The weather people said we got about 4 inches of snow.  I think we got more but it was so wind driven I couldn't prove it.  The way lake effect snow sets up though we could have gotten significantly more than where ever the official data collection site is located.  I have a bit of it to shovel off the patio.  The grounds crew came by twice yesterday to clear the sidewalks.  It is really cold right now--about 0F.  And not likely to get much warmer.  The wind is still brisk.  (AH!!  It is sunny outside now so we may break 20F)

An interesting little piece by Paul Rosenberg at Casey Daily Research:  "Looking for a Reason to Believe: The Benefit of the Doubt is Cracking."  The crux of issue, of giving the benefit of the doubt, is trust.  We trust that somewhere the grievances will be redressed and justice achieved; that the "system" is fair.  When that trust is repeatedly violated no benefit of the doubt can be given.

The title of this Foreign Policy article says exactly what I have been saying for some time: in the Middle East the enemy of my enemy is still an enemy.  We don't have any friends over there and few useful allies.

An amusing story on the morning news: Americans aren't spending the "savings" from lower gas prices or, rather, they aren't spending on new consumption.  They are banking it or paying down their debt.  Hence, retail sales fell unexpectedly last month. That is what happens in a consumer driven economy when the consumer can't or won't consume at expected levels.

The continuing story about Brian Williams also provides some wry amusement.  His only problem is forgetting when he was presenting "news," which most people expect to be true, and entertainment, which can be fictionalized truth or wholly made up fantasy.  That is the problem with "infotainment."  The two strands become so knotted together that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

We woke to a new, light layer of snow.  How much we can't tell because the very brisk wind is blowing it around.  The snow is coming in waves off the lake and is heavy and wind driven right now.  They say we may get as much as 7 inches depending on how the system sets up.  The temperature is in the low single digits and expected to stay that way for the day.  The windchill is right around 0F.  We had a couple of days with temps above freezing which reduced the snow mountains to hills.

I take any dietary advice, no matter what the source, with a heavy dose of skepticism.  It seems that what every is advocated today with all the strident urgency the "experts" can muster will be seriously moderated, if not totally reversed, in the near future.  Now those experts are reversing the advice on cholesterol.  Mom's doctor tried to get her on a low cholesterol diet but it required such an unrealistic change that we ignored it after we stopped laughing.  We refuse to use low fat or no fat alternatives because they are, usually, heavily laden with salt and/or sugar.  The only exception to that rule we make is for our yogurt because our local stores only carry the brand we like best, and has no additional chemicals, in the 2% and 0% forms.

Update on the snow: right now blowing sideways and so heavy we can hardly see anything across the street.  The guys our landlord pays to shovel snow (and tend the lawns in the summer) were out earlier but will have to do it again.  The mail did come but I am not going out there.  I will put out our mail and collect today's tomorrow.

The Contrary Farmer has found an application of genetic modification he can get on board with--and I agree.  For the most part the genetic modification industry has sold us on the notion that their work can boost yields and defeat weeds, and bacterial/fungal/insect pests while being healthy for human and animal consumption.  The industry has failed on all counts.  The weeds and pests are increasingly resistant to the chemicals the crops have been engineered to tolerate while recent studies show that the yields between traditional and GMO crops are not significantly different while the costs of the GMO crops are significantly higher.  However, a judicious application of GMO technology can be beneficial and shouldn't be thrown out simply because the industry over-promised the benefits.

I love the phrase "Gardens are, by definition, a mediation on impermanence."  Mine definitely are impermanent.  I have remarked before that the garden I plan in the spring is never the garden I wind up with in the fall.  Some things simply don't work out and are replaced.  Some things that once worked don't any more for what ever reason.  The garden of last year is no harbinger of the garden to come this year.  Which is why it never gets boring.

I have followed this story for the better part of a year.  It has only gotten grimmer.  Think about what you would do if you only had access to water from your tap two days a week.

The official temperature just went down to -1F according the news this morning.  Another good day to stay in and warm.

Reading:

We like tea in the afternoon with our supper/dinner and like variety.  We brew up a mix of regular teas (Earl Gray or gunpowder, for example), or yerba mate with a variety of herbal blends often from herbs I have grown here.  Here is an interesting description of how people in 22 countries prepare their tea.

File this one in the "boys gotta have their toys" file.  Even if they have to exaggerate a non-threat and redefine "terrorism" as advocating "peace, love, and understanding."  It is also obvious that they don't use intelligence as a criteria for hiring or promoting police officer or for electing politicians.

The Romans had "bread and circuses;" we have "reality TV."  Looks like they serve the same purposes.  Late last fall we took our cable service down to bare basic--so we could still get the "news" and the few channels we still liked.  We have debated for years about the offerings and were increasingly unhappy as the so-called reality shows dominated more and more of the airwaves.  Not only have we reduced our cable service but we have reduced the hours we watch as well because the news isn't really news any more--which is why the word is in quotes above.  The early promise of what TV could offer has been short circuited by capitalism.

Ronni Bennett always offers a good info and today she offers links to a new website that deals with medical care and questions patients and doctors should ask.  Evidently the medical establishment (at least some of it) is coming to the same conclusion I have: we get too much medical care at too great a cost.

Fortune reports an interesting drug shortage:  saline solution.  Yeah, for the last couple of years sterile salt water has been in short supply.

Well, all that crap had to go somewhere.  Did they think Dumbledore waved his wand and murmured a spell to make it disappear?

We have been getting small spurts of nuisance snow and expect more today.  Clearing the car was a big job.  A layer of ice had formed under about 12 inches of snow the wind didn't blow away.  We shouldn't have much trouble with catching up on what fell over night.

Still, slowly, planning the gardens.  I have made my (nearly) final decisions on tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers, and cucumbers.  I say nearly because, as I have mentioned before, the garden I have in the fall is never the garden I planned in the spring.

I always try a few plants totally new to me.  Last year I put in shiso.  Pretty enough plant but a big one and not worth putting in again.  We don't do Japanese cooking and it didn't seem to fit with our normal foods.  This year I have three greens I hope will replace spinach and lettuce.  I haven't had good luck with them.  My little patio goes from deep freeze to oven very quickly--a consequence of being a small cement platform with a six-foot white fence that concentrates sunlight, and heat, in that space.  All lettuce and spinach varieties bolt almost immediately.  This year I will put in Long-leaf Tong Ho, mizuna (mixed colors), and orach.  All are supposed to be heat tolerant and the Tong Ho is supposed to be a good substitute for spinach and all are supposed to be good in salads.  I will find out.

And what would a garden be without herbs.  I will include a number of old friends: lemon balm, lemon basil, sweet basil, peppermint, spearmint, hyssop, summer savory to name a few.  This year I am adding Moldavian balm and wintergreen.  The wintergreen plants will come later at an appropriate time for transplanting as will the lemon verbena plants.  Some of you may recall my struggles with lemon verbena but I am an eternal optimist and my success with my 3-year-old rosemary have me hoping I can keep it going inside.

Reading:

Since the meetings at Davos began I have been reading more stories about the uber-rich getting ready to retreat to their castles and pull up the drawbridges.  This post has a good summary.  It is interesting the amount of attention it is getting this time around.  I saw similar articles soon after Obama's election when all the politicians and pundits were trying to convince us they had a real plan and there was "light at the end of the tunnel."

Gene Logsdon, the Contrary Farmer, asks an interesting question of whether we will follow the Maya and the Mound Builder cultures, based largely on corn farming, into oblivion.

Rhetorical question surely.  Like the author I used to find Chris Christie refreshing especially considering the colorless idiots lacking brains or backbone in the GOP.  However, sometime ago he shifted from refreshing to assholery.   How big an asshole?  Try total.

One of the foundations of our industrial commerce is the notion that "if you make it some idiot will buy it.  That is well illustrated in this article.  It seems that there is a new "disease" every week or so which requires large numbers of people to take a new pill.  Or "science" suddenly discovers that almost everyone needs to take a drug, like statins, "just in case."  Or that some people aren't helped as much as they would like by one medicine so they need another--and maybe a third.  I think we are being medicated out of our minds and, maybe, our lives.

Cold this morning with more snow probable.  We did get our path on the patio cleared yesterday.  Where my containers had been clear with only a thin layer of old snow small mountains of snow four feet high obscure everything.  Looking out over the "winter wonderland" I am amazed when I realize I will be starting some of my seeds in a little over a month.

The garden planning goes on.  I have six varieties of tomatoes and I don't know exactly where a couple of them will go.  I decided to experiment with a couple of the small varieties (Micro Tom and Red Robin) and a tumbler (Tumbler hybrid) for the baskets I can hang on my fence.  I have two standard. indeterminate slicers (Costuluto and Amish Gold) both of which are heirloom.  I yielded to impulse and got seed for the Roselle cherry tomato--also standard, indeterminate heirloom.  I need to remind myself to save seeds this year.  The maturity dates go from a very early 45 days to a very long 90 days so I should have tomatoes for a long span this summer.  I do plan to make and can tomato sauce but will buy the romas from the farm market and add in any of the home grown tomatoes we can't eat right away.

Of course you can't have tomatoes without peppers.  I have two favorites (Albino Bullnose and Lipstick) ready to start in late March.  I yielded to another impulse and added the Violet Sparkle.  All are heirlooms.  We don't eat many hot peppers but if I can find a Mexibelle (very mildly hot) transplant I will make room for it.

Reading today:

From Market Watch: a good reason not to use the herbal supplements.  More details here.  We don't do herbal supplements.  We do like herbal teas and I grow several herbs every year.  But we drink the teas for the flavor not for the health benefits.   Crooks & Liars also has a comment.  Although I agree with the remarks about this being yet another example of retailers (and by extension, manufacturers) putting profit above quality and defrauding their customers, the comments ignore a long history of product adulteration which is probably as long as the history of commercial production.  Look up the penalties for selling/producing inferior/watered beer under the Hammurabi code.  And Medieval bakers created the "baker's dozen" so they wouldn't suffer the severe penalties for short weighting the goods they sold their customers.  Caveat emptor, as the Romans said.

I have thought for a long time that the so-called sharing economy, exemplified by Uber, Lift, Airbnb and others,  were a new form of a rental economy.  Robert Reich calls it the "share-the-scraps economy."  Either way it sucks.

Patrice Lewis on whether "we own our stuff or it owns us" and the place of technology in our lives.

We got about 18 inches of snow which is piled around in drifts thanks to the wind.  With temps in the teens and wind chill in the mid single digits we won't be slowly start clearing a path and uncovering the car.  And we expect more snow in spurts today.  Actually, watching the news/weather we are reassessing.  We will wait a day or two.  Neither of us are that young or that fit and we have no where we must go.

I have started to go through the seeds I have (new and old) to decide when to plant what where.  All garden plans are tentative because the garden in the fall is never the one I planed while the snow was still on the ground.  It should be an interesting season.  I have two tall sunflowers.  I ordered the Candy Mountain variety (a hybrid) from Burpee and Baker Creek sent Lemon Queen, another tall variety that is an heirloom, as a freebee.  I plan to companion plant three of the beans (Blauhild, red-seeded Asparagus, and Gold Marie Vining) and one of the cucumbers (Dragon's Egg) with the sunflowers so they provide the "trellis" for the vines.  I read on one blog last week that planting cucumbers with sunflowers not only provides support but increases the sweetness and reduces any bitterness in the cucumbers.  I retrieved an upright enamel-painted shoe rack a neighbor threw away last fall which I will mount on one of my large containers so it will support the Sunset runner beans.  I have one more cucumber, the Barese, which Totally Tomatoes sent as a freebee that I don't know yet where it will wind up.  It is an heirloom that is actually a melon with a cucumber flavor.  The small ones can be used as cucumbers in salads and whatever while the large ones can be used as melons.  Should be interesting.  More seeds to consider and more planning to do.

Now a sample what I am reading today:

The Atlantic:  Kent Greenfield argues that the real solution to corporate bad actors is more corporate personhood not less.  He brings up the case Hobby Lobby brought under the Restoration of Religious Liberty Act which, the courts agreed, exempted the company from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.  They argued that the company, as a closed corporation the shares of which are owned by the Green family, shared the religious orientation of the owners.  Greenfield suggests that, if the corporation is indeed a person, it's "religious orientation" should be separate from the ownership.  Let's go a step further and mandate a means of executing particularly egregious corporate criminals.

Tomdispatch: Seven reasons why America's wars will not end any time soon by William Astore.  And I read yesterday that Obama wants the military exempted from "sequestration" and proposed a hefty increase in the Pentagon budget.

We are snug here waiting to see if the blizzard and snow totals are as forecast.  We did get, maybe, 2 inches over night.  I will see if we got the freezing rain at some point when I clear some of the patio--mainly the path from the door to the gate.  After the last bit of freezing rain covered by snow I moved the "salt" from the shed (the door of which tends to freeze shut) to inside the house right next to the door.

So what am I reading this snowy, blustery Sunday at the beginning of a new month?

This post by way of Naked Capitalism.  I have long thought that the "industrial model" of production (produce as much at the lowest cost possible to be sold for the lowest price possible hoping that someone somewhere will buy it in the quantities produced) has been pushed to the breaking point.  It has migrated from steel and autos to agriculture, education, and banking (think subprime loans for everything.)  As with most technologies (and organization is as much a technology as an iPhone) it works well--until the negative consequences, which often aren't apparent early on, mount up.