no brainer

But there's hope: the sign of the double rainbow in the eastern sky over Seattle a oouple of days ago.

grease trap

Writing at the Huffington Post, environmental activist Bill McKibben estimates that if we did away with all fossil fuel subsidies world wide, we'd be about halfway to solving global warming.

In petro-producing countries such subsidies are usually a gift to the resident population. The government buys gasoline at the regular wholesale price and sells it to the public at a loss, so in Nigeria, for example, the people who have cars get dollar gas.

In the US though the subsidies are just a straight-up gift to some of the richest corporations in the universe, a gift from the 99 percent straight into the pockets of the top .01 percent.

It's tax time right now, and Congress have blown it again. The Senate bill ending these obscene payoffs was "defeated" 51-47 -- you can tell which party is in charge there by the numbers. This raises a couple of questions. How could something be defeated when it was approved by a majority? Why do we keep subsidizing something we want less of?

And most importantly, when are the rich in this country going to start paying their share?

thought for food

Farmer's markets are not small time any more. The USA is experiencing a revolution in local, organic, sustainable food production and consumption; farmers' markets and locally-stocked co-ops and groceries now do over a billion dollars in business annually, and their numbers are growing rapidly.

One of the forces driving this revolution is public dissatisfaction with the purity and integrity of the agribusiness-grown food they get from corporate-owned supermarkets. It seems we've finally figured out that the growth hormones and other fun stuff the ranchers give their steers, making them fat and sexless (the steers, not the ranchers) have the same effect on humans who eat them.

Add to this that the closer to home your food grows, the fresher it is when you get it, and what could be better than produce picked in the morning, cooked and eaten in the afternoon? Even broccoli is a treat for me now, which is something I wouldn't have imagined a short time ago.

There's a short article by Bill Wenzel at Common Dreams that could be a primer covering the basics of the local/farmers' market movement, emphasis on its economic and political implications. As you'd expect, our corporate-owned government favors the big producers at the expense of the small. So when you buy that bunch of locally-grown organic carrots, you're not just getting your vitamins, but also becoming an ad-hoc participant in #Occupy the Food Supply.

So what are we waiting for? Seize the Carrot!!

Top photo: Solstice Farm, Beaver Valley Road, Chimacum, Washington. Bottom photo: "Seize the Carrot" ©2012 by Dave B., Daveb, Horney, and Smeavy Productions.

the long, hot summer

Why is the so-called Department of Homeland Security buying 450 rounds of ammunition? Most of it is hollow-point bullets of the kind pictured here.

Are they planning to shoot somebody?

The facts are here.

Both parties will gather this year to crown their presidential choices.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

Thanz to Ted at #Occupy D.C. for this info.

perfect for birthers

Google™ has announced that they're going to market a new kind of spectacles -- augmented reality glasses. They look like this:

To see how they actually work, go here.

This might be just the thing for birthers, global warming denialists, Marxophobes, anti-Darwinists, &c., &c.

I don't think I'm going to get them. My reality is augmented enough already.

what's goin on?

Not much.

arizona sunset

Looks like the feds are getting ready to finally take down Joe Arpaio, sheriff and mad dictator of Maricopa County, and his desert gulag.

The website Talking Points Memo reports that "The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has cut off negotiations with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and said his recent actions are driving the U.S. 'closer to pursuing judicial remedies.' Arpaio had claimed he was cooperating with the probe into alleged civil rights violations back in February.

"'We believe that you are wasting time and not negotiating in good faith,' Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin wrote in a letter to Arpaio's lawyer."

This sadistic clown has been terrorizing the residents of Phoenix way too long. It's time to give him a good broom to sweep with and send him packing, preferably to one of his own concentration camps, although if he was to do time it would undoubtedly be in an air-conditioned federal pen.

a whiter shade of palin

So Sarah Palin and Katie Couric are opposite each other on dueling morning TV shows today. It's supposed to be "mean girl smackdown" or some such nonsense, but I don't have a TV so it means nothing to me.

I did watch about 20 web-video seconds of Palin on "Today," however, talking with Matt Lauer, who asked her if she likes Romney. She replied that "Anybody would be better than Obama with these failed socialist policies," so I guess her actual answer is "Not much."

I'm not precisely sure what socialist policies she's referring to, but I presume they would be Social Security, which is completely solvent through 2037 and easily repairable after that, and Medicare, which is in trouble because of George Bush's sweetheart deal with big pharma on Medicare part D. Get rid of that and it'll be manageable.

She might also be referring to the Affordable Care Act, which is not socialist.

If she really wants to compete in that market she ought to forget the politics, which was never her strong suit, and maybe talk about her recipe for cooking up a perfect batch of methamphetamine, and how to make festive potholders out of your husband's old socks.

Illustration schnorred from TBogg@Firedoglake.com

unzipped mittens

On the radio, Romney's wife Anne said that we need to "unzip him" if we want to see "the real" Mittens.

None for me, thanx. I already know more about him than I ever wanted to.

Illustration by Danny Hellman in the Boston Phoenix.

easter comes sunday

(Re-posted with revisions from April 12, 2009.)

Easter, the ultimate Christian holiday, is also our only special day whose name derives from pagan sources. Old dame Eostre, the northern equivalent of the Latins' Primavera, and the goddess who used to rule the earth during the season of the hare moon, has managed to hang around nearly two thousand years now in the Germanic cultures, lending her old fertility totem and talisman, bunnies and eggs, to the feast of the resurrection.

When Eostre ruled the spring rather than Jesus there were 13 months, not 12. This is why, in Walter Scott's version of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood and his men sang "How many months be there in the year? There be 13 I say..." And it works out, too, because 13 months X 4 weeks = 52 weeks.

Some years have 13 full moons, and some don't. We'll have 13 this year, with two in August. The second of these, on the last day of the month, will be the blue moon.

Thirteen is a very magical number, partly because it's prime and also because of its calendrical significance. In the Christian era it acquired ominous meanings and became associated with "bad luck," because there were 13 gathered at the last supper, supposedly. The real reason the early church fathers tagged 13 as an "evil" number, however, is because of its significance to pagans the world over, and paganism always had to be represented as the work of devils and demons. Hence, that unlucky day, Friday the 13th.

There are 13 cards in a suit, and for Americans, the revered, almost mystical origin of the nation in 13 colonies.

I've also found that my own life tends to run in 13-year cycles, the end of which always see a significant closing and equally significant opening.

But that's only if you believe in that kind of stuff. And I do, sort of, in a way.

history & myth

I've been trying to learn a little of the history of the Indians who lived in this area before we whites overran it, but unfortunately there is none.

History consists of written records: wills, deeds, bills of sale, cargo manifests, census records, inventories, etc. Rendering such dry and boring materials properly yields the narratives we call history, a true record of real events which actually happened.

In the absence of written records, there is no history. In its place are legends, which over time coalesce into a variant of history, the orally transmitted epic poetry known as myth.

This is not the first time I've attempted to deal with the unhistorical history of the natives of the Puget Sound region, and that earlier experience taught me that trying to resolve the wild variations and inconsistencies in the legends and stories of the Salish peoples is futile. However, broad outlines of past events are discernible as through a glass, darkly.

The Chimacum inhabited the east side of the Olympic Peninsula, between the head of the Hood Canal and Discovery Bay, and had a fierce reputation among the ordinarily pacific and unwarlike Salish peoples. Some time in the early 19th century they were raided at least once by one of the ferocious seagoing tribes who still live in the islands off the west coast of British Columbia. The tribe survived, but in a weakened condition, and this invited their destruction at the hands of their local rivals.

The details of the Chimacums' last stand are forever lost in the vague welter of conflicting stories spun out from all sides of the sad drama. At least once, probably twice, other Salish people launched wars against the Chimacum. Chief Seattle and his band of Suquamish are cast as belligerents in some of these tales, and the Clallam of the north-central Olympic Peninsula were certainly involved, since they coveted the territory of their neighbors to the east. What's certain is that the powerful and charismatic Patkanim, chief of the Snoqualmie, engineered the final blow, crossing the Sound at about the time of the coming of the whites in the mid-1850's to deliver the coup de gras against the unfortunate Chimacum, who thenceforward ceased to exist as a separate people.

Later today, Catboxette and I will motor down through the shocking poverty of lower Irondale to the mouth of Chimacum Creek, to visit the site of the main village of the tribe, a formerly noteworthy aboriginal group whose true history is now lost in the hopeless confusion of local legends, lies, myths, and tall tales.

See also this article in the Skagit River Journal.

skeletons

My great-great grandfather, Francis C. Brice, moved from Duplin County, North Carolina to southern Georgia in 1833, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth, their young son, also named Francis, and two slaves, Dave X and Ireland X.

By what standard do we judge the actions of our ancestors? The fact is we will never know about most of them, since we each have four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-greats, 32 direct ancestors in the generation preceding that, and so forth, all of them converging in our family histories from their own ancestral streams, or so we hope. Still, those of our forebears from whom we have inherited our surnames seem somehow more pertinent than many of the others.

Francis Brice was only one generation removed from the old country (England), his parents having emigrated to settle first in Pennsylvania, then in North Carolina. When he moved to Thomas (later Brooks) county Georgia, he purchased land formerly belonging to the Creek nation. Southern Georgia was taken from them in 1814, after they were massacred by that old Indian killer Andy Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, and the 200 or so survivors escaped to Florida to join the Seminole.

In addition to erecting his plantation, Tallokas, on ground forcibly taken from its former inhabitants "with extreme prejudice," to use the 20th-century term, Francis had left his North Carolina home under a cloud, as the ownership of the two slaves he took with him was disputed by his own mother, Martha.

This was probably due to an oversight in Joseph Brice's will. Executed shortly after he died in 1829, it conveyed three slaves by name to his wife Martha and a fourth to their daughter, Rachel A. Brice. However, the North Carolina registry of slaves indicates the family owned six slaves at the time, and when Francis departed the family home he undoubtedly took the two slaves whose names did not appear in his father's will, Dave and Ireland.

Martha apparently never forgave her son for carrying off two people she regarded as her property, and left him out of her own will. This underscores the fact that human chattel was far and away the most valuable form of property in the ante-bellum south, that much more capital was tied up in slaves than land, and that the old southern economy was based primarily on slavery and only secondarily on land. The Civil War was as much about massive capital destruction as it was the establishment of freedom and justice, and indeed the former was a precondition of the latter.

As I try to absorb this information, all of it new to me, my initial reaction is horror and disgust, for it appears that my direct ancestors willfully and without any visible remorse profited from two of the nastiest chapters in human history, New World slavery, and the forced alienation of New World natives from their lands and lifeways. I'm tempted to say they were forced by circumstances, but these were autonomous, independent souls who made their own circumstances.

Lincoln tended to see the Civil War as a blood sacrifice which God required of the nation as a penance for the sin of slavery. I don't understand it quite in those terms, but I can see his point. Exodus 20:5 specifies that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on their children "on the third and the fourth generations." That would be me.

tossing the bull around

The death of the Wall Street bull, the sacred idol of Republicans and free-market cultists, at the hands of #Occupy turned out to be an internet/photoshop hoax. During its brief moment, though, it set off a firestorm of alarm and indignation at the Beliefnet US News and Politics board, where I've been known to hang.

"The people who did this are guilty of destruction of private property," one poster furiously railed, "while every one who hides the identities of the involved can easily be charged with obstructing justice," then went on to call for the "absolute destruction" of Occupy Wall Street.

You're dern tootin. I mean, killing women and children with drone missile attacks in Yemen and Pakistan is regrettable, and of course we're sorry these things have happened and continue to happen over and over again, but goddammit, this is Private Property!

Once it became clear, however, that the god of the hedge fund managers was still standing unharmed behind his NYPD hedge of parking-lot barriers, the mood lightened considerably, with one correspondent noting that "Tourists to NYC like to rub the bull's pendulous testicles for good luck/fortune."

That's news to me, but I believe it and find it interesting, since I've always wanted to know more about the customs, superstitions, and fertility rites of free-market cultists.

Another regular poster answered the call with a full report detailing visits of the faithful to the site to fondle the generative organs of the sacred totem.

Now, I always suspected there were rituals of some sort at that holy site, but had no idea of the extent of them.

I should have known, since I've been aware for some time that the free-market cult is remarkably similar in many ways to the cargo cults of New Guinea and the South Pacific.

A cargo cult works this way: the supplicant speaks into an empty sardine can or some other object which bears a superficial resemblance to a microphone, and calls on a deity such as Joe Navy to send the planes to drop cargoes of Spam,™ Kraft Macaroni & Cheeze,™ and other life-sustaining goods.

Similarly, a free-market cultist prays to deities such as Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan, hoping to gain their intercession in removing all taxes on profit, government regulation, environmental laws, and so forth. They believe that if that was to happen, the unrestrained free market would produce an endless stream of wealth, forever, and everything would be perfect. A pilgrimage to the bullsite to rub the monster's huge nuts is apparently a necessary step in the series of rituals.

I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the story about the time the children of Israel decided to bow down to a golden calf. Remember how that worked out for them?

pants for pessemists

The other day I was watching my girlfriend, the lovely Catboxette, engaged in her favorite activity (doing laundry) when I happened to notice that she was wearing bib overalls with belt loops, similar to the pair worn by the model in this picture.

Since they come with suspenders attached, I figure this type of overall is the perfect fit for pessemists.

low crimes and felonies

Perhaps you've never heard of ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council. If that's the case, then you aren't aware of why ALEC is the most subversive and dangerous organization operating in the US today, and you need to go read Paul Krugman.

grease trap

So the Senate is scheduled to vote today whether to end the big tax breaks to the petroleum industry.

A majority of Democrats (I'm told) want to end them, but the bill is getting "filibustered" by you-know-who. "Filibuster" is in quotes because it's a fake filibuster; nobody actually has to drag his butt into the well and stand there talking for X number of hours.

The you-know-who's are ably assisted by a number of Democrats who refuse to go along with the rules change that would do away with the ludicrous and preposterous 60-votes-to-end-a-filibuster rule.

This is an object lesson in how the man behind the curtain dupes the American public, many of whom still believe they've got a democracy, when what we actually have is a plutocratic oligarchy dressed up in democracy's clothes.

mini-urban

This used to be a rural country. In the 19th century, most people lived in the country, but as industry spread the balance shifted, and by 1920, 51 percent of us lived in cities.

90 Years later, the US population is overwhelmingly urban according to new figures just released by the US Census Bureau. 71 Percent of us now live in metropolitan areas (clusters of cities which have grown together) or medium-sized cities of 50,000 or more, with only 19 and a half percent living in rural places.

But that only adds up to 90 and a half percent. Where's everybody else?

It turns out the Bureau has unveiled a new category of location where 9.5 percent of Americans live, the "urban cluster," a town or unincorporated area of between 2500 and 50,000.

There is a tremendous variety of types of these clusters and their relationship with the surrounding countrysides. Some are actually "exurbs," others are county-seat, country-market, courthouse-and-post-office type places. A depressingly large number are dying small towns.

There are considerably more of these urban clusters than big cities -- 3,087 as opposed to 486 "urban areas" or regions such as New York-Newark, Los Angeles-Anaheim-Long Beach, or the Bay Area, to name a few of the largest.

Here's a little secret: the best living in the US today is in some of these "urban clusters," especially those which have a thriving symbiotic relationship with the surrounding rural areas. The future of the country might be in just such places, and I expect them to wax over the next 20 years or so, as the cities become even less attractive than they are already and wane toward their 1920 population levels.

vampires & cowboys

A couple of old movie posters sold for big bucks at a Texas auction yesterday. An original "Dracula" (Tod Browning, 1931) 40x20 went for $143,400, and a poster for the less-well-known but Oscar-winning western "Cimarron" (Wesley Ruggles, 1931) sold for $101,575.

They were discovered in a bundle of old posters stuck together with wallpaper paste which sold for $30,000 at an auction in Texas last fall.

These kinds of prices indicate the cultural significance of both the movies that date from the early days of talkies in Hollywood, and the poster art that supported their commercial release.

Other early sound pictures that had a tremendous impact included the Marx Brothers' first movie, "The Cocoanuts" (1929), and the World War I drama "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1931).

little of note

There's little going on here in Pt. Utopia, WA right now except for a beeyootiful day, with lots of bright sunshine with cool temps.

The young guys who live across the road are sprawled out on their backs in the front yard, even though it's a chilly 47 out. We're all really ready for spring here.

The world of politics and social turmoil is far, far away at the moment, so let it be.

lard of the wings

"You're gonna die anyway, so just cook the shit in lard."