Good Morning, All.  I think that I will simply take you on a tour through some of the blogs that turn up as I look through my Google Alerts.

Here is an interesting one.  After Armageddon writes some good sense, I think, and very nicely says some things I have been thinking for some time.  John Michael Greer's article, 'The Effluent Society,' is in part a good review of John Kenneth Galbraith's 'The Affluent Society,' a book that provided part of the ideological basis for the modern American belief that good times were here to stay.  I have long thought that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s were due to specific conditions that were unique to the time.  What is even better, Greer ties the bubble in housing into a broader historical context.  At the end he hopes that some historian will write an account of the last thirty years which will do that on an even broader scale.  I think someone already has started that process:  Jared Diamond in 'Collapse.'

I started this post on Sat (Sept 20).  It is now Sun.  We decided to take a little trip up to the Chellberg Farm at the Indiana Dunes.  The annual Harvest Festival is this weekend.  It was a pleasant excursion.  The farm was established in the 19th century by Swedish immigrants and is preserved by the park service.  Though open all year, they hold special events with artisans brought in to demonstrate the operations of an pre-industrial agribusiness farm.  We caught the end of the cloggers set and most of a performance by traditional musicians.  They had booths demonstrating quilting, candle making, soap making, blacksmithing, sorghum processing, an organic garden and dyeing.  We had a very good time talking to the artisans.  Between us Mom and I have enough history behind us that we could related to having done many of the processes they talked about.  I am sorry I don't have any pictures but the weather forecasters said there was a chance of rain and the at last festival we went to many vendors had signs asking that no pictures be taken.  I left my camera at home.

Now to continue my tour of blogland and the more interesting blogs I visit.

Crone And Bear It has an absolutely delightful and humorous story.  She updates the old childhood excuse about the dog that ate the homework and bring it into the high tech age.  Maybe I should warn her about my cats who, I am sure, are conspiring with other felines over the internet to take over the world.  I can't count how often we have come back to our computers to find one or the other of them sitting by the keyboard and watching what they brought up on the monitor when we KNOW we had left the machines asleep.

On Open Left, Paul Rosenberg comments on a Bill Moyers interview with Kevin Philips.  It is another very long post but is well worth the read.  I am a confirmed skeptic who leans Democratic.  My skepticism arises from a conviction that both parties are so tied into the economic mess that neither is a credible source of change.  As Moyers and Philips say in the excerpts Rosenberg includes--the present crisis has bi-partisan parentage.  Furthermore the economic indicators have been so massaged over recent years that they hide more than they reveal.  After you finish reading the account of the interview run out and find some of Philips books.  I find them right on point and illuminating.

Rain at Rainy Day Thoughts asks 'Is Winning All That Matters?'  She is right to ask the question--especially since the latest of sleazy political seasons reveals that winning the election appears to be much more important than either the principles espoused or the quality of the candidates.  However, I would observe that the question should be applied broadly in our economy and society.  I can't count the number of times I have read stories of writers caught plagiarizing their stories or books.  When I was still teaching college history courses the problem was becoming epidemic.  How often over the last years have we seen news stories of CEOs who treated the companies they ran as private piggy banks and squandered money not their own on their sybaritic lifestyles?  'Is Winning All that Matters?'  Unfortunately, the answer seems to be 'yes!!'  And worse, the illusion of success, of winning, appears more important than achieving success by any objective measure of success.  

That will be all today.  I need to get some breakfast and then do some stitching.  Have a good day, everyone.