Monday--

Supposed to be cool, sunny and dry today.  Good day for gardening and clean up.  I cut down the last of the sunflowers and the bean vines growing with them.  I will get more of the tomatoes cut down and maybe harvest some of the herbs.  I washed the trays of both dehydrators yesterday so those are ready.  The spearmint and feverfew are both begging to be cut back.  I washed out a bunch of the empty pots and have them stacked for storing--somewhere.  The shishito is the only pepper still producing and I saw some ripe peppers on it.  I need to collect them soon.

Doesn't this just make you feel safer??  I don't know about anyone else but 9/11 never made me feel unsafe.  I did my own version of threat math and came up with an answer that eluded most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis.  Terrorists (most of them Saudi nationals--not Afghani, Iraqi, or Iranian) hijacked 4 planes, 3 of which they crashed into the World Trade Center (NYC) and the Pentagon (Washington, D.C.), killing a bit over 3000 people.  Over 100k planes fly each day which means the chances of winding up on a flight with a terrorist is vanishingly small.  Given conditions today the chances of getting on a flight with a impulse-control-impaired rage freak is much higher. That seems to be a weekly occurrence nowadays.  On that one day as many people likely died from auto accidents as did from the terrorist caused crashes.  Fifty people were shot in Chicago over the weekend (according to the morning news) of whom five died.  I am far more likely to be walking on a Chicago street than I am to be flying anywhere or to be anywhere a terrorist might strike.  My point?  Terrorism is the least of my concerns.  It ranks alongside various natural disasters which might or might not happen.  I go through my life without letting those possibilities stop me so why should I freak out about terrorists?  But as a society we have been freaking out for the last fourteen years.

Fascinating story about water woes in Saudi Arabia have serious implications for the future of, among other places, the U.S. and China.