Not Entitled

I guess I'm one of the 47% not entitled to healthcare. My insurance provider just refused to help cover the costs of a medical procedure my doctor recommended. Next I'll find out I'm not entitled to food, either. It's a good thing I have a garden (though here in September, it's mainly bearing okra, eggplant, and basil; that stir fry could get a little old).

Eggplant, okra, bell peppers, peas from our summer garden

What Mitt Romney Really Thinks of Us

Yes, I'm offended that Mitt Romney has this to say about people who support Barack Obama:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. ["Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters," David Corn, in Mother Jones, 17 September 2012.]

The guy who wants to be president of these United States believes that half of Americans think they are "victims" and don't "take responsibility and care for their lives." What arrogance.

And he's back to that stupid "no income tax" meme. Hey, Mitt, those same people pay sales taxes, state taxes, and payroll taxes. And guess what? A bunch of the 47% of folks who DON'T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY to pay federal income taxes (the elderly, college students, the poor) are voting for you because they think you support their values and that you're in their corner. What a joke on them.

Note:
See "Why the Poor Pay No Federal Income Tax: A Wee Tutorial," Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 17 Sept. 2012.

See also, "The 47%: Who They Are, Where They Live, How They Vote, and Why They Matter," Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 18 Sept. 2012.

Another Death in the "War on Terror"

I am going to vote for Barack Obama for president in November, and I have good reasons to do so. The Democratic ticket more closely represents my ideals, though it isn't perfect. I believe in gay rights; I believe in a woman's right to choose her own birth control and to have low-cost, easy access to methods that prevent pregnancy in the first place. I believe that the wealth gap is widening in our country, that corporations and the rich have too much power. I really think we should have universal healthcare and that the government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices. I believe in a public education that helps its citizens to become critical thinkers. I believe in the separation of church and state. The Republican Party, as it exists today, supports policies that are inimical to  these ideas, and it's largely responsible, through following the rhetorical instructions of people such as Newt Gingrich, in creating the toxic public rhetoric that drives our politics today. In addition, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans have been pig-headedly obstructive in these times of economic crises, putting politics before the good of the country.

That being said, one of my really big disappointments in the Obama administration is its inability to shut down Guantanamo Bay and its continuing many of the war policies of the Bush administration. And I despise the fact that the DOJ hadn't the balls to go after those who approved administration-sanctioned torture in its "war on terror." (How's that working? Has terror disappeared from the face of the earth?) Unfortunately, voting Republican would not create a change here, either. Mitt Romney is being advised by some of the same neo-cons who got us in the war in Iraq with their lies and unbelievable naiveté about how long the war would last, how much the war would cost, and how little the war would impact the very people we were supposed to be liberating. 

My disappointment is magnified by stories such as that of Adnan Latif, who was finally successful this past week in his many attempts to commit suicide in that national disgrace of a prison, Guantanamo Bay. 

Congress, of course, is greatly at fault, too, in abdicating its responsibility to declare war and in allowing the executive branch to accrue more power. And so are we responsible, too, in our silence, in our eager readiness to follow that presidential advice years ago to "go shopping" rather than to deal with the harsh realities of our nation's actions.

Adnan Latif is finally returning home after ten years. . . . in a coffin. I doubt his death has aided the "war on terror." Do you?

Sick of the Willful Amnesia

Because of the riots in the Mideast, the attacks on U.S. embassies, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) calls President Barack Obama the "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy." Where was this woman on 9/11? Did she call President Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" then?

As early as May 2, 2001, "the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that 'a group presently in the United States' was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be 'imminent,' although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible." Yet Bush's neo-con advisors pooh-poohed the idea, and the government did not go on high alert. [Kurt Eichenwald,  "The Deafness Before the Storm," New York Times, 10 September 2012; a reason why Eichenwald's reminder matters here--"Why the New Pre-9/11 Disclosures Matter," Alec McGillis, The New Republic, 11 September 2012.]

(I almost laughed aloud in disbelief when a relative of mine told me recently that George W. Bush had "kept us safe." The attacks on the Twin Towers came almost eight months into Bush's first year in office--and then there were the anthrax attacks, in which five people died and at least 22 people were infected with the deadly virus!)

Did Michele Bachman call President George W. Bush "the most dangerous president we have ever had on foreign policy" when:

• A car bomb killed 10 people and injured over 50 others outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002?
• Explosions erupted near the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan in 2004?
• Gunman "stormed the American Consulate" in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 2004?
• Armed gunmen attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, in 2006?
• An antitank grenade was fired on the U.S. Embassy in Athens in 2007?
• Protesters set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008?
• Ten people were killed in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in 2008? (h/t Media Matters-- When I started looking up information on embassy attacks, I discovered that others had done the work already.) 

How about the 2005 riots in Afghanistan over "a report that interrogators desecrated Iran's holy book at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay"? 

Or how about these Pew Research Findings in 2006, well into George W. Bush's second year in office:

Positive views of the United States have declined sharply in Spain (from 41% to 23%), India (71% to 56%), and Turkey (23% to 12%). Even in Indonesia, where U.S. tsunami aid helped lift America's image in 2005, favorable opinions of the U.S. have fallen (from 38% to 30%). . . .[snip] Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, compared with 30% who say it has made the world safer.

Did Michele Bachmann think then, "uh, oh, President George W. Bush is falling down on the job in foreign policy"?

Have we forgotten Abu Ghraib?  Whose Mideast policy was responsible for that blot on our nation?

Discussing policy differences is fine and necessary. Willfully forgetting the past in order to propagandize the present is stupid. But even more stupid? Believing those who do this.

Short, Sweet, and on Message

 Andrew Tobias makes two points in his short message to the Democratic National Convention of 2012. Wash, rinse, repeat:





 h/t, James Bennet of The Atlantic

Laughter Better than Tears?

I try not to get all wobbly when people say crazy, mean, and stupid things, you know, the "man in the street" comments that make one wonder about the morality and intelligence of one's fellow travelers. But when elected officials (or leaders of groups of people) make crazy, mean or stupid comments, I wonder not only about the morality and intelligence of the official who is supposed to make important decisions, sometimes national decisions, for us, but I also wonder about the majority of voters who put him or her in power.  Are they complicit? hateful? stupid? clueless? uninformed? or gobsmacked that their representative, so clever and eloquent during the campaign, has turned out to be such a prick?

Political rhetoric has always had a mean streak, but it seems particularly vitriolic these days. Joe Wilson's (R-SC) screaming "you lie" during President Obama's 2009 address to Congress seemed to me to presage the vaguely (and sometimes overtly) racist comments aimed at our first black president. Some would deny that Wilson's outburst was racist, but many of us in the South heard the unexpressed "boy" hovering at the end of that accusation, a ghost of Old Dixie that has materialized more substantially in the past four years. Underneath such comments is the ancient fear of the black uprising and a resentment of the "uppity" black. To keep people in their place, you have to convince yourself that they are inferior; when they prove to be equal or superior--morally, socially, intellectually--well, that's a challenge to a lot of people. No one shouted "you lie" in that august chamber when President Bush pushed the more obvious lies of weapons of mass destruction and yellowcake uranium. No, his lies were met with silence, approbation, and submission. You decide what the difference in response means.

But in keeping with my resolve to laugh at the follies of our elected officials, in the hope that laughter will prove more efficacious than tears, I offer here for derisive laughter a comment by Haley Barbour, former Republican governor of Mississippi, who actually hoped to be president of this country.

Barbour offered a brief assessment of the Republican National Convention. 'While I would love for [Chris] Christie to put a hot poker to Obama’s butt,' said Barbour of the RNC keynote speaker, 'I thought he did what he was supposed to do.' [source: Sheelah Kolhatkar, "Exclusive: How Karl Rove's Super PAC Plays the Senate," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 04 September 2012]

Whew! close call! Aren't you [cue relieved laughter] glad this person isn't making national decisions now? Can you imagine [guffaw] what the brutality of that image says about the illustrious former governor of Mississippi? Oh, [wiping eyes] but the sexual innuendo and the implied delight in the forced submissiveness of our president isn't racist at all....oh....no.... Of course, comments such as this play well to a certain demographic. Isn't that hilarious?
 

A Missing Month and the Comfort of Philosophy

I abandoned the post here at 6 Generations as summer heated up, environmentally and politically, and as I became engrossed with family matters: visits with our college-aged children, trips out of state, a birthday party for my 80-year-old father, and preparations for enduring a hurricane. August included a ride back from Atlanta on Amtrak, on which I pondered the sad difference between public transportation in countries I have visited overseas and public transportation in our country. That disappointing difference, however, has not weakened my resolve to take public transportation more often.  One personal promise I made to myself during August was not to allow politics to make me crazy or despairing. Though I feel strongly that the best choice for the presidential election is the Democratic choice, I refuse to let vitriolic polarization poison my daily attempts at maintaining some portion of happiness in my own life. I try to remember the words of my favorite Stoic philosopher, Seneca:

But there is no point in banishing the causes of private sorrow, for sometimes we are gripped by a hatred of the human race. When you consider how rare is simplicity and how unknown is innocence, how you scarcely ever find loyalty except when it is expedient, what a host of successful crimes you come across, and all the things equally hateful that men gain and lose through lust, and how ambition is now so far from setting limits to itself that it acquires a lustre of viciousness -- all this drives the mind into a darkness whose shadows overwhelm it, as though those virtues were overturned which it is not possible to hope for and not useful to possess. We must therefore school ourselves to regard all commonly held vices as not hateful but ridiculous, and we should imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For whenever these went out in public, the latter used to weep and the former to laugh; the latter thought all our activities sorrows, the former, follies. So we should make light of all things and endure them with tolerance: it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it. Bear in mind too that he deserves better of the human race as well as who laughs at it than he who grieves over it; since the one allows it a fair prospect of hope, while the other stupidly laments over things he cannot hope will be put right. [from "On Tranquility of Mind"]

Maintaining that balance can be quite tricky, especially in this crazy season of political conventions, presidential aspirations, and pernicious propaganda, but recent weather here in Louisiana helped put things in perspective. While Clint Eastwood was talking to an empty chair in Tampa, we were hunkered down in the darkness as Hurricane Isaac slowly dumped rain that flooded our rivers and creeks, inundating whole neighborhoods. Fortunately, our house is on high ground--comparatively, that is--and we were without electricity only 49 hours. Our only access to news was a battery-powered radio, with which I kept up-to-date on the rising waters and evacuations and somewhat informed of the outside world through National Public Radio.

I'll continue to read my favorite political bloggers and be engaged in the political process, but I'll bear in mind that my daily happiness is determined by me, not a pundit, preacher, prophet, or political leader. As Seneca says:

Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away. The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. [from "Consolation to Helvia"]

Who are our heroes?

Yesterday On Friday, former Arizona Republican State Senator Russell Pearce posted on Facebook a criticism of the victims of the Aurora shooting (no longer available on his FB page, but available here.) In that post he essentially blamed the massacre on no one's having the foresight to carry a loaded weapon into a theater for a midnight showing and being prepared at an instant's notice to shoot a man covered in armor and packing an assault weapon:

Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of this tragedy. He was two and three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop and reload. Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because noone was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved. All that was needed is one Courages/Brave man prepared mentally or otherwise to stop this it could have been done.

Lives were lost not because the gunman had semi-automatic weapons but because no one was prepared to stop him?!! Judging from other comments I've read, Pearce is not alone in blaming the massacre not just on the fully-armored man carrying an assault weapon that can shoot up to 100 rounds but also on the people in a dark theater who failed to stop the murderer.

I find comments such as these offensive on so many levels. First, they show an appalling inability to sympathize with victims. Sure, Pearce goes on after his rant to say that his "prayers are with all of those suffering this senseless act," but that's after he's called every one of the victims--and especially the men--a coward. The comments also reveal a willingness to pass judgment with insufficient knowledge: Pearce "understands" that the murderer "had to stop and reload." But hours later, surviving victims' recollection of events suggest that the murderer might have started firing the shotgun first, then the assault rifle (which jammed) and then the Glock semi-automatic pistol with its 40-shot capacity. In addition, the shooter was dressed in black in a dark theater, was heavily armored, and had confused the crowd with canisters of what might have been tear gas. But facts do not matter to the rigid ideologue--only his stupefying world view.

And then there is the sexism. The brave are always men, a few good men, or, according to Pearce, "one Courages/Brave man prepared mentally or otherwise."

Most appalling of all, however, is how these comments totally disregard the bravery that was exhibited in those horrifying moments. President Barack Obama publicly highlighted one of those brave acts: that of twenty-one year-old Stephanie Davies, who saved the life of her nineteen-year-old friend, Allie Young. When James Holmes threw the canisters of tear gas into the theater near their seats, Allie Young stood up, as if to warn people. She was immediately shot in the neck and fell down. Her friend Stephanie dropped down beside her friend Allie, pulled her out of the aisle, and kept pressure on Allie's wound, while using her other hand to call 911 on her cellphone. And Stephanie refused to leave her friend's side while the gunman continued his rampage.

Other people shielded their friends and loved ones from bullets, and, yes, several of these were men. Some lost their lives being the brave men that Russell Pearce lamented were not present in that theater: Matthew R. McQuinn, Alexander Teves, Jonathan T. Blunk. And I'm sure there were other acts of quiet and desperate bravery that will never receive public attention.

These are our heroes: ordinary men and women acting extraordinarily in moments of terror.

The President best summed up that heroism: "As tragic as the circumstances of what we've seen today are, as heartbreaking as it is for the families, it's worth us spending most of our time reflecting on young Americans like Allie and Stephanie because they represent what's best in us, and they assure us that out of this darkness a brighter day is going to come."

That's an attitude I can embrace.

Ready and Loaded for Bear

This past week I was deep in the heart of East Texas, traveling between Nacogdoches and Austin, and I didn't listen to any news while I was on the road. Not until I turned on NPR near Baton Rouge on the way home Friday evening did I hear about the shooting in the theater in Aurora, Colorado. I no longer get television reception at my house, either, so I'm isolated from the 24-hour, hyped-up news cycle of cable and network news. I read all my news (and watch my movies and television dramas) online, so whatever I read has had some time to be filtered, to be evaluated and checked.  And when I do watch a news video online, I have usually accessed it through a link provided by a journalist who has also provided context and additional detail to the original story. Thus, I miss the endless speculations that fill the air immediately after a tragedy. 

But I have now read most of the online news stories of the major newspapers that have covered as many details currently available about James Holmes and the victims of his horrific attack, and I've also read commentary of several journalists who have raised the issue of gun control and of the powerful hold that the National Rifle Association has on politics in this country. Should we all be, as the NRA seems to think, always ready and loaded for bear?

I'm not opposed to gun ownership. I grew up in the country, and every man (and some women) I knew owned at least a shotgun. I never fired a gun, myself, but I've loaded a shotgun and been prepared to fire. (Thank God there was really no bogeyman outside that door in Denham Springs, Louisiana, those many years ago!) I'm not opposed to hunting for food (and I'm happy that we have public lands where hunters with no access to hunting grounds of their own can hunt in season). I'm not much of a meat-eater these days, but I've eaten venison many times in the past, and when I was a child, I ate squirrel that my father shot in the woods of Old River, Texas. He still uses those guns to protect his corn from the wild hogs that can devastate a garden overnight in East Texas--though the guns aren't much use unless one is prepared to stand vigil all night for nights on end, in hopes of catching the wily creatures.

And so, I am willing to entertain the idea that the NRA and its myriad spokespersons (many just private citizens in love with their guns) put forth: that we should always be ready and loaded for bear, that if only someone in that theater or classroom or campus or courtroom had a gun, that person could put a stop to a madman with an assault weapon. Is this claim feasible? Should every teacher in every classroom pack heat on the off-chance that some mental case is going to burst in and start mowing down students? Of course, who would be the first to be targeted? Derangement does not preclude craftiness and high intelligence.

And what about the gunman who is loaded for T-rex instead of bear? James Holmes entered a dark theater dressed in black, covered in body armor, armed with a semi-automatic AR-15, a Glock handgun, a 12-gauge Remington Model shotgun, and canisters of smoke or gas.
 

What kind of society expects its citizens to be loaded for bear? What kind of society would that be? I just traveled hundreds of miles on interstate and state highways and was threatened repeatedly by angry people in cars in a hurry to get nowhere worth killing people to get there. (And I was driving the speed limit or just a tic or two below.) Those aggressive people are already using their cars as weapons. Imagine if they had a gun handy, too.
 

No, I'm appalled by the idea that there should always be someone (me? you? all of us?) in our public spaces ready to take down a potential mass murderer--it's an idea that has totally given up on a civilized society.
 

Ta-Nehisi Coates best describes the thoughts that have been rolling around in my own brain the past two days:

It's worth considering the wisdom of waging a shoot-out in a crowded theater with a mad-man in body-armor. More than that, we should consider the import of the argument's implication--a fully, and heavily, armed citizenry. If we all are going to agree to be armed, surely I don't want my arms to be inferior to the arms of my potential adversaries--a category including virtually any other citizen. The Aurora shooter was evidently in full body-armor. I need to upgrade to hand-grenades. And so we arrive at a kind of personal arms race,

And we arrive at a world with minimal trust in the state's ability to deploy violence on our behalf--a distrust of the authorities whom we pay to protect us, a cynicism which says those authorities are beyond reform, and that only through this personal arms race, can a person sleep at night. 

And too we are left with the deeply held belief that, somehow, we can always outgun those who would do us harm, or at least our end can come at the place of our choosing.  Now we are cousined to immortality. Now we are chin-level with our various Gods. 

It's worth considering what we mean by a safer society, and whether it can be secured through a cold war of all against all. It's worth asking if the world really needs more George Zimmermans. ["The Dream of Maximum Guns," posted 21 July 2012.]

Reading Novels of the Domestic Drama

Because I've been doing so much handwork in the past few months, my novel reading has suffered. Instead, when I wasn't gardening or--more lately--involved in family activities associated with our daughter's living with us for the summer, I would sit down in front of my television with the latest handwork project and access Netflix in order to watch something that wouldn't be so engrossing as to interfere with the needle work. And so I have watched all of the old Adam Dagleish mysteries from the 1990s, adaptations of the P.D. James mystery novels; most episodes of the sci-fi series Stargate Atlantis; all of the British Rosemary and Thyme mysteries; and now, abandoning myself to the nostalgia of childhood, the Mission: Impossible episodes of the 1960s and 1970s.  Occasionally, I think that I should listen to language tapes instead when I'm doing handwork, for then I would be learning something, but the boyish face of Colonel Shepherd of Stargate Atlantis or Roy Marsden's melancholy Adam Dagleish or the lovely English gardens highlighted in Rosemary and Thyme make me abandon my more intellectual aspirations. Could I stitch as well while repeating Spanish phrases?

This week, however, putting handwork aside, I indulged in a novel by one of my favorite contemporary British novelists, Joanna Trollope, who ranks up there with my other favorite British novelists, Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, and Penelope Lively. I gulped down the novel in one day, immersed in the human experience that Trollope creates so believably in her novels. Novels written by women authors that deal with domesticity and human relationships underwhelm many people. Charlotte Bronte said of Jane Austen's fiction: "There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound." Mark Twain had this to say: "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig [Jane Austen] up and beat her over the head with her own shin-bone."

But I love a finely written novel that delineates the human heart in all its strength and weaknesses without resorting to violence or over-dramatization. I love novelists who realize that we reveal ourselves more thoroughly in everyday experiences, when we least think we're on display to the world.

Anthony Trollope, a distant relative of Joanna Trollope's, had this to say about Jane Austen:

Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with uncommon accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good;.--and certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly, I know of no novelist who has beaten her.

Anthony Trollope, if living today, would perhaps write something similar about the novels of Joanna Trollope, which are often called "domestic dramas" because they deal with the everyday drama of marriage, lovers, divorce, children, aging parents, aging lovers. Another term that has been used to describe these kinds of novels is "Aga saga." According to Wikipedia the "Aga saga is a sub-genre of the family saga of literature. The genre is named for the AGA cooker, a type of stored-heat oven that came to be popular in medium to large country houses in the UK after its introduction in 1929. It refers primarily to fictional family sagas dealing with British middle-class country or village life." Obviously, the phrase has a condescending ring to it.

Joanna Trollope describes in an interview some of the criticism of her writing:

“I am often criticised for being rather accessible. . . . And my reply to that is I think Mozart and the Parthenon are quite accessible, too, though perhaps in another league. . . . There was one review that said 'you could read this book in a day’, as if that was a bad thing. I mean these books to be easy to read, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thought-provoking.

But, as Fay Weldon says, "She can be as subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte. Trollope’s brilliant."

In The Men and the Girls, the Joanna Trollope novel that I finished today, two couples that are the main characters are men and women with a wide gap between their ages; the men are in their late fifties or early sixties, their younger partners in their thirties and forties. The novel deals with the issues this discrepancy in age causes. At the beginning of the novel, an accident causes a young woman to re-examine her life, and she is convinced she must leave the much older man with whom she and her young daughter have been happily living for eight years. In a conversation before she leaves, the man, very kindly, asks," Are you afraid you'll have to look after me?"

The young woman eventually responds, "I'm afraid of you," to which the man wisely replies: "You're afraid of yourself...You see in me what you will become and you're afraid of that."

Who among us hasn't had that fear as we observed those older than us? I see that fear in my daughter's eyes, as she grapples with deciding on college courses and emphasis of studies that may affect the choices she can make later in life. At work, she has seen what bureaucracy can do to a person, how it can wear one down, destroying ambition, dampening enthusiasm, encouraging mediocrity. At home, she sees the disappointments and sorrows I and her father have dealt with, and while we have survived, we bear the scars of those battles, a cynicism or melancholy that we cannot entirely escape, despite our best intentions. This is a difference between fifty-four and twenty.

Toward the end of the novel, one of the characters in Trollope's novel The Men and the Girls, a young wife to a television star who is past his prime, lies in bed thinking:

She...had lain awake for a long time thinking...that there were few things she could think of at that moment that were as desolate as plain old disappointment . . . [N]obody ever gives disappointment the credit of being a prime force behind wayward behavior. But it is. Disappointment is what's the matter with most of us...

It's that kind of insight I so appreciate in the novels of Joanna Trollope, that, and the believable characters that come to life in her novels.

The Republican Nominee Depresses Me, Too

Matt Taibbi, in comparing Mitt Romney's address to the NAACP and later to a "friendlier audience" in Montana:

So now this is the message: I tried to reason with the blacks, I really did, but it turns out they just want a free lunch.

How’s that for bridging the racial divide? Time to wake up the Nobel committee in Oslo!

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.

That set of facts alone made the “free stuff” speech shockingly offensive. But the problem isn’t just that Romney’s wrong, and a hypocrite, and cynically furthering dangerous and irresponsible stereotypes in order to advance some harebrained electoral ploy involving white conservative voters. What makes it gross is the way he did it.

Romney can’t even be mean with any honesty. Even when he’s pandering to viciousness, ignorance and racism, it comes across like a scaly calculation. A guy who feels like he has to take a dump on the N.A.A.C.P. in Houston in order to connect with frustrated white yahoos everywhere else is a guy who has absolutely no social instincts at all. Someone like Jesse Helms at least had a genuine emotional connection with his crazy-mean-stupid audiences. But Mitt Romney has to think his way to the lowest common denominator, which is somehow so much worse. [Matt Taibbi, "Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech is a New Low," 13 July 2012]

Absence and Presence

Three weeks have passed since my last post. No, I haven't been on vacation in some exotic location. Our daughter has been staying with us for the summer, working locally before she returns to university in another state, and we have spent some time visiting, cooking, going to the local farmers' market, driving occasionally to New Orleans to pick up (and to deliver) one or another of her friends at the airport or the Megabus drop-off. We've grilled on the patio, tried out new (to us) restaurants in towns nearby, gardened, and harvested our vegetables. Just as the tomatoes slowed down in production, the peas, okra, and bell peppers increased production--and the July rains began as well. Our days have been full of ordinary activities illumined by the presence of our daughter, who loves to cook and to experiment with ingredients, and the superabundance of the fresh herbs in my garden have turned ordinary recipes into culinary masterpieces.

So while I have been absent from my blog, I have been present elsewhere, in an ordinary life filled with simple activities transformed by an appreciation of these fleeting moments we have shared. Summer will end, but we've caught hold of its green garment and have held fast while we can.

And we have all started new projects. I am trying my hand at hand quilting, beginning with a baby quilt of my own design but inspired by a photograph taken by a friend. In this project, I will do some traditional quilting, which I haven't done since my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat made me a log-cabin quilt in time for my wedding in 1978. My grandmother made a quilt for every grandchild, and some of us helped her hand-stitch those quilts. I put in many hours helping her stitch my quilt as well as some of the quilts she made my cousins and siblings, but I've never assembled a traditional quilt by myself though I have created folk art quilts in which I used nontraditional techniques for connecting squares of appliquéd material.

current project--small quilt top (Indigo bunting in a tree)

Even in my "traditional" quilting, however, I'm using less traditional techniques. This is not a pieced quilt; the top is one piece of cotton material on which I've appliquéd a design that I have cut, free-hand, out of felt. I've been thinking of how I will quilt this piece; I might choose a flannel back, and I'll quilt around the design first, what's called echo quilting. I plan to hand-stitch several series of echo lines around the appliquéd felt and then emphasize the background pattern in the remaining spaces with random stitches that will follow some of the lines of color in the cotton quilt top material. That's the plan, anyway. Using my friend's photograph as inspiration, I drew a pattern, but I have freely improvised as I cut out, arranged, and appliquéd the felt.

the quilt top design

Making this quilt is a learning experience for me; I hope to improve and to increase the complexity of my designs.

The other big project underway here is the building of a garden shed; my husband and daughter are hammering together the foundation now, and just minutes ago, I took this photo of their progress:

foundation for a garden shed

My job will be to paint the garden shed when it's completed. I'm leaning toward painting the shed green (a spring green) and blue (maybe turquoise), but I have some time to make up my mind.

Meanwhile, I wander the yard in search of pollinators and snap photos of those creatures that visit the mountain mint, zinnias, and other flowers in my garden. July rain has incited a frenzy of growth in my basil; I'll have to begin gathering up much larger quantities of it to dry for use during the winter.

Genovese, lettuce-leaf, and purple opal basil

These are just a few simple pleasures of a summer spent making things and growing things in southeast Louisiana. By August, I'll be longing for the cooler and drier weather of October, but now I'm enjoying being present in the moment.

bee on one of my zinnia flowers

little waspy thing on our mountain mint

The New Oil

If you have money enough in Austin, Texas, you can have your own water well drilled into the Edwards Aquifer, at a cost of $18, 000 to $32, 000 within the city limits, and ignore the city water restrictions. According to the Austin American-Statesman:

As plummeting lake levels triggered drastic watering restrictions during the drought, homeowners drilled 47 new water wells in Austin last year — more than doubling the 19 drilled the year before, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board. More than 150 new wells have been drilled since 2006 — the number also jumped during droughts in 2006 and 2009 — and nearly all of those wells are in West Austin neighborhoods such as Pemberton Heights, Tarrytown and Balcones, where many homes boast lush, carefully manicured landscaping.

The owners of these homes, with an averaged assessed value of $2 million, claim that they are helping to conserve water by not taking city water--the use of which is regulated in drought-prone Austin--to water their lawns. Others see the increased use of aquifer water from private wells differently:

• Daryl Slusher, an assistant director at the Austin Water Utility, is more concerned with how the drilling of private water wells and the use of that water in drought will affect people's attitudes toward water. The first effect is on the attitude of the folks who have paid lots of money to have their well drilled. Not only do they have little incentive to conserve water, they also may feel that "the more water they pump from the aquifer, the faster they can recoup their investment." The second effect, he thinks, will be on the attitudes of folks who see their neighbors with a "lush green lawn" in times of drought. That attitude may cause those folks using city water to conserve less themselves.
• Others are concerned that folks fail to realize that aquifers aren't an endless supply of water, either.  John Dupnik, a senior regulatory compliance specialist for the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, says that because it's difficult to measure the unregulated withdrawal of water from an aquifer, the end result could be an aquifer depleted by "a thousand cuts." Jason Hill, spokesman for the Austin Water Utility says that "'just because it's groundwater and not surface water doesn't mean it's an infinite supply. We do hope that customers (using wells) still are prudent and mindful of water use.'"
• As John Dupnik also points out, the use of privately drilled wells, especially in these times of drought when city water is being regulated, emphasizes the difference between the haves and have-nots. A recent Texas Supreme Court decision also throws that difference in a new light in its ruling that landowners own the water beneath their land, just as (some) land owners own the mineral and oil rights to their land.

Water is the new oil.

Best quote from my online reading this morning

"...[W]e have risked the fate of the earth, the fate of the species, on the mental stability of a few ambitious politicians who rise to the top of the heap, not necessarily because of their rationality." --from Ron Rosenbaum's "An Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age," posted in Slate, 28 February 2011.

Corporate Welfare

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who received such love from Senators, especially Republican senators, in a recent Senate hearing, owes some of his fortune to taxpayers. According to Bloomberg and research by the International Money Fund, JPMorgan "receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year....[which] helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses...[and] distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy." Read the entire article at: "Dear Mr. Dimon, Is Your Bank Getting Corporate Welfare?," to get a step-by-step discussion of how corporate welfare affects us all. (h/t Think Progress: Economy)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "the financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties." In the 2011-2012 cycle so far, Mitt Romney has received far more contributions than any other presidential candidate: $19, 222, 965 to Obama's $8, 414, 629. Of the top 20 recipients of the financial industry's largesse, 14 are Republicans and 6 are Democrats. Insurance heads the financial industry PACs in contributions, with 62% of its contributions going to Republicans this year, compared to 38% to Democrats.

The financial industry is hedging its bets, of course, but it looks as if the Republicans are the favored horse in this year's race. Wonder what the industry will expect in return. Not.

Choosing: Reflection at the end of the summer solstice

where I choose to be happy

crooked neck squash plant overtaking the basil

Like many people, I find myself in a place I would not choose to be, given a true choice. And so I choose to make it into a place I like to be. Tough work, but it has to be done to be happy.

Genovese and lettuce leaf basil

My old cat seems happy enough, too, on this summer solstice.

Quote for the Day, Ta-Nehisi Coates

"...I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent "a home-state advantage nationally," I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop." Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Toward a Politically Correct Conservatism, cont.," posted online at The Atlantic, 20 June 2012.

Keeping Track of the PACs

Here are some links that might help those interested in keeping track of who is contributing to super PACs, along with links to articles and discussions about the current situation in campaign finance.

First up, ProPublica is updating a chart on super PAC donations and spending here: "PAC Track: What and Where are the Super PACs Spending?," Al Shaw and Kim Barker.

ProPublica also has a chart that visually illustrates who is donating and how much, here: "Who are the Super PACs Biggest Donors?."

ProPublica is also keeping track of where the money is being spent. Where do those campaign dollars go? Here is a link to the interactive graphic that will walk you through the tangled web of campaign spending: "A Tangled Web: Who's Making Money from all This Campaign Spending?"

You can access all of this information at ProPublica's "Campaign 2012" page.
 
Some discussion:
Several views on the Supreme Court ruling in Citizen's United vs. Federal Election Committee on Bill Moyer's website: "Corporations, Political Spending, and the Supreme Court" and here, "Free Speech for Corporations." Links within the posts lead to videos and further information.

And if you're interested in the power of Wall Street:
Frontline's "Money, Power, and Wall Street: Part One," Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

Men Love Darkness Rather than Light: Republican Response to Dark Money

Campaign finance reform? Republicans aren't for that anymore. Now that the Supreme Court has armed them with Citizens United and their Wall Street financiers and billionaires are supporting the GOP with millions and millions of dollars, Republicans want to keep citizens in the dark about who is contributing to whom and why. The whole "Obama's enemy's list" talking point is all about that: convince folks that campaign donations should not be public knowledge:

So this is the world conservatives now want to create—unlimited donations, and we’ll never know from whom. That’s the goal. Trying to gin up a blog post into an enemies list is merely a device, a handy way to try to attain the goal. There is no enemies list. There is only, as usual, a lie, and a vast propaganda machine pushing it. [Michael Tomasky, "Stop the 'Obama's Enemies List' GOP Lies," posted 19 June 2012, on The Daily Beast]

some history here: Andy Kroll, "Follow the Dark Money," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

more info here: Alex Seitz-Wald, "GOP Senators: No Disclosure, Please," Salon, posted 19 June 2012.

Following the Money

Until the financial crisis of 2008, regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act (and its demise under the Clinton administration--courtesy of Phil Graham of my home state of Texas) had barely registered on my radar. I had certainly seen how lack of sufficient regulation caused all kinds of problems (I did read history), but the political maneuvering that created an environment ripe for the financial predator and toxic for the ordinary citizen was in that realm of eye-glazing statutes that I was required to recall for government and civics classes and that I then promptly forgot. Since 2008, however, I've been paying a lot more attention to the Republican claim that markets should be less regulated than they currently are and to the influence of the wealthy people who benefit from that lack of regulation.

Now that the Supreme Court has more thoroughly provided ammunition for the wealthy in its ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, my eyesight has sharpened, and it has begun following the money much more closely. Wealthy individuals and corporations have even more opportunities to influence elections and government legislation. As John Dunbar and Michael Beckel write in Forbes, in its Citizens United decision,

[t]he conservative majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that spending on independent messages that support or oppose federal candidates by corporations and labor unions does not lead to corruption. A few months later, a federal court cited this rationale in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission. That decision led directly to the creation of super PACs. It said that outside spending groups — like American Crossroads, for example — could accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals to be spent on political ads. Previously, if a group wanted to expressly advocate for or against a federal candidate, it could only collect $5,000 per person per year. If an independent group were to raise $5 million for high-profile TV ad campaign advocating against the president or members of Congress, it would need at least 1,000 donors in a year to give the legal maximum. Now, one wealthy individual can single-handedly give a super PAC the cash it needs — and change the political dynamics of a race overnight. [in "Top ten donors make up a third of donations to super pacs," 16 April 2012]

That kind of big money, most of it from Republican donors, is already having a huge impact on elections. Take, for instance, the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Most of the money for Walker's fight against recall came from out-of-state very wealthy individuals. Just look at the roll call of wealthy contributors, from the $100,000 contribution of billionaire hedge-fund trader Louis Bacon to the $490,000 contribution from Houston home builder Bob Perry, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from members of the Koch brothers' million dollar club. As Clare O'Connor wrote in Forbes before Walker's successful fight against recall:

If Scott Walker wins Tuesday’s recall election, he’ll have 14 of America’s richest people to thank. Wisconsin’s Governor has out-raised opponent Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, by almost 8 to one: $30.5 million to Barrett’s $3.9 million. Of that huge haul, $1.68 million — or, almost half Barrett’s total — came from 14 members of the Forbes billionaires list, all but one of whom live outside Wisconsin. [Clare O'Connor, "Gov. Scott Walker's Big Money Backers Include 13 Out-of-State Billionaires," Forbes 5 June 2012]

These contributions are disclosed, but you can bet, however, that wealthy individuals are looking for ways to support the candidates who will legislate their views without having to disclose their contributions, as Alec McGillis points out in The New Republic:

[I]t's likely that more and more mega-donors indeed are going to seek out ways to give that are undisclosed—it is the reason why Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is raising so much, because, as a group that focuses on “issues,” not “elections,” it does not have to name its donors. But this shift is a travesty, not a solution, and it's why anti-disclosure loopholes like the “issues” groups need to be closed. [in "About that Obama Enemies List," posted 16 May 2012]

Many of the extremely wealthy individuals who are now donating so generously to political campaigns have in the past remained out of the usual limelight. Some, such as Louis Bacon, have a reputation for being reclusive. (Bacon, in fact, sued in a London high-court to get several publishers--Wikipedia, WordPress, and the Denver Post--to track down and to reveal the identities of folks who had posted online what he determined to be libelous comments about him.) Yet, as Alec McGillis also rightly reminds us:

When you are giving on the level that Citizens United and related rulings allow you to give, you not only invite scrutiny, you demand it. When you are giving at levels hundreds of times larger than the $2,500 maximum for a regular donation to a campaign, or thousands of times larger than the size checks regular people send to candidates, then you are setting yourself apart. And the only thing that the rest of the citizenry has left to right the balance even slightly is to give you some added scrutiny—to see what personal interests, biases, you name it, might be prompting you to influence the political system in such an outsized way. It's all we've got, really—the Internet, the phone call, the visit to the courthouse. And yes, this applies to everyone. Why does everyone on the right know so much about George Soros? Because they were outraged at the scale of his giving in 2004 and 2006 and dug up everything they could on him. As is only right and proper. And now people are going to look into Frank VanderSloot, Harold Simmons and Paul Singer and the rest of Romney's million-dollar club.

As more and more news organizations are cutting back--for instance, the New Orleans Times Picayune is planning to publish only three days a week and is cutting half of its newsroom staff--the eyes doing the research and following the money are being severely curtailed. So it's up to us ordinary citizens to be alert, to determine how our government is being influenced by those with almost unlimited supplies of money.

For instance, it's important to know that nearly half of the money that the Mitt Romney Super-Pac Restore Our Future has raised has come from Wall Street contributors. According to OpenSecrets.org, Restore our Future is at the tip-top of the list of money-raising Super-Pacs. Organizations such as OpenSecrets give us some insight into how wealthy individuals spread their influence. You can track individual contributors to see where their political allegiance lies and to surmise, perhaps, what those contributors hope to gain from their out-sized contributions.

Try it. Your eyes may glaze over with the information, but you'll be a better citizen for it. Or maybe you'll just be depressed. 

See also:
Dave Weigel, "Pity the Poor Multimillionaire Campaign Donor," posted on Slate, 15 May 2012.
Stephanie Mencimer, "Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back," in Mother Jones, May/June 2012 issue.
Benjy Sarlin, "Whitehouse: 'Very Little Hope' for Bipartisan Push to Roll Back Citizens United," TPM, posted 18 June 2012.
Monika Bauerline and Clara Jeffery, "How to Sweep Dark Money out of Politics," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

Grow Up! "Vagina" is not a "bad" word!

Unbelievable.  Michigan House Republicans  "prohibited state Rep. Lisa Brown from speaking on the floor Thursday after she ended a speech Wednesday against a bill restricting abortions by referencing her female anatomy." She used the word vagina.

What? Is the Michigan House full of middle-schoolers who snicker at words that refer to female anatomy?

See the story here: "Lawmaker Barred from Speaking Over 'Vagina' Comment," Detroit News, 14 June 2012, reported by Chad Livengood.

And you can listen to her words here: "Rep. Lisa Brown speaks out against House attack on women's health."

More here:  from the Detroit Free Press

I'm getting really tired of these Neanderthal attitudes towards women's bodies.

When the Pest Becomes the Pollinator

I think this is an Eastern Black Swallowtail on my zinnia

Because I planted lots of flowers and vegetables this spring, I am especially interested in all the pests that are competing with me for the food and with the pollinators that are insuring that the fruit matures. Getting rid of pests, however, is a delicate balance because some creatures are pests at one time in their development and beautiful pollinators at another, such as butterfly caterpillars. Some are more voracious than others in their caterpillar stage, destroying one's fruit or vegetable crop within days if not exterminated.  For instance, the adult moth (Helicoverpa zea) of the tomato fruitworm is a pollinator, but the caterpillar stage of the moth has been a constant problem this spring and summer. We have used Bacillus thuringiensis to combat the caterpillars, but they return, and by the time I see them (for they start out very small), they've done some damage to the fruit and leaves of an individual tomato plant.

According to Wikipedia, the tomato fruitworm is prolific in the wild,  eats many different kinds of agricultural plants, and is variably susceptible to Bt.  It's called the cotton bollworm when it feeds on cotton and the corn earworm when it feeds on corn, but it eats more crops than these. Because the tomato fruitworm is so voracious and because it eats the summer vegetable we love the most--tomatoes--I have become its sworn enemy this season.

caterpillar of Eastern Black Swallowtail eating my dill this morning

But I'm not consistent when it comes to killing caterpillars that eat my herbs, flowers, and vegetables. This morning, as she was leaving for work, my daughter called my attention to one of my dill plants. "There's a caterpillar on it, Mom!" she said. I know, however, that the larval stage of the Eastern Black Swallowtail can often be found on dill and other plants related to the carrot family. Sure enough, there was the caterpillar of a black swallowtail chomping on my dill. I couldn't bring myself to kill it. The dill is heading now and will soon seed, and while dill is one of my favorite herbs, I also love to see butterflies in the garden. This year, I planted three dill plants, but next year, I'm planting many more in a flower bed that I will devote to butterflies. I plan to remove humanely any butterfly caterpillars from the plants I don't want eaten to the butterfly garden where pollinators can chomp to their heart's content.

closer look at the front of the caterpillar

It is also possible that the Bt that Tom sprayed before the rain of last week might still be viable, especially in the flower heads of the dill, which the caterpillar is now eating. I will be saddened, however, to see another dead caterpillar of the Eastern Black Swallowtail on my dill. I found some earlier after Tom had sprayed the nearby zinnias, trying to get rid of the tomato fruitworms which seem to love zinnia leaves as well as tomato leaves.

Although I have gardened all of my life, for years I didn't pay much attention to pests or pollinators, beyond remarking on the beauty of a butterfly or on the ugly results of the pest. We would sprinkle a little Sevin dust on our plants and go on our way. Sevin is the pesticide that my father used on our tomatoes, too, when I was growing up in Southeast Texas. But Sevin has its issues. Sevin, Bayer's trade name for the active ingredient carbaryl, is very effective, but it's a pretty nasty chemical and will kill honeybees just as quickly as tomato fruitworms.

Sevin is used so often and for so many purposes (to kill bugs in the garden, to kill mite infestations on chickens, etc.) that it's probably safe to say that it is over-used and probably not used carefully. The ecological description on TechPac's "Material Safety Data Sheet" is enough to convince me not to use it:

This product is extremely toxic to aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. For terrestrial uses, do not apply directly to water, or to areas where surface water is present or to intertidal areas below the mean high water mark, except under the forest canopy and use on rice. Discharge from rice fields may kill aquatic and estuarine invertebrates. Do not contaminate water by cleaning of equipment or disposal of wastes. This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on blooming crops or weeds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area.

C'mon, does anyone really think that folks who use Sevin are following the advice in that last sentence?

Back to squishing the tomato fruitworms and using biological controls on pests.

Sucking up to Wall Street as Usual

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, testified before the Senate Banking Committee today about the more than $2 billion (and rising) the bank recently lost in risky hedges. Instead of being intensely questioned and sermonized on the need for regulation, Dimon

received a warm welcome from Republican lawmakers, suggesting that his status as Washington’s favorite banker remains intact. Some Republicans praised JPMorgan for navigating the financial crisis better than other Wall Street firms, and even sought Mr. Dimon’s advice on fixing the economy. ["JPMorgan's Chief Says Clawbacks 'Likely,'" in  The New York Times, 13 June 2012]

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) told Dimon that lawmakers "can hardly sit in judgment of your losing $2 billion."

Really? Well, what's the use of our lawmakers, huh?

Yep, just the person to trust.....if you're hoping for some Wall Street money for your political campaign. And, of course, the connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee are very close and entangled; folks who work for our lawmakers on that committee become lobbyists for the financial institution. Kiss, kiss....

See Cora Currier's details of the revolving door in her article, "Charting the Cozy Connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee," on ProPublica's website.

Too many pests, too few pollinators

bee on one of my zinnia blooms

By this spring, we had lived in our house in southeast Louisiana for one year, so we have much yet to do to prepare our property for gardening. In late winter and early spring, I cultivated new flower and herb beds near the house. Because those new beds had been lawn previously, I spent a great deal of time removing grass so that I would have to spend less time weeding later in the season. Now every morning, I go outside, pull a few weeds, check for vegetables that are ready to harvest, and take photos to record the changes in growth. I  also look for pollinators. As I have written in a previous post, pollinators such as bees and butterflies are diminishing in numbers, the victims of intense agricultural practices (pesticides and genetically-modified, insect-resistant plants) and habitat destruction.

Today, I spotted, at different times, four butterflies circling the zinnias and sunflowers in my backyard, the most I had seen at a time this season. Two of them were much the worse for wear, with ragged and missing wings. Those tattered wings didn't seem to slow the butterflies down, however.  I couldn't get close enough to them for a good photo.

The pests, however, were easy to spot and fairly easy to squash with my fingers or shoes. I caught a few leaf-foot stink bugs and squashed them with my sandals, but several flew away before I could capture them. Last week's rain dispersed the Bt that Tom had sprayed on the tomatoes, and what I have now identified as tomato fruitworms are once again infesting the tomatoes. I managed to squash some with my fingers; I've gotten over the gag reflex response to green caterpillar guts.

bee near Crimson Sun ornamental sunflower

tomatoes in 8'X8' bed (tarp in back killing grass for next bed)

We made the mistake of planting too many tomatoes in one 8-foot X 8-foot garden area. We didn't have the big garden dug and tilled at the beginning of the season, so we planted vegetables behind our house, in one of the 8-foot X 8-foot beds that will eventually be full of herbs and flowers. Tom planted more than twenty tomato plants in one of those square beds, and the plants are so close together that I can't walk between them. Thus, it's more difficult to reach the pests in order to eliminate them in a frontal assault. Next year, we will plant tomatoes in rows in our big garden, where I'll be able to examine each plant more carefully.

So for now, we're using Bt and our fingers to eliminate tomato fruitworms. Oh, and I followed the advice of some gardener in Austin, Texas, who wrote on her blog that she has vacuumed leaf-foot stink bugs off her tomatoes with a shop vac. That was fun.

Because we didn't get the big garden dug, tilled, and amended until later in the season, we planted hot weather vegetables there: peas, okra, peppers, mainly. The okra leaves are being munched on, and I discovered aphids on several of the leaves.

aphids on okra leaf

tomato fruitworm

It's hot and humid here in southeastern Louisiana now, so the pests are out in force. The battle over our food continues.