Good Labor Day Monday, Everyone.  It will be warm today and tomorrow (88 and 90+) so I will leave any gardening until Wednesday.  I did check on the seedlings and cuttings in the mini-greenhouse.  They all look good.  It feels like summer and all are waring with each other for supremacy.  We have a couple of days of summer conditions followed by a couple of definitely fall-like conditions.  Kuma is still with us but all he seems to be thinking about is finding a nice dark place to hide.  We have cleared a small place he seems to be content with--at least he hasn't gone looking for another.  I put him over by his water bowl but he totally ignored it.  We look in on him every now and then to see how he is doing.

Since I am not going to be occupied outside I will do some long neglected chores inside.  Yesterday I got all but one bookshelf dusted and a bag of books ready for donating.  I have three on my chair-side shelf to read before I decide whether to keep or donate them.  I am finding a number of books that are old friends whom I have carried along with me for the last forty years but really don't want to revisit.  It is time to find them a good home elsewhere.  And I have to get back to cleaning up our storage/craft room--a chore I have let languish over the spring and summer.  And I have to spend some time with my  garden notes to bring them up-to-date.  Let's see how much I get done and how much of interest I find on the 'net today.  By the way, I am treating the DNC convention as I did the RNC--trying mightily to ignore the whole thing.

Ah!!  Capitalism at work.  Isn't it wonderful how profits can be made?  Remember the Chinese themselves described their economy as "capitalism with a Chinese face." (SARCASM ALTERT!!!)

This is an interesting development.  I have seen stories about a new station in Egypt run by women that only employs veiled women, some in niqab (full face veil) rather than the hijab as shown in the picture. But this is Egyptian state TV which was 'unofficially' prohibited from putting veiled women before the cameras.  If I find a new story on that station I will put in a link.  (Ah!  found a link.) I find it interesting how often women's religious dress becomes a political statement.  I remember the 1970s when the chador in Iran became a symbol of resistance to the Shah's regime because the state had forbidden women to wear it in government buildings and schools up through university.  The women who took up the chador weren't necessarily religiously conservative; they were, however, definitely anti-Pahlavi. On the other hand, I also remember reading an account of a politically active Egyptian woman who, returning after Nasser took over, dramatically dropped her veil in the Mediterranean--a symbol of the freedom she expected to enjoy.  The irony, of course, is that Iranian women have had no choice since the Shah was overthrown--they must wear the chador or face persecution by the religious police.  I hope Egyptian women will fare better with their revolution.  Right now the results are mixed and chaotic.

We have seen some (little!!) coverage of the possible consequences of the drought over here.  Mainly on the escalating food prices.  Al Jazeera asks a very good related question: how much of the higher prices are the result of speculation.

Well, someone is finally asking a serious question about all of the digital stuff we buy--who gets it when we die?  We buy virtual things now-a-days.  Things that are intangible.  But unlike all of the tangible things we accumulate, which may go to someone of our choosing before or after death, the virtual 'things' are another matter.  Do we actually 'own' something; or, are we merely 'renting?'

Kunstler has a really good rant this morning on Clusterfuck Nation.  I have thought for sometime that both parties were in a fantasy bubble just hoping that nobody had a pin.  That is why, though I will vote in the fall, I don't have any hope that real change will come.  If you remember, I voted for Obama but not with any enthusiasm--rather with a very skeptical notion that not much would change but he and Biden were the least obnoxious candidates.