of my life.  Lots to think about. No time to be lonely.

The Stupid, Stupid Scapegoating of Public Employees

So...evidently Mitt Romney has in this evening's debate of Republican presidential candidates claimed that he would "link pay of public employees to that of private-sector workers." However, as the writers at Think Progress point out, such a claim would actually require RAISING the pay of public employees. According to an article in the Washington Post, Saturday, November 5:

The federal government reported Friday that on average, its employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a 'pay gap' that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.

Got that, Mitt Romney, and all the other Republican talkingpoint-bots who like to scapegoat public employees? 

It's all just a diversion tactic--to get people to focus on what's NOT important and to forget what IS: the increasing income gap in this country, the over-weaning power of corporations, and unemployment.

Sick of Politics

In mid-September, my husband and I left for a two-week vacation, with Nova Scotia as our end destination. It was a great trip, in which we saw fossils of ancient trees in the cliffs near Joggins and the Bay of Fundy, watched humpback whales and porpoises up close, drove foggy roads along the Bay of Fundy, hiked in the rain, and viewed the land that my original Acadian ancestor farmed. What would my life be like now, I wondered, if the British hadn't ethnically cleansed the Annapolis Valley and the shores of the Bay of Fundy of French Acadians? What if Abraham Dugas' grandsons had remained instead of finding refuge in the swamps of Louisiana and then, later, the marshes of Anahuac and the Old and Lost Rivers of southeast Texas (where "Dugas" became "Dugat")? What would it be like to be Canadian now instead of American?

During our trip, I tried to stay away from the internet and the nastiness of our political discourse, but then one morning, a Canadian asked us at breakfast a question about our politics, and soon other people at the bed and breakfast were voicing their opinions, especially an ex-patriate from West Texas who had married a Canadian. Our hosts, however, were visibly silent; they were trying to sell their bed and breakfast so that they could spend their winters in Florida and their summers in Nova Scotia, untroubled by testy customers who wanted better views.

I was sick of politics. I just wanted a better view, not from my window but from my heart, a better view of humanity. History was not the place to find it, however. Abraham Dugas had never been compensated for the land confiscated to build a fort at what was then known as Annapolis Royal; his grandchildren were deprived of their cattle, the farmland they had improved, and their homes were burned; his descendants were transported to British colonies where many had to beg and where their daughters were taken away to work in the big houses of Protestants, where their language and their Catholicism were scorned.

Just the politics of kings: the strong taking from the weak. But how is that different from today?

It was the greediness of Wall Street--of banks and CEOs of corporations and financiers and politicians-- that brought our economy and the economy of the world to the brink of disaster, yet corporations continue to profit while laying off workers, politicians continue to cut deals, the banks are bigger, the CEOs who led those bloated financial institutions are not in jail but making more money than ever. So that's not the smoke of burning homes in the distance or of people loaded into ships with only the belongings they can carry, but, really, how different is it?

Mitt Romney can run for the highest office in the land of a democratic republic and tell voters that foreclosures should just be allowed to run their course. So what that people lost their jobs because Wall Street sold toxic derivatives and over-leveraged. So what that those people now can't keep up with their mortgages while looking for other jobs. Let those with money buy up those homes at rock-bottom prices and rent them out.  In other words, let the rich make more money off the losses and grief of the working and middle class. That's Romney's message to the people.

Or how about making federal employees scape goats for the economy? Mitt Romney, whom it is estimated to be worth up to $250 million, shows up at a steel fabrication plant, dressed in jeans and a plaid work shirt,  and tells the workers that government employees are "making a lot more money than we are." I'm married to a government employee, and, with a Ph.d., he still makes less as a government employee than he did working for a private non-profit and less (counting inflation) than he did working for a corporation over ten years ago. I bet you he makes less than some of those working in the steel fabrication plant.

Who does Mitt Romney think he's fooling? This is a man who made his fortune buying sinking corporations, laying off the workers, and re-selling what remained. And he's likely to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

What a joke. On us. The middle-class, the working class.

 Our houses are burning, our wealth confiscated, our voices silenced in a sea of political bullshit.

Low Information Voters and Republican Strategy

Some of the most distressing descriptions of American citizens I've read lately have been detailed by two retired Congressional staffers, one a 28-year veteran of the Republican party and the other who worked for a moderate Democrat. These are not people on the fringes of the right or left. And now that they have retired, they feel free to write what they really believe, what they have actually experienced and observed. This is what Mike Lofgren, who served 28 years as a Congressional staffer and "16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees," writes :

There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Lofgren goes on to describe how "the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends." People who think government doesn't work decide that their vote doesn't count, too. And so they stay home while the far-right minority, "whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News" increases its clout in elections. This strategy of weakening trust in government institutions to create citizen malaise goes hand in hand with another Republican strategy, that of disenfranchising voters who are more likely to vote Democratic:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies)**; by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

Lofgren says that other folks are very upfront about these strategies:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption [the more recent Republican strategy to filibuster every confirmation and routine procedural motion] .... By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

 So what Republicans cannot succeed in doing by rigorous debate of the issues and communication of those issues to constituents, they plan to win by subterfuge and destruction of democratic institutions. Again, this is not some leftie talking; this is a guy who witnessed Republican strategy for years from the bullpen and who mourns the demise of Republican virtue (if virtue exists in politics). He is no supporter of President Obama, he says, but he wanted Obama to succeed in the worst economic crisis the country has faced in years because he wanted his country to succeed. The Republicans--those leading now--want the country to fail so that Obama will fail. The country fails, millions of Americans suffer--but they will blame the current president. Why? Because they are low information voters who have no idea how government works.

The second negative description of American citizens comes from a Congressional staffer who worked for years for a moderate Democrat. This staffer wrote in response to James Fallows' post about Mike Lofgren's essay.

The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

 Although the pollster mentioned above is referring to Congressional races, I grimaced a little when I read how inattentive voters are in making their choices. While I understand my own ideals and how those ideals have affected my voting record in national elections and state level elections, I have been less attentive to local elections. Yet that's where many politicians get their start, in their being elected to the school board or to mayor. From the city level, they may go to the state level and then the national level--though, more often than not these days, the already-rich jump directly to representing us at the state and national level.

If anything should convince those disaffected voters to get out to vote, this should: there are people hoping that you won't vote so that their ability to whip up the anger and fear of the fringe will have a stronger impact. And that's not good for our country...or for ordinary Americans.

**I have read that the push in Wisconsin to close Department of Motor Vehicles offices has been tabled. A spokesman said that there was no intention to shut down offices in Democratic constituencies, but a Democratic spokesman said that a look at which offices were planned to be shut down counters that claim. However, a recent Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles memo came to light in which employees were directed to provide material when people ask for the free ID but that they should not readily provide information if not asked. So it's pretty clear what the intent is.

More on the Wisconsin voter ID conflict: This guy evidently should have used his personal e-mail to send out his message, but....."Wisconsin Employee Fired for E-mail Defying Voter ID Policy," posted on TPM. More at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: "State Employee Fired After Telling Co-Workers about Photo ID Policy," 8 Sept. 2011.

Antidotes for Angst and Despair

For days, weeks even, I have been thinking of trying to address as honestly and straightforwardly as I can why I usually support liberal causes over conservative causes and why I have become increasingly cynical about politics and the possibilities of change in the way we are governed.  I envisioned a series of such exploratory posts, and yesterday I wrote the first one, addressing my changing perspective on religion. And then I lost the entire post because I was using the updated Blogger interface, which evidently doesn't save drafts automatically as the older interface does. Or perhaps the loss of the post was due to some error of my own. Whatever the cause,  nothing I could do resulted in my being able to retrieve the lost essay. So I surrendered to the capriciousness of technology and took a walk instead. Later I recorded some details of that walk with photos and a post that turned out quite differently than I had originally intended.

I have found, however, that experiencing--and recalling--details of the natural world helps me maintain perspective when confronted with political landscapes where alliances are constantly shifting, where people say what they don't believe, don't believe what they say, say they believe what facts and figures can't support, or massage facts and figures to conclude what they wish from them, or just make up stuff and hope that saying it over and over will convince people of its veracity. (Unfortunately, research shows that this last strategy works.)

So a day when I get online and read that even a career Republican Congressional staffer thinks that the Republican party is now "full of lunatics" or that "the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress," I know that's a day I need to leave despair at the keyboard and get outside.

A camera can be distracting if I am constantly snapping photos so that the initial experience is distanced and delayed to later viewing. But having a camera in hand can also help me to focus on sights I might otherwise overlook: the mushroom covered in tiny brown fibers that look like furry hair, the fly with red eyes perched on an autumn-blooming flower, the photography-worthy gate to one's neighbor's yard, slender green limbs heavy with purple beauty berry, a dragonfly posing patiently on a blue-black salvia bloom. Just small moments of awe and beauty can help restore my equilibrium.

However, I'm afraid that all my antidotes to angst and despair--immersing myself in the natural world, gardening, crafting things, writing--have limited efficacy and must be administered frequently. The next news cycle requires another dose.

 For an enlarged view of the dragonfly I photographed today on my patio, click on the photo.

After the Storm

Tropical Storm Lee has finally left Louisiana after days of dropping copious amounts of rain. At our house, we received just a little less than 11 inches of rain. What remains is wind, lots of cool wind brought in by a cool, dryer front colliding with the warm moist air of Lee. Our cats can be seen sniffing the air and walking in and out the front door, which we propped open in order to enjoy this uncharacteristically cool air at the end of summer in South Louisiana.  The cooler north wind brings with it, perhaps, unfamiliar scents and a hint of fall, both welcome after four days of rain.

Like the cats, my husband and I also ventured out to sniff the air, to enjoy the cool breeze, and to appreciate the subtle signs of fall. The sky was still overcast when we left the house to walk through our neighborhood and along a paved trail, but by the time we returned, the clouds were on their way out, headed to Georgia and the Appalachians.

More Irony

I don't get cable anymore, so I'm evidently missing out on a whole host of reality television shows turned bad--not that I ever was a fan of reality shows, in the first place. First there was the poor guy who had appeared on that "Housewives" show who hung himself after his wife filed for divorce. How horrible! And now here's Stephen Seagal with his little reality show, Steven Seagal: Lawman. I mean, it's funny how actors like this (the Chuck-Norris syndrome) take themselves so seriously. Here is Steven Seagal playing lawman with that controversial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, Joe Arpaio. Evidently, alongside Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ol' Seagal raided a guy's home for alleged animal cruelty (cock-fighting)--a raid that included driving a tank through Jesus Sanchez Llovera's front gate. (What is this, Iraq?) In the raid, Llovera's 11-month-old dog and over 100 of his roosters were killed by gunfire.

h/t TPM

Update: But maybe the dog wasn't killed after all-- "Arpaio, Seagal deny dog killing claim during raid."