Marty’s blog

The Frau dragged me over to the Chicago Botanical Gardens this morning.  She wanted to check out the Japanese gardens especially, to get some ideas for an area on our lot.  Glad I went, and we both got a lot of ideas that will help us with our whole landscape - ended up gleaning a few ideas for our prairie garden as well.

And actually, I didn’t really want to go - been feeling under the weather for a couple of days.  Just overall tired and feeling shitty. Gotta start taking better care of this body! Surely the usual culprits are:  not enough exercise, lousy diet, drinking too much (and withdrawl from cutting down), too much coffee (also cutting down - withdrawl symptoms), anxiety, and I think I’ve been pushing it a little too hard practicing many hours on the violin.  I don’t usually liked getting pushed into things and going places, but often, afterwards, I’m glad somebody did. That “somebody” is always, of course, my spousal unit.

A lot of the violin playing muscles, tendons and joints - arms, hands, chest, neck, back - are really out of condition.  It also puts a lot of tension on the back and spine, and the circulation with the arms raised up all the time while playing.

And stress is playing a role.  Since I’m out of work, I can’t just sit idle, but can’t spend any more money on the house, so I’ve been trying to jump start some old research projects, but am just not motivated because I see no reward in it.  Still can’t get my Van Bergen book published, and there are no avenues that I can see for grants of any kind with my lack of academic credentials.  Frustrating.

And my wife is changing jobs, which means we’re changing insurance again, which means cobra for three months and hoping we’re covered, and then all the hassle of changing doctors, and all that stuff, yet again.  Really frustrating.  We will — we must - have major changes in health care!

Less frustrating, I hope, except for the politics we’ll be writing about;  I’m setting up another new blog with my friend Cassandra.  She’s in Denver right now at the convention and hopefully will get some posts up if she can get some time at a computer.  Hopefully we’ll have share some of the chemistry in blogging that we have when we’re ranting about politics together in person.  We’ll see.  More about that when we get the blog up.

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America welcomes a new art form.  High Style Racism.  This is the most sophisticated coded racist ad so far in the campaign.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/25/mccain-ad-clinton-support_n_121079.html

Watch it a few times, you’ll see.  If you’re smart, you’ll have to watch it once or twice before you get it.  If you’re stupid, you’ll get it right away.

You ask if there’s evil in this world.  Evil is a society where racism is acceptable if it is sophisticated and covert enough.  Civilized, socially acceptable racism.  Hmmm…I seem to remember reading about another place like that in my history books.

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This blog is getting hit big time by spam “comments”.  Just so you know that I don’t moderate, edit or block comments - but I do have to run an aggressive spam filter, and so comments don’t get posted until I can OK them.  Sorry!  The few comments and emails I do get are very welcome, so by all means, please do;  they always make my day.

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Biofuels, food crops straining world water reserves: experts

Yeah, I know, this is the kind of stuff people just don’t want to hear.  I’m tired of it too!  But right now it’s where we’re heading, folks.  The future we’re creating is not that hard to see if you look, and some days I get really weary of seeing a such a depressing and difficult future for my children and their generation. 

It’s going to take us all to change, not one of us can afford to just sit back.  Education (and self eduction) is key to understanding the complex problems and finding the complex solutions. Geez, let’s not do this to the next generation!

And please, let’s start talking seriously about birth control and population!  Hey, I like babies too (helped make a couple myself).  But not 15 billion of them!

Oops, did I say a wrong thing again?  Did I say the “P” word?  Is that subject still a social and religious taboo?  (Rhetorical question.)  People of planet Earth…WAKE UP!

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Just hanging around the house again today, communing with nature, as it were; the plants in late summer flowering or going to seed, huge spider webs slung across the walking path.

This red oak has been hit by lightning several times in its hundred-plus-year lifetime - old scars healed over decades.

It was surprisingly quiet today. No weekend warriors out with their mowers, chain saws, leafblowers…you know, guys, testosterone and noisy gas combustion engines. Was there a big game on TV today? The Olympics? Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for the peace!

And this majestic, absolutely magnificent tall bur oak on the front of our lot has been raining acorns by the thousands! It’s a priceless living thing, could never be bought, can never be replaced in a human life span. A privilege to see it every day, and be greeted by it whenever I come back home, as if it’s guarding the place like a giant sentry at the foot of the driveway .

The driveway is covered with the acorns and it’s so cool how they crunch when you walk over them or drive over them with the car.

The tree is very fertile this year and the acorns look good and viable. It anybody wants some to germinate and grow, let me know in the next couple of weeks - I’ll bag some up for you. You don’t plant these for yourself though. This is something you do for your grandchildren.

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Okay folks, here’s the rub.  While we’re all really looking forward to a new administration, BushCo is still in office, and intent on sucking more blood out of the country, the government, and our children’s future, creating further disasters through the end of their term in January ‘09!

The campaign is a nice diversion, and provides many of us with the optimism that we need to try to keep moving forward.  But let’s not get totally diverted.  It ain’t over yet and the “fat lady” hasn’t sung!

Here’s the latest BushCo atrocity, and one that can have long lasting and very negative consequences, far beyond their term in office.

 http://www.nwf.org/news/story.cfm?pageId=B37BC419%2D15C5%2D5FE8%2DB007DAC35C60F339

Call your rep in Congress, write an op ed, e-mail, blog, SPEAK OUT!

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An interesting day in politics.  There are few better.  And more ahead before the sun sets. 

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I set out this morning to get a lot of work done around the house.  A few errands until lunch, and then that whole plan was out the window.  I intended only to take a short stroll through the “back yard”.

But the mosquito numbers were down, due the dry weather and cool nights, the ground was damp from last night’s rains and just smelled beautiful — imagine being up in the woods at Boundery Waters or some place far away from civilization…  The oaks are raining acorns, the walnuts dropping their fruits with big thuds on the soft forest ground.  The chipmunks scurrying everywhere taking advantage of the bounty.  The hawks flying overhead with their primeval calls.

Mushrooms of dozens of varieties sprouting from the ground and the bark of dead tree branches.  Cicadas doing their thing to attract mates.  Wood peckers calling - Hairy and Downey mostly - Oh gosh, what else? - I don’t know where to stop. I still can’t believe my incredible dumb luck. But I’m worried that it’s making me a lazy S.O.B. Geez, I hope it never makes me a Republican!

This is what it’s like out in our “yard” today:

Working today for me would be insane!  This is so much what we’ve worked for, for so many years.  There is a time to say “enough”. Stop working, have a good meal, open a bottle of good wine - for lunch — just like in Europe, France or somewhere - and do…nothing. Which is what I’ll do after entering this post. And as I sit here writing this at the kitchen counter, I am smelling the gorgeous aroma of a fresh pineapple from Hawaii.

Life can be good.  I wish it was so for everyone, and not just such a few in this world.

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This is one of my favorite video blogs. 

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Separate subject:  Thanks, Eric!  Though some people here would say: “don’t encourage him!”

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My favorite Neil Young song.

Crappy video, but it really doesn’t matter.  I could listen to him all day.  Gotta see him perform live before one of us dies.  Lost my CD - still have the case - must be around somewhere.

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