3/31/07:
We like to think we are different from other peoples and cultures, far more advanced. I have wondered at times what forest it is that I cannot see because trees block my sight. It is difficult to perceive a medium one is drenched in, kind of like a smell you get used to and no longer perceive even though it is still there, as strong as ever.
Today's American culture is very different from the culture Europeans found when they arrived here centuries ago. Native Amercians were thought to be primitive, not making good use of abundant natural resources, instead focusing on their sense of connection to all of nature. Peoples who inhabited this continent offered respect, through rituals, carvings and stories, to different aspects of nature, varying by region and the tribe. Arriving Eropeans could not wrap their minds around ideas of connectedness. They believed they were superior beings, here to use nature.
Today's physicists posit theories that connect all life. They suggest humanity not only is part of something bigger than itself but that humanity is not separate from everything else.
We believe we are different from the "primitives". We are advanced, we don't have symbols and rituals depicting how we view ourselves and our place in the world. Instead, we are driven by our selves, guided by our large intellect toward what is real. We do not imbue things with meaning but stick to the practical and observable. We do not waste our time with things such as totem poles or carved figures representing some mystical idea of what is meaningful in this world. Our lives are filled with practical things such as tall buildings of shiny glass and steel, and large vehicles propelling us and proclaiming our independence from a connectedness to the earth. We are different from the "primitives" whose things they make reflect their beliefs about man's place in this world.
All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.— Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory
3/30/07:
In the news today was a story about a hearing here in Washington state regarding whether or not pharmacists should be able to decide if they want to fill a person's legal prescription. Washington's rule has been that a pharmacist may chose to not to fill a prescription that prevents the implantation of fertilized eggs but they must refer the person (of course this is about female sexuality) to another pharmacist who will. Opponents feel this is too much to ask of the better than everyone else pharmacist. It's interesting that the question is not only asked but entertained as if is legitimate. Freedom of religion means freedom of belief for all people.
There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody.— Florynce Kennedy
3/29/07:
Our daffodils have been blooming a couple of weeks, as have many local cherry trees. Our spirea and our quince started blooming last week, while today I noticed flowers on our own cherry tree and the bloom of those white flowers I have planted under our roses that at the moment I can't remember the name of… Spring feels good.
The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet—
—"Haiku" (1819) by Issa
3/24/07:
Last weekend I went to an emotional showing at the local, restored Lincoln Theatre. The theme for the night was the war in Iraq, which attracted a rather small audience.
The evening began with a few local speakers, mostly mothers and friends of American soldiers killed or wounded in the war. A mother from Bellingham spoke of her son's death and how she, her husband, her father and grandfather had served in the military. Now she spends her extra time supporting the peace movement and the work of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. We saw a film about the group's incredibly touching boot memorial. A lady in the film talks about visitors' reactions: “Some people have taken it as an antiwar statement; some people have taken it as a tribute and memorial to our fallen heroes.” The boot picture links to some info.
We also heard the story of a local soldier killed in the war, Nathan Nakis. Click on his name for a page I have made about him and the fund raising to build a climbing wall he had dreamed of for the local Boy Scout troop. Check it out, donations are tax deductible.
Then we viewed in its entirety a documentary called
The Ground Truth. It indeed is a powerful picture, consisting mostly of Iraq veterans talking about their experiences in Iraq and returning to civilian life. It puts a human face on the price paid by our service men and women during and after deployment. A sample:
The Ground Truth Trailer
I listened this week to an interview on NPR with Tom Delay. He spoke strongly about his vote against more funding for veterans' services last year. When the interviewer asked if his opinion had changed with recent news stories about conditions at Walter Reed, he said it had not, he would again vote against it because it was too much money to spend on veterans. I found that position quite interesting. Today NPR had a story about a town whose council had passed a resolution in support of the federal government creating a Department of Peace. A number of citizens got all up in arms, had a fit, and the resolution was rescinded. They interviewed some of the disgruntled citizens and many felt officially supporting peace would somehow confer power to the UN and make the US subservient to that organization. Another summed up the feelings, perhaps more succintly, "It makes us look like wusses". Yes, let us not look like peacemakers, God forbid.
Last weekend I visited the literature tables after the Lincoln Theatre presentations. At the Veterans for Peace table, I picked up a button, put a $5 in the bucket and pawed at the printed information. The guy manning the veterans' table looked to be from my generation. He told me to help myself, asked me to look closely at the offerings. I said, "I already took one of your buttons." He again told me to help myself and asked if I had seen a particular film, whose title sounded like it was about the money corporations made and are making off the current Iraq War. He started choking back tears as he asked his question, as if it hurt his heart. I told him I had not seen the movie but had read the news stories. Damn, those veterans are such wusses…
In lieu of a quote, a definition: interstice: a space between things or parts
3/23/07:
I don't know how to teletransport myself. She glanced at me with a look that seemed to hold wonder as she passed, looking to catch my reaction to this unbelievable confession.
"Neither do I!" My own confession was met with a small smile.
Has it ever struck you… that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going? It's really all memory… except for each passing moment.— Tennessee Williams in "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore"
3/22/07:
Feleniece Miller January 6, 1916 - March 21, 2007
Family friend Feleniece Miller passed away on Wednesday. She was 91 years old. We will miss her. Click on the picture of her with my mom for a little more…
Female friendships that work are relationships in which women help each other to belong to themselves.— Louise Bernikow
3/17/07:
Thanks to my cousin Diane, we have a St. Patrick's Day comic greeting— enjoy! The link is courtesy of fart aficionado Will Clegg.
Jay worked a half day today, then we headed over to the Thrifty Food Pavilion in Burlington— specifically to purchase a couple of maple bars. What? Do you think this is an outing with an unusual focus? Indeed. Brown & Cole Stores started in 1909 and grew into a chain of grocery stores all over Washington state. Their store on the edge of downtown Burlington reminds me of the ones I grew up going to,
small and simple. Jay used to go there after school in the 1960s for a 6 cent maple bar. Times have changed, grocery stores are bigger and fancier these days, and maple bars are 50 cents. The small Burlington store is closing, so today became our day for one last maple bar. In deference to this Irish holiday, we also bought one can of Guinness for Jay. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.— George Burns
3/11/07:
Yesterday Jay and I went to the Skagit County Historical Museum in La Conner for the first day of a new exhibit, a showing of contemporary photos of Skagit farmers and farmland by eleven local photographers. We enjoyed snooping around the museum's old pictures, items, maps and such, and enjoyed viewing the interesting new photos.
Afterwards we stopped at a nursery near our home that we like to explore once in a while, Christianson's. We looked at flowers, shrubs, fig trees and kiwi vines. I took a couple of photos of Jay gazing about— click on the photo of hands harvesting to see gazing Jay.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.
'But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
— Excerpt from "As I Walked Out One Evening", From Another Time by W. H. Auden
3/10/07:
Maybe some people were expecting this, while for almost everyone else (who hadn't given a thought to what I would write 'cause, well, 'cause Cindy is not the center of the universe…) it comes as no surprise. Yes, you guessed it, I am talking about the vagina thing in the news. What has happened to the good old days when young girls knew their bodies were dirty and unmentionable? When everyone knew enough to not mention female body parts because if they did the world as we knew it would crumble and degrade into a world of unfanthomable evil?
I saw a television interview of the three notorious girls who said the word vagina at a school presentation last Friday and so, of course, were given suspensions. Eve Ensler, writer of the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues, was also at the interview, congratulating the girls. Eve's work has been performed around the world and has inspired a global movement to stop violence against females called VDay. In the interview, the girls reported that another presenter at the school function used the "f" word and this was not objected to by the principal. Other school-approved words likely include violence, war, and murder.
The hoopla is not just about whether these girls were insubordinate in saying a banned word out loud, but also about why the word itself was banned. In 2007 words for parts of the human body are still considered vulgar. The Bible says: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27) and "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31). Maybe the people who find words for human body parts dirty are thinking about something else entirely when they hear the words spoken, maybe they doth protest too much (Shakespeare in Hamlet). Hypocrisy is a luxury— best we don't run out of money just yet. Oops, did I hear someone knocking?
"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," Gingrich said during the interview… Gingrich also acknowledged cheating on Ginther while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky… In 1994, Gingrich linked Democrats to Susan Smith, a woman who had murdered her two children in 1991. "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," he said. "The only way you get change is to vote Republican." Gingrich divorced Ginther in 2000 and soon married his third wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide who was in her 20s when she and Gingrich began their affair. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards," Gingrich said. "There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards and my neighbors' standards. But I think my job is to try to do for my country— and on a very personal level for my children and for my grandchildren and for their future— to try to do everything I can to be a servant in helping this country deal both with the domestic challenges to our very identity, and that's what rediscovering God in America is all about, and to foreign challenges to our very survival … I hope that people will see me in that context." Among the three Republican front-runners— thrice-married former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; twice-married Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; and Gingrich— there are eight current and past wives.— from ABC News Internet Ventures, March 9, 2007
3/8/07:
I grew my own garlic for the first time last year. The crop turned out nicely and I am down to my last couple of heads for cooking. This first garlic crop lasted well and is only just now sending up little green shoots seeking light. For that first crop I bought organic seed garlic, but this time I have planted from my own harvest, seeing if I can get a continual crop going all on my own.
Here you plant garlic in the late fall as it likes to start with a mild winter. I again planted two types of garlic, hard and soft neck. The weather here has moderated and returned to more normal proportions, and my garlic is progressing nicely. Click on the garlic drawing (of a hard neck variety) for three photos of my garlic crop taken last weekend (you will note a bumper crop of weeds keeping the little guys company!). We had three cloves of last year's crop in our stir fry tonight, and it was yummy…
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
3/5/07:
It is my brother-in-law Jerry's birthday tomorrow, March 6th. I believe Jerry is turning 54 this year. Jerry has been married to my sister Linda since, hmm, the late '70s, maybe 1978? A long time.
Jerry retired not too long ago after working over 30 years for Oldsmobile in Lansing. He and Linda have a nice place outside of Olivet, where they enjoy their flowers and garden. Like Jay and I, they like to putter about and enjoy time at home with each other.
Happy Birthday Jerry, best wishes for the coming year!
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.— Rainer Maria Rilke
3/3/07:
Last year Jay started making a new calendar page for us each month, usually using amusing or interesting pictures he had manipulated. Each month the new calendar is framed and posted on a wall in our kitchen. Click on the vintage oat tin to see the picture Jay put on our March calendar.
Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.
— from "Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction" by Wallace Stevens
3/1/07:
So much for the pretty, brief snow of last week. Last night we had a couple of inches of snow that left roads slick for the morning commute. But that was nothing compared to 9+ inches in parts of Snohomish county to our south, where my co-worker Barbara had trouble making it home. Since she couldn't get out this morning we postponed today's work plans, giving me a much needed respite as I continue to recover from the virus I have had the last week and a half. Despite roaring in and making quite a mess, the weather moderated here today and much of the snow melted. It was interesting to see the tree pollen count had been classified as "very high" yesterday afternoon, but was down today as the trees shrunk back from the surprise snow. We count our blessings though, as we hurtle still forward into March, with more moderate weather than many have.
Happy March to all, and Happy March 1st Birthday to my dear old friend Rhetta.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?— from "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
Jardot's World: March Edition, 2007
All pictures on my page link to somewhere... go ahead, click!
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