Saturday--

Thunderstorms rolled through starting yesterday evening and continuing through the night.  It is still dark so I can't see how my plants are doing.  Update:  now that I have light I can see all the tomatoes are bedraggled but alive.  Sometime today I will have to get out my garden stakes and get them supported.

I follow a number of "sustainability" blogs or environmental blogs or homesteading blogs, what ever you what to call them.  I have noticed this shift in some of them.  They are dropping the term "sustainability" in favor of "resilience."  I read the original story, included in full, yesterday but find the introductory comments interesting so linked to the Naked Capitalism site rather than the original.

Interesting and thought-provoking essay partly concerning the British elections.  Kaiser's broader theme is political fragmentation in the Western world, the rise of corporate power and the implications of both for democracy.  His outlook is about as gloomy as my own.

Sunday--Happy Mother's Day--

Rained most of yesterday and is still raining.  It was heavy enough that that I worried over some of my transplants but so far all have come through--a bit ragged but all right.  I have friends in Colorado who are getting their gardens in and setting up their bee hives and their weather is much worse.  The rain should continue all day today and through the better part of tomorrow so I am not planning any outdoor activity.

Found an interesting article by Atul Gawande by way of Naked Capitalism.  I recognize many of his arguments from his excellent book Being Mortal.  Both are good descriptions of modern American medicine and its weaknesses, blindspots, and inefficiencies.

Ah, the perils and pains of globalization!!  I have never been enthusiastic about the extremes to which it has been pushed and never believed in the pollyanna predictions of the benefits that would supposedly accrue to people like me.  Most of us got lots of cheap crap and crap jobs out of it.