We should have another beautiful day today. One of my slow to drain pots finally did drain. After everything thaws out it us fine for the rest of the season. Some of the pots are still frozen but others are thawing nicely. I hope I can start digging soon, getting them ready to plant. I don't do that until around middle May and, even then, may put cloches over the seedlings. I have one big container to take out--it is cracked. I have already decided not to replace it. I have other ideas for that space.

I read this piece by Patrice Lewis over the weekend which has stuck in my mind. I don't normally read WND but she links from her blog at Rural Revolution. She quotes from Tim Wu's New York Times editorial which I haven't read because the Times puts everything behind a pay wall. He writes that the notion "convenience" is based on the "nightmare" of physical work and questions whether we should think of physical work as a nightmare or wish to be liberated from it. He makes a good point and Lewis makes several more. I think that depends entirely on what kind of work we mean. So much "convenience" promises to free up time for other things--things that either pays us or things we enjoy but don't pursue as much as we wish because we are either engaged in the work that pays for our lives or the work we have to do to sustain our lives but don't get paid for. Unless we are affluent enough to pay someone to cook for us, clean for us, watch our children for us, grow (pick, process, and transport) our food for us, we are stuck doing it for ourselves. But that that work is, in our society, low status and poorly paid or not paid at all (unless you are a celebrity chef or some one similar). What Lewis did was reframe the story so that her physical labor was not something she was stuck with but something which liberated her from a "normal" life she found more nightmarish.

Number 45's proposal to provide "food boxes" in place of half of the SNAP benefits poor people receive gets a scathing reception from people who know just how that works: Native Americans. Many of them have received something similar since 1977 and the results for general health are really, really not good.

And on a different really, really not good topic check out the heatwave in the Arctic. Yeah, "heatwave" is my word but what else do you call it when the temperature is 50F above normal?

Naked Capitalism has a post which resonates with me: Time To Stand Up for Dumb. Yes, I am typing this on a lap top computer, and I have a tablet also. I do use e-books but it is a matter of convenience, real convenience not the kind of convenience mentioned above. We don't have a lot of space for print books so the 1000 or so on the tablet split between nook and Kindle saves a hell of a lot of space. Besides I can try some new authors for a small price compared to the hard copies. We don't use and don't want any GPS service--too costly and we use printed maps. Nor do we want our fridge telling us what we are out of or ordering anything on its own for delivery. Our paper grocery list is good enough. I could go on but you get the idea. Time to stand up for dumb? Not really. Time to give our tech some thought and adopt what will do the job for us in our circumstances. And have a back up just in case something (or someone) happens to make the tech inoperative.