June 21, 22

I don't think the rain predicted for last night appeared so I will see later what plants need water. Supposed to be another hot day.

Well, I have checked the plants and watered the tower and small pots. The rest look good. Got a nice surprise--several of those old sunflower seeds have sprouted. They were just a bit slow doing so. I filled the bird feeder and, after using the remaining water in the bird bath to water the tower, filled it with fresh.

 I culled about half of the pattern books in my file cabinet. As I mentioned I am keeping the patterns I would like to do at some near time in the future. At some time soon I have to organize the keepers. For now the crochet, embroidery and quilting patterns are all mixed up together. Things get done in stages as I have the energy to do it.

22********************************************************************

I was right that the rain didn't come last night either. I got all my plants watered and found that the cosmos seeds I planted a short while ago have sprouted. With those plants and the sunflowers I noticed emerging yesterday all my spaces for summer plants are filled. I may not have any spaces for mums unless I go for small transplants for some 12 inch pots I can bring out. Decision for later.

Surprised that NBC is showing the last day of the Royal Ascot races. Interesting to watch and a wonderful respite from the so-called news. Another channel has the European soccer championships.

However, though I am really turned off by our political news over here, articles on international politics sometime do pique my interest such as this one by Simplicius. A major point made in the article is that the world has changed and the U.S. doesn't have quite the same preeminent position it once had. The bi-polar world of the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. If we ever really had a unipolar moment it didn't last long as we have already moved into an international situation in which regional powers play a more active role. The U.S. hasn't at all adjusted its foreign policy to take that into account. I thought from the time George W. swaggered across the international scene like a John Wayne wanna be that it was long past time that we put the cowboy attitude behind us. I was hoping that would be the case after Obama won the presidency but physics isn't the only system that shows the effects of inertia. Our politics and economics also shows the same phenomenon.

June 19, 20

 Happy Juneteenth. Stray thought on the coverage: so often the stories end with the comment that it was the day slaves in south Texas were informed that they were free some two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Why the tone of amazement? Did they (or their writers) ever read the document? It applied to ONLY those states still in rebellion against the Union. As though the authorities in those states would publicize it. It didn't apply to states where slavery was legal but which were not in rebellion, like Kentucky.

Interesting that the failure of the 911 system in Massachusetts and elsewhere in the northeast hasn't caused more ripples in the news. I looked for reports on the cause but haven't found any yet. From what I have found the local authorities found work-arounds to allow people to get help in spite of the outage. As some "on the street" interviewees noted we simply expect these systems to work. But it feels (I don't have any "data") like so much we take for granted aren't that reliable nowadays.

20**********************************************************************

Welcome to the Summer Solstice and astronomical summer. The heat is hanging on and is predicted to continue for the next week. I went out early to water the plants hoping it would be cooler. The word "cooler" is a a comparative term: cooler than what? The thermometer already reads more that 80°F. We should get into the 90° + range.

Aurelian has some interesting observations about elections in our western world including: Part of modern democratic systems is the organisation of regular elections. In the depoliticised politics that we have enjoyed for the last generation, politics in many western countries has degenerated into nothing much but elections, generating a massive industry of consultants, psephologists, analysts, stylists and hairdressers.

The way we live now it seems the election season never ends. Not since Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower. From what I have seen in the bloggers I follow we, here, aren't the only ones utterly exhausted by the endless chattering.

June 18

 Damn but the heat yesterday was brutal. We had a number of errands and  were wilting by the time we got back. We hadn't planned to go out today but the lease renewal arrived. We decided to take care of that and pay rent today. We did our grocery shopping as well. Thanks to a pulse of rain the temperature stayed moderate while we were out. The weather forecasts predict temperatures at or above 90 for the rest of the week. Unless something unexpected appears we will be staying home.

Tom Englehardt linked to this story in the introduction to the John Berger guest post this morning. The morning news yesterday showed a segment of Trump's speech to the rally. He mentioned that his security people told him that the heat was dangerous and his audience was in danger. He asked "what about me?!!" and went on, in a moment in truth-telling, said "I don't care about you. I just want your votes." What a selfish, self-centered piece of crap. The temperature hit around 111F.

I went out on the patio very early--as soon as I could see clearly--and watered the plants. I didn't do it yesterday because everything looked good and the soil was moist to my touch. I didn't want to trust that we would get enough rain to do any good. The last two pulses of rain barely moistened the plants and patio.

June 17

 Half past June already and another Monday. We have errands planned. I checked the plants and they all looked good for water. Beautiful sight this morning as my Asiatic lilies are blooming. I am definitely going to have to thin the stand in the fall. I hope the day lily will perform as well.

Stray thought: the Surgeon General wants some kind of a warning (similar to the kind on tobacco products) on social media sites. I am becoming more and more skeptical of such nanny measures. They say that the warnings on tobacco worked and use of those products dropped fantastically. However, I also remember the repeated hikes in the taxes on tobacco over the same years. A smoking habit will set you back considerable cash. But does the government have to be an ever-present nanny? I also noticed that efforts to mandate some measures during COVID fizzled badly. People didn't like being told they had to wear a mask many found uncomfortable or even dangerous for some of them. And they didn't like the lockdowns from which many still haven't recovered financially.

If China didn't have bad weather luck it wouldn't have much luck at all. Of course, some parts of our own country is in much the same position.

It seemed like every spring we had some unwelcome visitors: proselytizing Christians. For the last five years or so we haven't seen any and haven't missed them. That streak came to an end over the weekend. When I was younger I would politely listen to the spiel and give a vague response. Not now. These two I sent on their way with a firm "I don't discuss religion. And, no, I don't want to talk about it." Then I shut the door. We have gotten in the habit of keeping the screen door locked after one long-ago "missionary" tried to actually open the door and come in spite of our rejection. I wonder why they are back after such a long a hiatus.

Depressing thoughts: discussion this morning on the news/commentary show outlined both the Israel/Hamas and the Ukraine conflicts turning into long running lower intensity fights. They can join a long list of similar conflicts around the world--Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, etc.

June 15

 Sunny today, they say, and temps should hit the high 90s. I just finished watering the plants in the gardens which needing it. My plants are doing very well. Next week we expect the temps to go into the 90s for most days. I will have to get out early to keep the plants watered. And we will have to go out as early as possible to beat the heat for any errands.

We didn't even bother to put on any news--it is all the same. It is beyond boring going into irritating. Even BBC hasn't got much new. Or much informative. I put out a stack of our DVDs to cover the day. Thank goodness for our collection because the stations have nothing of interest or they require us to subscribe to a more expensive package--not worth it. We are talking, again, about cutting cable out all together and keeping only the internet.

Some years ago, in one of the classes I took on the history of science, I read THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas Kuhn. I have re-read it several times over the years. His premise was that scientific work is driven by paradigms (models) which guide scientists and change only slowly under the weight of accumulated anomalies. Reading a collection of Andrew Bacevich's essays (ON SHEDDING AN OBSOLETE PAST) it occurred to me that our politics, economics, and diplomacy/military thought are also driven by paradigms which we don't even realize or examine. For the last almost the dominant paradigm was that which emerged from WWII: resistance to Communist expansion where ever we saw it, creating multi-national military alliances (NATO) to achieve that aim and spending more that the next ten high spending nations together on our own military, and building similar alliances economically (World Bank, International Monetary Fund) and politically (U.N.). Over the last four decades those structures have shown cracks which are spreading no matter how our leaders try to cover them.

I just finished another book: Andy Borowitz's PROFILES IN IGNORANCE. He focuses primarily on Presidents from Reagan on. I noticed one comment on the Goodreads page which faults the author for a partisan focus on Republicans. Not a bad criticism, except Borowitz does take on Democrats for "normalizing" ignorance. All of them (Clinton, Obama and Biden) were all intelligent men who saw their route to power in pandering to an electorate entertained by ignorance. In a globalized world can we really afford to have leaders who are so clueless as Trump. His ignorance and total lack of curiosity can't be dismissed as mere gaffs.

June 14

 We did get rain--sorta. It wasn't much and didn't do much for my plants. I was out a little earlier to check things out and watered all the plants. I also clipped a couple back. I don't see any sprouts of sunflowers or cosmos where I planted the seeds. I considered making one more trip to Home Depot but decided that I will wait until our favorite dairy brings in the fall mums. Those have done well for us before and it will bring in some fall color just as the summer bloomers are about finished.

I also made a start on sorting my collection of needlework magazines and patterns. I plan to cull a lot of them. Some years ago a meme made its way around the needleworkers' blogs: SABLE, i.e., Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. Well it applies to magazines and patterns as well. So I am looking at all of them and deciding which I will keep because 1) it has interesting techniques I am likely to want, 2) has patterns not included in my library, or 3) patterns I am likely to actually do.

Yesterday I mentioned Aurelian's post (and linked to it) and commented on part of it. The part I didn't comment on involved his contention that we have no heroes any more and haven't had any since our last lunar landing. As a result, he wrote, we have no transcending vision of where we should go or what we should do. I can agree to an extent. After Kennedy pledged that we would land men on the moon before the end of the 1960s we did have a vision most of our population could agree with. Before that we had a vision for a world recovered from two world wars and a decade of depression. Note I said WORLD not just the U.S. Before that we had the second of those world wars to win with our allies. We didn't simply do that on our own. And the great projects of the 19th century were settling the continent (I won't mention who we ran over to do it) and the resolution of the issue of slavery which bedeviled our Founding Generation. Who the heroes of these phases of our history were not obvious during the events and depended on whose vision won the contest. As they say: history is written by the winners.

Something else rattled around in my memory and it took me a bit to track it down. At sometime during my academic incarnations I read or heard the quote: pity the people who have no heroes. No, pity the people who need heroes. It was a slightly mistranslation from Berthold Brecht's THE LIFE OF GALILEO. He wrote "unhappy" not pity. Right now many of us are searching for heroes but not really satisfied with any of the options. But we aren't asking why we feel the need of heroes. Or what even defines a hero.

We also seem to be a people who delights in tearing down "heroes." I don't know often I have heard the Founding Fathers dismissed because many of the were "enslavers." It doesn't seem to matter that they rebelled against England and established a separate political entity, that they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that they set a pattern that the country has pretty much followed since. Somehow the fact of "slave holder" washes out everything else.

June 13

 Sunny but we might have rain a bit later. The Weather Channel reported that thunderstorms are approaching Chicago which is about 50+ miles to the west of us.

Aurelian posted a long piece on his substak which I am keeping on my e-mail for re-reading. He takes his argument in a direction I didn't expect but parallels some of what I have felt for sometime--I just didn't express it in the same terms. I know that most of the new movies aren't at all appealing. When one seems interesting we wait and buy it as a DVD or BluRay. TV is extremely boring. The news/commentary channels are interminably repetitive and talk the very few stories covered to tatters. I don't buy as many books (either physical or electronic) as I once did. I read the description and feel I have read the themes too often before. Why bother? I need to mull over his contention about the disappearance of heroes.

June 11

 Sunny with mild temps. I watered all of the plants. It has been cool enough that they didn't need much. All are looking good. I think all of the sunflower seeds were dead. Nothing sprouting yet and they have had enough time and warmth to sprout. Next time we have to go out shopping I might pick up a packed to new seeds.

I have read two articles on the intersection of climate and politics. One is a post this morning by Dave Karpf that republishes an article he wrote two years ago and is still relevant. The other is an article in The Atlantic posted yesterday written by George Packer. Both write about the population growth in the Phoenix area, water, and politics. At several points Packer cites a saying he heard often in his interviews: Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting. And the fighting is heating up and the sides intractable. Karpf asks if the climate change will lead to the rise of authoritarian politicians. One of the controversies in the E.U. which fueled the wins of hard right wing candidates was the efforts various governments have pushed to get to zero carbon emissions.

Joe Scarborough, on his morning talk/news show Morning Joe, asked Richard Haas to confirm his memory that the last time the right wing and nationalist parties made kind of gains they did in this last election Donald Trump was elected President here. Haas agreed. I hope history doesn't repeat. 

June 8, 10

 Partly sunny today with rain probable later and overnight. I thought I would leave planting til tomorrow and rely on the expected rain to take care of watering. But some of the new plants looked a bit wilted. So I got out and planted the petunias I had put where I intended to put them and then watered everything. Nature, as usual, forces you to do something not planned.

10***********************************************************************

I did get the gardens almost planted yesterday. Almost because I forgot to plant the dahlia I put on the pot where I intended to put it. I don't know if I will get it done today because we have clouds and may get rain. The upside is that the temperatures are cooler. Update: I just planted the dahlia I forgot yesterday. It is actual almost cold out there with a bit of a brisk breeze. It is so much of a boost to my mood to see blooming flowers and green plants. We will probably see that til mid to late November. I put in new peppermint and spearmint to replace the ones that died over last winter. I never had mints die in winter. I added four or five new perennials which I hope will make it in my micro-environment.

From the various news media have been saying a lot of people are not at all happy and the voting seems to back that up. Several countries have posted surprises like India's Modi who survived but with a slim majority when he was expected to win in a landslide. Germany and France both saw extreme right-wing, nationalist parties show surprising strength. Macron has called a snap parliamentary election to, he hopes, shore up his party. the U.K. has an election coming up that might turn the Conservative Party out of power and South Africa's voters rejected the ANC for the first time in thirty years. The pundits opine that voters are frustrated and turning against whatever party is in power. I wonder how it will go here. Neither party here is really out of power because we have a very divided government. And neither party can say their presidential candidate is an outsider. Our choice is between the arsonist who failed to win election in 2020 and the fireman who won.

June 7

 Good morning. I have been lazy so far today. I don't have much I want to do today. Hopefully it won't get too warm too soon. I have a few pots I want to add some soil to and some I want to finish filling. We will be looking for plants tomorrow. I did plant the sunflower seeds and some cosmos seeds Mom got as a "reward" from some group wanting a donation. I put that word in quotations because it is really something to make you feel guilty if you don't donate. She has throws most of those away--even those she had donated to before. They all want a monthly donation preferably by automatic deduction from a bank account or on a credit card. She gives once a year.

Aurelian has an interesting post which I read most of (it is very long). He calls it "The Coming Neo-Tribalism. He does note that tribalism was never totally exterminated as societies changed. Even in so-called advanced societies retained elements of tribalism. With the social chaos over the last few years I often said that the tribes were resorting themselves--redefining who is in and who is out. Groups who have lost (or believe they have lost) power economically or politically or socially, are trying to regain the positions of authority they once held. Tribes were losing cohesion before liberalism became a major political ideology. As societies grew in population and spread out over larger territories subjugating other groups the connections and networks weakened. I don't know how old Aurelian is but the neighborhoods composed of extended families had almost totally disappeared by the time I was a teenager. One friend was Polish and lived in a Polish neighborhood but she was an exception. In my own family, none of my father's siblings lived closer than 200 miles from each other and none lived close to their parents. My siblings and I are closer spatially but not particularly closely connected in other ways. Our economic history over the last 400 years have also help in loosening tribal bonds. We are a people used to leaving people behind to pursue education and employment. Sometimes others followed but not always. I imagine tribes might reform if the economies around the world abandon the pursuit of globalism, which was always emphasized the individual over all, and contract to locally dominated economics. Interesting to speculate on the possibilities.

A couple of interesting things I saw yesterday. 1) The globe hit another temperature record with May 2024 was hotter than May 2023 which means we have just posted a 12 month stretch with each month hotter than its predecessor of the year before. 2) A massive field of oil (several hundred billion barrels worth) may exist under the oceans around Antarctica. The article said the Russians have been exploring those areas for the past decade.

We put on the Weather Channel almost immediately this morning. The first thing I saw on the regular news channel was Hunter Biden's trial. I wish I could shout into the programing execs I AM NOT INTERESTED. There is so much about the news that is totally uninteresting. And it is repeated ad nauseam.

David Karpf has a good post also this morning: The Republican Party has Belonged to Trump for a Long time. I see where he is coming from and the historical trends have been evident for decades finally culminating in the Cult of Trump. I like the quote from Rick Perlstein summing up his series of books on Republican conservatism: There's always more and it's always worse. It's never new.

June 4

Hoping the day will be dry. The forecast is for sun and temps in the low 80s. Planning to get two transplants in and some sunflower seeds I hope will sprout in spite of their age. I got them about 4 years ago. We plan to visit the farm market next Saturday where I hope there are more plants available. We will also visit Home Depot. That seems to be the best local source.

I was skeptical of the "cease fire" plan Biden outlined in his press conference last Friday. It was clear that, no matter what Biden claimed, neither Hamas (in spite of their vaguely "positive" response) nor Netanyahu had agreed. After threats from his right wing cabinet members, he insists that any "agreement" had to include the "destruction" of Hamas. I have already commented on the fuzziness of the word "destruction."

I did get the two transplants in and watered everything but it was already too hot to do any heavy work. I think that over the next few days I will do a couple of simple tasks like adding soil to a couple of pots already filled and get the remaining post (without plants as yet) filled and ready for planting. I noticed that the mints are almost ready for a first cutting which I think I will use for one of our pitchers of (soon-to-be) iced tea.

05********************************************************************

We had heavy rain early this morning. Too wet to do much outside. My cats are very unhappy because it is too warm outside for me to open the windows. They can't sit on the sill and dream of catching all those feathered chew toys just out of reach. I turned off the so-called news early. Nothing new or really informative.

One bit of news: Mexico managed something we haven't--electing a woman President. In fact, the two front running candidates were women. Claudia Sheinbaum is also Jewish. 

June 3

 Still very early here but dawn is just about here at just before 6 a.m. I am partially caffeinated--almost through my first cup. And working my way through my e-mail. The news/commentary is fixated on Trump's sentencing five weeks away. We have already heard more than necessary. The only way I can learn more about the issues involved would be to go to law school which, at my age and with my finances, ain't gonna happen.

Sunny today and warm already--mid 70sF. 

Janinsanfran posted an interesting piece on the ages of our probable presidential candidates. One is 77 (three years older than I am) while the other is 81 (six years older than I am) and the question of how their ages might affect them if they win. Both have already been President once so they both have a record to judge them on. But most pundits seem to ignore that. Jan quotes Kareem Abdul Jabbar who says that he is younger than either and thinks he is too old to be president. His major concern was an observed decline in mental acuity in both men though polls say it is a more pronounced problem for Biden, at least in the minds of respondents to the polls. But he makes a very valid point with which I agree. Aging is a very individual happening. I wouldn't want to run for or be president because I don't have the necessary physical stamina. But I do have an active mind capable of absorbing information and making decisions on that information. We tend to generalize our own experience over all others of our group--in this case older people.  But Jan makes another good point asking "are we asking the wrong questions?" Looking at the two candidates it is clear, to me at least, that one has the maturity, intellectual ability, and thoughtfulness to be president. The other is a child in a man's body, with a serious lack of impulse control, vindictive,  and has a noted inability to absorb information (especially that which doesn't allow him to do what he wants). I don't always agree with Biden's decisions but I doubt he will go off "half-cocked" , cozy up to dictators, burn down our legal system to get his way and benefit him and his family. Trump has done all that and will do worse.

Robert Reich asks a good question while considering the various government data on "consumers"--who exactly are they talking about. He divides consumers into two buckets: high income and low income. Businesses who cater to the low income consumers are in trouble as their customers pull back on their spending. Reich mentions that some, like Target, are shifting to attract higher income customers. The high income consumers aren't under as much economic stress but they are a smaller part of the economy. I would argue that the two tiers is simplistic. There are a lot of people in the middle whose economic prospects may be improving so they can move into the high income category or may be worsening and moving down the economic ladder. Our economic system is geared toward perpetual growth and the more consumers move lower in the economic structure the harder it is for businesses to grow. We have noticed a lot of ads on TV from companies we hadn't seen for a while. And we have seen more programming time taken up by advertising. It is frustrating, annoying and we are watching less cable and more of our own library of re-runs.

Reich notes in another post that Trump's convictions may not move many voters in any way. He has successfully fused his own (fake) victimhood to the perceived victimhood all too many feel.

June 2

 Cloudy for now though we should see some sun later today. Nice trip to the seasonal market yesterday. We saw fewer people selling seedlings. That may pick up later in the month. However I did find a nice pot of chives and a basil variety I hadn't seen before (Blue Spice). I will plant them tomorrow after things dry out a bit. Our favorite vegetable vendor was there so we picked up some tomatoes and a couple of ears of corn. A new vendor is selling their locally grown mushrooms. I think I will need to look for new recipes.

A few thoughts on Dune movies and books. The books are complex far more so than I thought when I read the first time. When I first read them I was struck economics of world which wouldn't have had any outside interest except for being the single source of spice, the most valuable substance in the universe. Dune and its inhabitants were vulnerable to outside exploitation on the same scale of savagery as what was the Belgian Congo endured. However, the empire that tried to control Dune and the spice was also vulnerable as its was dependent on the constant production of spice. As several characters said "The spice must flow." The first Dune movie was long an "atmosphere" and really very short on almost anything else. Dune is an excellent description of resource limits: both water and spice. The miniseries and the latest adaptation does a far better job. What I missed forty or so years ago on my first reading of the books and the first movie also missed (or barely glanced over) was the role of religion and government were interwoven. Those are a different topics for another day.

We have even more evidence that the U.S. no longer has the influence it once had. President Biden held a press conference to announce a proposal for a pause in Israel's operations in Gaza while hostages are released by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners by Israel along with a massive surge of humanitarian aid for trapped Gaza residents. Hamas seemed amenable but yesterday Israel objected because they demand Hamas be destroyed. I have wondered over the last several months what exactly constituted "destroyed." My suspicion is that only the obliteration of the Palestinian population (men, women, and children) in Gaza would meet their definition of "destroyed."

June 1

 Welcome to meteorological Summer and the first day of Hurricane season, The forecasters say they expect an active one. We'll see how many develop and how many hit our coasts. The heat has already appeared in several places.  Last week Pakistan and India posted temperatures of 50+C--122+F. I have read of other unbelievably high temps.

Heather Cox Richardson posted this piece on her Letters From an American site. It is a long one and difficult to sum up concisely. However, I think she is right to say that, since the guilty verdict, Trump and his acolytes are showing signs of panic and desperation. Ten of those Trump Mini-me clones are insisting that they will refuse to pass any legislation and refuse to approve appointments until (someone in someway, somehow) exonerates their god. And our taxes pay those useless bastards six figure salaries.

Having watched the new Dune movies I decided to re-read (for the first time in a few decades) the first six Dune novels. I have seen all of the movies from the 1987 version through the mini-series and its Children of Dune sequel to the current two movie treatment. I am still working my way through my own thoughts.

Stray thought--I really resent the notion that the verdict somehow hands the election to Trump. So--we should let a political sleaze-bag commit crimes just so he might not be elected?? This is supposed to be a government of LAWS to which ALL citizens are equally subject. Evidently Republicans think that only applies to Democrats and other unreliably Republican people. "Good" Republicans are somehow above it all.