This has been hanging fire for a while.  I started it on the date listed on the post--the 16th, I think.  It is now the 27th.  The last three weeks have been hell on any routine.  I am really tired of the political scene.  I was getting sick of it before Senator Clinton 'suspended' her campaign and the feeling has only intensified since.  Medical appointments have thrown any typical schedules into chaos.  And the house cleaning spirit has finally moved us to a major reorganization of our living room.  The spirit doesn't move often but when it does it is best to answer the call.  As a result we did little for a day and a half except clean and rearrange furniture.  We still aren't done because two small and empty bookcases are still in the kitchen waiting for a relative to remember to come and get them.  We started off with, I think, 19 book cases when we moved in almost ten years ago.  We now have 12.  It has been a long process of paring down and getting rid of various things.

Let me see if, after all this time I can remember what I was going to say about the following sites I visited recently.

 Jeneflower has an interesting problem-- 'green burnout.'  I can relate to it somewhat. She feels overwhelmed by the struggle to live a green lifestyle.  She is caught between her children who want to go out for a burger and be like other kids whose parents are not so particular and desperately wanting to do even more to achieve her goals of sustainable and green living. I think a major difficulty is balancing good intentions with a common sense recognition of limitations.  I can't implement many of the suggestions I read simply because of my situation.  I can't grow very much of my own vegetables because I live in a rented unit and have only a 12x12 slab of fenced in concrete behind my house.  I do what I can with pots and look forward to my own home-grown tomatoes soon.  We limit our driving, our air-conditioning, and heating.  We have started cutting the power to our tv/vcr/cable box and our computers at night. Simplegreenworld provides a nice solution to the doldrums of green burnout: list all the things you are doing to accomplish your goals of living greener, more simply, what ever.  I looked at the list and saw many of the things I have started doing and noticed several that are stumbling blocks for me as well. 

Take a look at this new tomdispatch post.  I remember a little about the North Korean famine of the 1990s.  Very little because there was very little information available through the news.  Most of what I saw focused on the draconian measures the autocratic, authoritarian, repressive and Communist government took to meet the crisis.  Often the stories implied that the government directly caused the crisis.  Instead, this author indicates that the crisis was caused by a confluence of environmental, agricultural, and climate conditions and that the North Koreans were 'the canary in the mine.'  It is worth thinking about.

I have seen this article on several blogs.  The project is interesting and reminiscent of some stories about urban gardening and 'guerilla gardening' I have seen recently.  I looked for community gardens locally but haven't found any yet.  

There are times when the various bloggers converge on issues.  Another new tomdispatch post looks at attempts to renew uranium mining in the west, a theme that has come up frequently on Native Unity.  I wonder how many others are as concerned and skeptical about Senator McCain's proposal to build 45 new nuclear power plants.  

My normal schedule has been put badly out of kilter this last week and probably the one to come will be out of whack as well.  I think the weather may have affected our computer service because Saturday and part of Sunday it was so incredibly slow it was frustrating just to try to read e-mail.  We do our grocery shopping on Monday's and don't do as much on the computer as we otherwise would.  But this week and next we also have medical appointments and had to take Mom's car in for repair when the window motor decided it no longer wanted to work.  I am just beginning to catch up with my news and blog sites.   On the shopping front, we decided patronize the local Wal-Mart Supercenter since we needed a couple of things from the garden center and we were looking for new drapes to replace the pair in our bedroom.  Might as well do it all at once and check out the prices at the same time.  Our assessment--We would not save any money by going to Wal-Mart.  Only a few items were cheaper than those at our much closer supermarket and those were more than counter-balanced by the more expensive items.  Worse they did not have the kind of drapes we wanted.  We also noticed a definite reduction in the variety of items at Wal-Mart.  Interestingly an American living in Japan looks at a similar scene somewhat differently.  I guess it really is a matter of perspective.

I have been thinking for several years now about sustainable living and frugality.  This Australian Mom makes points that reflect my thinking on much of this.  I have described our society as 'gluttonous.'  I think there were good reasons why gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins.  It is wasteful when people consume more than they need.  Gluttonous consumption encourages envy in those who cannot consume on a gluttonous scale and envy was another of the deadly sins.  It is also thoughtless.  We don't really think about what it is we are consuming.  Instead of condemning the sin of gluttony our society/economy encourages it.  We are constantly exhorted to buy.  After 9/11 spending became synonymous with patriotism.  Breaking the mind sets and habits of gluttonous consumption are hard.  We are making a start.  We try to remember to cut the power to the computers and the tv.  We don't use the air conditioning much unless the outside temperatures hit the mid 90s or higher.  In the winter we keep the thermostat at 70 because that makes the average temperature in our apartment around 68.  We figure that we can put on a sweater or use one of our lap blankets if we get too cold.  Our trips by car have been consolidated and are absolutely necessary.  I like reading blogs on sustainability and frugality because they encourage me and give me ideas.

Are we in a recession or are we not?  According to the news last night some 'experts' think not.  I have long been bewildered by the disparity between my experience and perceptions and the economic news.  For several years now Mom and I have watched as companies laid off thousands of highly paid workers but the unemployment rate barely bobbled and wondered where those workers found new jobs and at what pay.  We watched the latest news about job cuts at Ford and wondered why the news readers didn't also note that Ford is opening a new plant in Mexico with 4000+ jobs for Mexican workers.  Often we saw the stocks of companies announcing job cuts bounce much higher on the news so someone benefitted but definitely not those whose jobs were eliminated.  Over the years we had our own economic indicators which seemed to be at odds with the official ones.  For several months a couple of years ago, just when the gas prices spiked the last time, I had a second job at a little gas station.  The last month I worked there, when prices were highest, I had four drive-off thefts on my shift.  I know there were more from the talk of my fellow workers and the boss.  We hadn't had one in the previous five months.  During that time I also worked at a small party supply store.  I had that job for nearly three years and during the first two we had no noticeable theft and no returned checks.  That last year however we had several large checks returned for insufficient funds.  My former boss told me that she was finally able to collect on the biggest one more than a year after the store closed and 18 months after it was passed.  Not only did we have an increase in outright theft but a number of incidents of vandalism--as though the thief didn't really want the item but damaged it so that no one else would buy it.  This blogger has noticed a similar pattern.  And here is another story to emphasize this sign of the times.

This post reminded me of one of the downsides to working for someone else. Your schedule is always controlled by someone else. I have never found a good carry-in meal. I don't like warm sandwiches and wilted lettuce. The employer may or may not offer a break room with microwave and fridge. More often my employers had vending machines for us. I can't count the number of times I finally got a late break and was so hungry I went for what ever was handy regardless of cost and nutrition. Or finally got off work and was so hungry I stopped at the nearest fast food joint. The cost wasn't the only draw back. I have always gained weight no matter what job I had. The more boring the job, the worse the weight gain.

I ran across this post and debated a bit before I decided to comment. As I read it I asked myself the same question I asked when I read posts about the mining company that wants to exploit a rich vein of gold that happens to be under a mountain that is sacred to the Western Shoshone and pollute the local stream with its waste. Or the mining company that wants to drill test cores for uranium in the Grand Canyon and on public lands adjacent to the Navajo lands in the southwest. Or the mining company that plans to lop the top of a mountain to get at the coal and dump the rubble in the adjacent valley. When do the environmental effects of our 'harvesting' mineral resources outstrip the value of the resources acquired? Unfortunately we have never found a way of valuing the birds, the streams, the land, or the air so a reasonable comparison can be made. And we have a long history of companies harvesting the resources and leaving the mess for others to clean up, maybe.

Mom and I were admiring our tomato plants. I showed her the blossoms coming out--a lot of blossoms. We are so looking forward to tomatoes that will have some flavor. The first ones will be taken green and fried. Yummm!!! Mom remarked in passing that we won't have to worry about salmonella. So right about that!!

This blog entry features a couple of thoughts that have come to me frequently of late. I have used the embroidery features on my sewing machine. I have drooled over the computerized machines and their embroidery capabilities. But, on reflection, I find I have no real desire to use acquire one of those machines or even to use my own machines features very much. I enjoy the hand work. I love the feeling I get when the embroidery turns out as or better than I thought it would. I will leave the machine work to others who enjoy it as much as I enjoy the hand work. I also think it sad that we equate efficiency with machines, speed, and the increased number of things done to the point that mechanization has become an unquestioned good. At the same time all hand work has taken on the aura of drudgery to be avoided.  Most of the jobs I have had provided little in the way of aesthetic satisfaction (and often almost as little in financial joy) so my needlework feed my soul.  Doing it by hand yields, for me, the most pleasure.

Entitled To Know has a little blog entry (5/31) about the high pressure tactics used by Medicare Advantage insurers and the first, feeble attempts to control them.  It burns me that the government, Bush Administration to be accurate, created a situation where these companies are paid 13% more to provide services that compete with Medicare which is paid for by our tax dollars.  And then we have to consider establishing rules and enforcement bureaus at additional expense to keep them abusing their potential clients?? When did we get government by scam artists and their shills?

This article in the LA Times comes via Ronni at Time Goes By.  It reflects something I have felt in my gut for a while.  I have read AARP Magazine and stories in other outlets about companies that retain or hire older people (55+) but wondered where they are.  As I looked at the lists of featured companies I noticed that  a large portion of the companies are in retail.  Most do not pay a living wage and, lets face reality here, minimum wage is not a living wage.  Most are not looking for full time jobs, no matter what the job ads say.  The article talks about flexibility in hours but the retail outlets around here want you to be flexible, not them.  As the article mentions these are low-skill jobs that don't require a lot of education.  But on the flip side, I have been told in interviews for these kinds of jobs that I am 'over-qualified.'  I have the same education background I had 10-15 years ago when the matter never came up.  My age is the only difference now.  Worse, I never really liked retail.  I did it as a standby, until something better came along.  But those better opportunities are coming less and less.

We all know that Joe Liberman is not really and Independent any more than he was a Democrat before he lost his bid to run for re-election on the Democratic ticket.  This op ed piece in the NY Times lambasting him for his efforts to pressure YouTube into removing  "hundreds of videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters" proves my point.  YouTube did review its sites for those that broke its rules on hate speech and removed 80.  I am disappointed that they did that much.  I wonder what criteria Senator Liberman used to determine which sites were produced by 'Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters.'  The same, perhaps, that Michelle Malkin used to determine that Rachel Ray was sporting a kaffiyeh in the Dunkin' Donuts ad?  See the details of this ludicrous example of stupidity on boston.com by of by way of Daily Kos.  

Thank you again, Ronni, for this article in Science Daily!!!  I knew there had to be a good reason to be what I always wanted to be: a contrary, cantankerous, irritable old biddy.  

Here and here are a couple of sites that reflect some of my own thought of late.  We don't take any of the premium channels on cable (HBO, Showtime, etc) because we have found so very little of interest to justify the extra cost.  We haven't been to the movies since 'Return of the King' came out, partly from lack of interest and partly from cost.  The pleasure derived is simply not equal to the cost.  We don't go out to eat very much any more for the same reasons.  I think we actually eat better at home.  When we do eat out we usually bring half of it home because the portions are so large.  I also prefer a good book (i.e., a good read) to much of the visual entertainment on tv generally.  We generally divide that into three categories: seen it and liked it enough to buy the dvd; saw it once and it isn't worth a second viewing (if we even got through the first); and don't want to see it even once.  At one time I could not go into a fabric, craft, or book store without coming out with something new.   Now, more often than not I leave empty handed.  I recently bought a couple of books and wished, after reading them, I had not.  Though enjoyable they were not keepers.  I could have done without them. I buy only what I need to finish craft projects but most comes from my stash.  

Has anyone else had a sense of deja vu with the media reports coming out of Iraq?  How often have we heard this administration announce a new turning point in this disaster?  It reminds me of the old saying that there are 'lies, damned lies, and statistics;' or as my Dad used to say 'Figures don't lie, but liars do figure.'  We have been told that the surge is working but no one points out that al Sadr has maintained a cease fire during this surge.  Tom Englehardt points out that the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr city seems to be quieting down but then we have fired some 200+ missiles into the area.  Given the experts we have heard over the last six years and how wrong they have been, I find it amazing that anyone believes any of them on anything.

I found this interesting little story by way of Newsfire from the BBC.  Every now and then I have thought about getting a little manual typewriter.  The urge gets a bit stronger whenever we have a brown- or black-out which makes my computer useless.  I feel a kinship with the woman who said that all she wants her machine to do is type.  I say something similar when I see the ads for the new smart phones.  I don't really want a phone that does much more than transmit my voice to whomever I want to speak and their voice back to me.  We don't think very often about the technology we are urged to buy.  Sometimes it is all to easy to be seduced into thinking about the problems it will supposedly solve and not about the problems it might cause or whether it fits well into our lives.  Over the years I have bought three different PDAs only to have them all end up in a drawer somewhere.  I found it faster and easier to use pen and paper than using the PDAs.  I also didn't have to worry about losing the information if batteries died or the machine otherwise malfunctioned.  A blogger I frequently read (but which one I can't remember at the moment) recently wrote that she had experienced a 'catastrophic' computer crash which had a paradoxical effect.  After the first panic and exasperation at what she had lost, she discovered a sense of freedom in that she had also lost a lot of 'junk' she didn't really need.  How much 'junk' do we keep on our computers simply because it is there?  Of course, I also have to remind myself of all the paper 'junk' that I had typed, printed, copied or otherwise accumulated during a long stint in academia.

Thanks to Tiffany and Donna for their comments on my last post.  As I read them an image of a commercial I find particularly irritating came to mind: the Comcast commercials with variations on the 'more, more, more' theme.  And immediately after another image this time from the remake of 'Sabrina' starring Harrison Ford.  Sabrina asks Linus what photos he wants her to take of his beach house.  He tells her 'everything.' She tells him 'more isn't always better.  Sometimes it is just. . . more.'  We have been trained to think that more is automatically better; more features, more power, more education, more things.  When we discover that 'it just ain't so,' our world is shaken and we have to find a new measure by which to value ourselves and determine our level of success or failure.  

Marian at Elderwoman posted a piece on 'gabbling,'  that is the tendency callers have of speaking very fast and incoherently when leaving a message in voice mail on on answering machines.  It struck a chord with both of us here when I read it yesterday (5/23).  This morning I thought about it again as mom and I listened to the news while drinking our morning coffee.  At one point Mom looked confused and asked I she had heard the teaser for the upcoming story  correctly because what she heard did not make any sense.  The story was repeated  and she had mistaken the word used.  It sounded very similar to what she thought it was.  This has been happening to us both a lot over the last several years.  But this morning, perhaps because Marian's blog was still in the back of my mind, I noticed how fast the reader was speaking.  She zipped through the stories at light speed and often we were not sure what exactly she had just said.  But we also noticed that the fluff  pieces and the latest installment of the current scandal  were presented in detail at a MUCH slower piece.  A confirmation, as if any were needed, of where the mainstream media place their priorities. 

The news media hasn't given much coverage to the bill to grant more generous GI Bill education benefits for those serving in the post 9/11 era.  I did hear that the "Commander in Chief" opposes it as does the presumptive Republican candidate to succeed him.  What I couldn't believe was the reason: that more generous benefits would discourage military personnel from reenlisting. I thought I had heard wrong.  Evidently not.  Here is confirmation from the Salon by way of Americablog.

"Bush, McCain and the others who've opposed Webb's bill argue that the expanded provisions -- the government would pay tuition and expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who spent three years in the military after 9/11 -- will hurt the military's efforts to retain its troops. Bush has threatened to veto Webb's bill, and McCain introduced one of his own." (my emphasis)

Obama criticized both the threatened veto and the rational forcing McCain to claim that Obama was spouting off about things he knows nothing about and impugning his (McCain's) honor as a veteran when Obama hasn't served in the armed forces.  Well, as one who has served I am also bewildered.  Perhaps we should go back to the ancient Roman tradition: offer those who survived a thirty year term a plot of land as a retirement bonus and place it in an out of the way corner of the empire.  They used Germany and Gaul to settle their retired soldiers. We could use Afghanistan and Iraq.  Maybe we should take a page out of British history and send out impressment gangs to remove the undesirables littering our cities.  

A related piece in the news over the Memorial Day weekend that irritated me more than I can politely express was the plans to include on tax returns a check-off box for those who want to donate to a fund to help military families cope with the financial strain service imposes.  I am still so pissed off with this notion.  I saw the Lt. Governor of Illinois assuring everyone that military families did not want charity this was not charity.  Bull-f***ing-s**t.  Almost two generations ago critics of President Johnson's War on Poverty claimed that he declared a war and funded a skirmish.  Today, we have something similar.  We have a government that lavishly squanders billions on waste, corruption, inefficiency and cannot (will not??) provide adequate pay, health care or other needs.  That opposes expanded education benefits for veterans of THEIR war because that would encourage people to leave the service instead of re-enlisting.  But then I forgot that the men and women who serve are not related to the Bush or Cheney families.  Most do not own stock in Haliburton or Exxon.  They are from poor neighborhoods in cities, from small towns and rural areas where economic opportunities are sparse and military service offer a possibility of improving their prospects.  They are not the Republican constituency.  

I found this article after I had posted my last bit, from the International Herald Tribune, which says 'voluntary simplicity' has reemerged.  Several other papers have also carried the article. Evidently a new generation is finding the truth behind the saying that 'what you own owns you.'  A couple of years ago I saw numerous sites on line dealing with this topic.  Maybe the time has come again.  Today I found this by way of Lattes and Life which got me to thinking about the following question: what do we really mean by 'frugal?'  Do we mean that we don't spend a lot of money?  Or do we question ourselves about what we spend our money on; whether we really need it, or if we get good value for our money?  When I worked in a party goods store I saw customers come in and grab lots of stuff with no idea of how much the items cost or how much they needed.  Often they came back trying to return the excess.  A little frugal thought would have saved them time and gas.  Some years ago I learned the hard way that Wal-Mart was not the place to buy fabric.  It did cost half what the cloth at a JoAnn's or the local quilt shop cost; but it was less than a quarter the quality.  Since I want the quilts I make to last, the frugal choice is not Wal-Mart.  Surely frugality isn't simply another money bottom line thing.

I have spent most of my adult life in the academic world (college/university) and over the last decade or so have become increasingly unhappy with it.  Twenty years ago I thought I would pursue a PhD in history and teach college or university classes.  I love research, writing and, at the time, teaching.  This article from Atlantic Monthly by way of Eric Alterman and his Altercation blog reflects so much of my experience and thinking on the subject of higher education.  Over the years I have had similar experiences with students who are either ill prepared for advanced study or have no interest beyond checking off another requirement in their march toward that so necessary degree.  At the same time I have looked at the listing of job ads and their requirements and wondered just what the degree really had to do with the job advertised.  I have seen relatives who are very well qualified by their work experience or who are exceptionally well certified in their fields forced to pursue degrees in order to keep or advance in their fields.  Those degrees did not help them do their work better.  It has merely drained their finances.  A college degree has become a part of the so-called American Dream along with the house in the suburbs, the spouse, the dog, the 2.1 (or however many) children.  We don't really question it and we should.  

The Caffeinated Librarian notes on one of her bullet points today (5/20, in case I don't get this posted today) that she is fed up with plastic bags.  I know how she feels because Mom and I have been talking for sometime about using the large stack of canvas bags I have acquired over the last three decades.  I started acquiring the bags when I was in Colorado and there was a big push along the front range to stop using paper and plastic bags.  My ex-husband and I used them for the very brief time we shopped at Aldis markets in Missouri because the Aldis charged for new bags.  He loved the low prices and I hated the quality.  In the end I did the shopping so I won and we got our groceries from other stores and I occasionally remembered to take in the canvas bags.  Here in our part of Indiana we get a lot of the Chicago news.  Evidently there is a move there to outlaw plastic bags.  It hasn't passed yet but the chances are good and often what goes in Chicago comes around to us.  We are becoming more environmentally conscious and will make the switch when we have to.  Why not sooner?  Well, we use the plastic grocery bags to line our small trash cans in the bathrooms and  we have three cats whose box MUST be sifted out every day.  We say our cats are full of s**t and what we get out of the box proves it.  Because we reuse the grocery bags we haven't had to buy new plastic trash bags which we think is a good thing overall.

I remember a similar situation to this one about twenty years ago.  It involved cuts in bus service. This time it is the airlines.  I saw numerous news stories on both the national and local news casts featuring small town residents without cars who depended on the bus service and were facing near total isolation.  Some could not even shop for groceries because the bus was their only means of transportation.  Just out of curiosity I wondered about what kind of bus service my town has now and found that it has none.  We cannot go to any of the surrounding towns or to major cities by ground transportation unless we have a car.  Surprisingly our small county airport lists flights to a wide variety of destinations.  We may be luckier than the towns mentioned in the article.