Good morning, everyone.  I haven't seen much I cared to comment on for the last couple of days.  What can you say when everything seems to be continuing in the same pattern with hardly a change even in the details.  The stock market went up dramatically on the 'hopium' of a much ballyhooed 'solution' to the European debt/banking problem totally ignoring all of the parts of that situation that remain unaddressed.  The Repthuglican Presidential Contenders Comedy Show rolls on.  Herman Cain is currently the star clown and, shades of Clarence Thomas and John Edwards, et al., we now have charges of sexual harassment!  The so-called 'Super Committee' continues its deliberations but a 'compromise' appears as far out of reach as ever inspire of the assurances from leaders of both parties that they are really, truly  in good faith.

CNN has featured segments today on efforts by various parties to trademark 'Occupy Wall Street,' 'We are the 99%,' and other slogans associated with the new movement.  Evidently two competing applications have been filed for 'Occupy Wall Street.'  Over the summer a bit of a firestorm erupted among some of the blogs I follow over the attempt by a family in California to trademark 'Urban Homesteading.'  I have wondered for sometime if our language is devolving into meaningless sounds.  I addressed this notion in a part of a blog that disappeared when blogger froze up on me.  There I considered the notions of 'natural,' 'organic,' and other such terms.  They have been taken over and stretched so out of definition that you can't rely on the idea that whoever is using them means what you might think they mean.  But, in a society where the dollar and bottom lines are the only things that matter, what else would you expect.

I love reading James Kunstler's weekly blog.  He says much of what I have been thinking about the latest effort to shore up the European debt/banking system and does so very astringently.

Well, since it is Halloween (or Samhain for those of you who are of the modern pagan persuasion) here is a link to Ronni Bennett's blog where she has posted some pictures of some very artfully carved pumpkins.

Good morning, again, to all of you out there.  Hopefully, today will go better with the blogging.  The weather is the same as yesterday: wet, cool, miserable.  At least I don't have to worry about the containers drying out right now and I don't have to move the inside plants because they won't get any more light by the south door than they would by the north.  At least we don't have snow yet.

The part of yesterday's blog that disappeared into nothingness concerned how words seem to have lost meaning in today's world of 24/7/365 advertising.  The link I lost featured the misuse of the word 'artisan.'  That term gives the impression of small-batch, hand-made and quality goods.  But fast-food restaurants use it to describe hamburger buns and industrial chip producers use it to sell tortilla chips.  But that is only the tip of the iceberg (as the old saying goes.)  We have 'natural' flavors that aren't, 'organic' products that stretch the definition, and 'environmentally friendly' industries that fit the definition only if you cherry pick the factors on which you base the definition.  Politics has given us the absurd notion of 'compassionate conservative,' 'job killing' referring to taxes on the top earners who may or may not (probably the latter) create jobs, and 'job creating' describes any legislation that cuts government jobs while funneling the 'savings' to pet supporters.  Oh, and corporations are 'persons.'

I just had a thought as I was reading yet another story about a city discussing consolidating, closing, or in some other way cutting schools to close a big budget gap.  I won't link to it because I am sure all of us have nearby schools that have had similar problems.  My thought involves the history of public education in this country.  Back in the early 19th century when Indiana was being settled one section of township acreage was set aside (by law) to support public schools.  At the same time, Catherine Beecher (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe) spent considerable time and energy pushing the establishment of frontier schools and the hiring, for the lower grades at least, women teachers.  In addition to teaching the children of frontier settlers to read, write, and cipher, she thought women teachers (besides being cheaper than men) would also 'civilize' the uncouth children of the frontier.  Later on, others pushed public education to foster literacy and numeracy as well as inculcate the values industrial employers required in workers: punctuality, sobriety, and obedience.  Now-a-days, it occurred to me, when we have fewer industrial employers and fewer such jobs and more of the work is handled by computers and computerized automatons public education is a value more often given lip service than real resources.  Today we don't have peasants coming from the farms of Europe or America to acculturate to the demands of an industrial workplace.  Nor do our employers require the numbers of workers they once did--so they don't want to be taxed to support a system of mass education.  We have been raised with the belief that education is the high road to middle class prosperity and what ever might lie beyond it.  I think it is time to question that received wisdom.

Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds) accurately describes, to my thinking anyway, the real result of the Obama Administration's new home re-fi plan:  perfection of debt slavery.  I would go further, however.  The whole structure of our present economic system is to turn all of into debt slaves.  Get the individual hooked with student loans (which almost can't be discharged in bankruptcy) then progress to a car loan, a home mortgage and consumer loans (i.e. credit cards).  It wasn't all that long ago that insolvent debtors were thrown in prison.  Lately some states have been trying to revive that institution (sorry, don't have the links to the stories).  Even without that effort, most of us are in debt prison--the bars are simply invisible.

Jesse's Cafe Americain posted a cartoon that more than adequately sums up our current economy.

Good morning to anyone out there.  Thunderstorms rumbled through here last night.  Only dropped a third of an inch of rain so at least we aren't too wet today.  But we aren't supposed to get any sun today and the temps won't get out of the 50s till next week.  Hope you don't get too much snow, Lois, and that you get some new jobs soon.  And glad to see you back, Kay.  Hope the situation in Kay's World is settling down.

Obama has moved from a limited new program to help a few homeowners who are underwater to a new limited new program to help some people with student loans.  This article sets out the particulars of his proposed program.  I don't know how many people this will help but I suspect not as many as promised.  I suspect the whole aim for these programs is to kick the can down the road hoping that the economy will recover to the point where jobs that pay enough for those students and former students to begin paying off the whole bill.  I don't expect that any time soon.

I had more on here but blogger froze and lost the rest.  I am pissed so I will quit for today.  Bye, all.

Good morning, All.  We should have some sun, temps near 70, and perhaps some rain today.  Time to do more than think about needlework as the garden in now on autopilot till spring.  I did some cross-stitch Sunday on a small table cloth that has languished since April.  It is about half done.  However, for now, let's see what I find on my daily trip through the internet.

Gary Weiss posted this opinion piece that expresses a number of thoughts that have been in my mind of late, both on Obama generally and on the new mortgage refinancing initiative just announced.  My long deceased ex-husband used to yell at dithering drivers 'do something even if its wrong.'  Unfortunately, after a pattern of ineffective, half-hearted and limited initiatives, we are so used to the programs doing so much less than advertised we are more than a little unimpressed with new ones.  I don't know how many stories I have read over the last months of underwater homeowners seeking to refinance who were told by their banks that they couldn't even talk refinancing until they were delinquent in their payments.  The new program won't even touch them.  The homeowners who are current will have to have an immaculate credit rating.  How many will be able to qualify?  I agree with Weiss--few to none (i.e., bupkiss).  I will probably wind up voting for Obama next time.  Not because I WANT to.  Rather because none of the brainless, soulless, and heartless Repthuglicans have presented me with any reason to vote for them.  And I won't sit it out or vote for a third party candidate because I really, really, really don't any one of those idiots in the White House.

Hello, again, everyone.  Not much going on here.  Enjoying the moderate weather before another cool front comes in mid week.

I like this story--a lot.  I am not a technophobe or luddite--but I am not a technophile either.  We depend on technology way too much and for things the technology may not be suitable for or for which the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.  We habitually adopt a technology without really considering the harm it may do until that harm rises up and bites us our collective asses.  Or we try to adopt a technology only to find that it really doesn't fit our lives.  It took me a couple of PDAs to realize I work better with paper and pencil.

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I started this on Sunday but didn't post.  If I hadn't found the above story I would simply have deleted the start and begun another post.  Let's see what I find today (Monday).

A thought, as I read this article:  we seem to be expecting far too much of politicians, especially our Presidents.  Unfortunately, the campaign so far indicates that that will continue to be the case as each of the contenders out line what THEY WILL DO for us.  As we have, or should have, found out over the last three years is that no President can do anything without cooperation from the legislators we send to Washington.  The article does indicate exactly how divided both expert and political opinion are on the economic problems is and how complicated the issue is.  As long at that opinion remains divided nothing will get done and, as long as hard line political positions remain in place along with an unwillingness to compromise, no one will be able to untangle the messy skein of economic problems affecting us.

The CNN news had teaser alluding to the 'image problem' the banks have and how little faith ordinary Americans have in the banking/finance system.  Well, I remember reading about such image problems going back almost 200 years.  Andrew Jackson killed the National Bank by refusing to re-charter it.  He thought that banks should be local and that a National Bank had an unfair advantage over local banks while discriminating against local borrowers.  Even local banks had an 'image problem' by the Civil War. I remember a scene in the movie Gettysburg where a Confederate general compared the British to the banks.  The British would come in on the Southern side only when their help was no longer needed just as banks would only lend when the borrower was no longer in debt.  A major part of the Populist and Progressive movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved deep dissatisfaction with two vital institutions seen as distant, unfair and unresponsive: railroads and banks.  Any of that sound familiar?

I absolutely love this article at MSNBC and hope the movement grows.  The only thing I disagree with is the notion that the banks are turning to customers to cover the costs of maintaining their accounts after regulations kicked in to cap overdraft and swipe fees.  It isn't to maintain the accounts; it is to maintain the profits their shareholders get and the fat compensations for the top execs.

This story is annoying, frustrating, and angering on a number of levels.  First, I don't think we should be giving government loan guaranties of any amount to any foreign company or to any American company for any operation in a foreign country.  Second, if the company is right and there are no contract manufacturing facilities in the U.S. that can do the job that is an incredibly sad assessment of the state of U.S. manufacturing and perhaps they should have required that Fiskars establish such facilities in the U.S.  And, why aren't the Repthuglican idiots in Congress rising on their hind legs about this?  They are all so incensed at the Solynra deacle but handing out money to a foreign company?  At least Solyndra is American and hired Americans.  Fourth, I am getting extremely tired of all of the promises of companies (U.S. or foreign), and politicians (Repthuglican or Damnocrat) who excuse any harebrained expenditure on the exaggerated claims of jobs.

 Good morning, everyone.  I thought I would show you what my gardens have become.  They are definitely no longer jungles.

I put the lemon verbena (foreground) and the rosemary (background) in pots and moved them indoors.  They spend the nights on the shelf by the patio door and in the mornings, on sunny days, I move them to our front (north facing) door to get the sun.  I hope that will be enough to keep them healthy over the winter.  Both are hardy only to the level of Florida and the Gulf coast.

I have 9 over the fence pot holders which now hang on the cross beams of my mini-greenhouse frame.  I put the empty pots in them for storage.  The pots--I cut the tops off 1 gal. vinegar containers and punched holes in the bottoms to make them.  I have bought some pots over time but for the small ones various food containers work very well.  The only problem I had was to get the plants out after the season.  They were all very root bound.  I may have to repot some of the plants at intervals over the season next year.

 Here are two of the three large containers I have put hardy plants I hope will over winter well.  I put the three miniature roses, mums and German thyme in the blue container, and lemon balm and lavender in the pink one.  I made the decision to keep the lavender and lemon balm at the last minute--after I had cut the lavender back.  I found some cedar shavings we had picked up some time ago--for what I forget--and put that as a mulch on these and the blueberries.  Why do I have the trellis stakes in the containers?  Well, I will fix them up as the frame for the plastic covers I will put in in the spring.  The soil isn't frozen now.  Easier.

 Here is a closer view of the blue container.  The mums have finally bloomed again.  I think the growers must somehow force the plants to bloom simultaneously.  I was very concerned when the buds remaining after the first blooming didn't open.  But I decided to leave it alone and see what happened.  As you can see they seem to have happily adjusted.

 These are the little Top Hat blueberries.  They are supposed to reach 2 ft tall and 2 ft wide.  Perfect for containers.  In the spring I will put them in individual pots and see how they do.  I hope they do well.

Last spring my sister gave me the Christmas cactus below.  It wasn't doing well and she couldn't figure out why.  I wasn't at all sure I could do anything for it but, as you can see, it is happy now.  It should bloom nicely.

Good morning on this last Saturday of October.  I can hardly believe I am writing that.  We are supposed to have sunny skies today and temps in the low 60s.  East of here they had frost warnings.  I am not too worried about that because the three tender plants are now indoors and seem to be doing well.  With clear weather I will get the last clean up chores done and the tools put away for the season.  I think I need to transplant the spearmint plants also.  They are doing very well inside.

I just found a thin film of ice on the covers of the trash tote and the compost bin when I emptied the remains of the coffee and grounds this morning.  And the roofs across the street have a good bit of frost.  The plants outside, however, are fine.