Tomatoes ripening on the counter. Magical thinking. Biiig jigsaw puzzle.

I picked all of the sauce tomatoes of any useable size yesterday.  A couple of dozen are ripening on the counter now.  I don't know how many I can actually use.  I threw out a couple that were already going soft without getting red at all and another this morning the was turning red but also going soft.  It has been a very strange year for the gardens--everything just shifted into a very slow gear in early summer.  Time to start pulling the plants.  The weather people expect colder temperatures next week.

My grandmother had a saying I think applies to politicians.   Whether trying to get the attention of a man or a mule the best option is often a two-by-four between the eyes.  This story suggests that perhaps we need something of that kind for our politicians.  The outrage expressed by some of those boys and girls over the Pentagon's failure to pay death benefits is just so much self-serving crap.  They were told that would happen but chose to believe it wouldn't.  Don't you just love magical thinking?  We seem to be ruled by masters of that art.  If I believe something bad won't happen, it won't.  If the bad thing hasn't happened to me, it hasn't happened at all.

This assessment of the Repthuglicans by First Read is almost on the mark.  They don't like what is going on and haven't since FDR was in office.  They resent not being able to convince the other major party of the righteousness of their views.  It isn't that they don't know what they want.  Rather they want to erase the last 80 or so years with one giant eraser.  Another case of magical thinking.  They want to go back to a "golden age" of American virtue and prudent government--which was never so golden and prudent as it is in their fevered imaginations.

Just what we need--another easy-to-cook-at-home drug.  This one sounds particularly nasty.

If you like jigsaw puzzles this might just be a challenge for you.

Now this is a good idea.  As most of you know I believe that we should all try to get as much as we can of what we need from local sources.  And I don't mean the local Wal-Mart.