It was another nice cool day yesterday though the wind did kick up in the afternoon. I will check on the tall plants on trellises for any damage but I didn't see any from the door. I spent yesterday trimming, pruning and tying up plants. More general tidying up. I emptied the dehydrator and got that batch of herbs ground and put up. I saw some nice pickling cucumbers developing.

A long but interesting Tomdispatch article by Alfred McCoy on historical parallels and the decline of the American Empire.

I saw a different article on this yesterday. The only surprise in the article is the stunning amount of product recalled: seven million pounds. That is an incredible waste. I remember finding slivers of bone and cartilage in ground beef and sausage. It happened with increasing frequency until a few years ago when we began getting our meat from a small local market. They still employ butchers and grind their own. I would almost bet the company involved in the recall either mechanically separated their own or bought from suppliers that did so. That does get more of the meat off the bones but also gets more bone chips and gristle in the final product. The wonders and joys of our industrial food processing system.

Charles Hugh Smith has a few on point remarks on waste. In our economy it is a feature, not a bug.