July 8

Today is a bit cooler and cloudy. We had rain early this morning so I don't have to water anything. I got most of the deadheading done before I watered yesterday. A couple of hard rains fell so the watering was superfluous.  

I have been cleaning and rearranging the What-not room. Every now and then that becomes necessary as I use up some materials and have the space opened up to consolidate what remains. I am trying very had not to buy more of anything until a good bit more is used. In the process I found two items I was working on several years ago. One is a cute crib quilt that got put aside because I had no one to give it to and a unsettling encounter with someone over the price I wanted for my work on other quilts left me in a  sour mood for quilting. I still don't have anyone to give such a quilt to but I  have noticed a quilting itch rising again that needs scratching. The other is a cross-stitched Christmas stocking that I didn't finish at the time. It won't be finished as a functional stocking. Instead I plan to make it a door ornament for the Christmas season--when ever I get it done.

TomDispatch has an interesting article on our "age of unaccountability." On the whole I agree with the article but I would expand the time frame. Go back to Ford's pardon of Nixon. Although there was some small measure of accountability for Nixon in that he resigned the presidency rather than face a certain vote in the Senate to impeach him, he escaped legal proceedings for his criminal actions because of the pardon. He went back to California a free man with his pension intact. The argument Ford trotted out was the nation needed to get past the scandals and heal so instead of accountability we tried to forget. What we have now is a system that demands we side step forgiving and go straight to forgetting the wrongs of he powerful while ruthlessly punishing and never forgetting the transgressions of the powerless.