Tom Coburn is a Big Fat Jerk

Okay V. 1.3

2006-10-29T09:39:00.002-06:00

Okay, so, here's a quick update on everything that's been going on so I don't have to clog the internets with all the necessary background information for getting all y'alls [hehe] up to speed on my exciting, fast paced, cosmopolitan, avant garde life.

First, there was the bizarre disorder --- Old Dog Vestibular Disease --- which struck my elderly German Shepherd girl. And let me tell you, pobrecita, both her and moi!

Because, you see, the disease struck three days after I'd turned in grades for Spring Semester. Now, during those three days of freedom, I'd driven up to turn in grades, returned home, immediately collapsed, then roused myself long enough to get the dishes done and the muck moved around enough that my home was now health department inspection safe.

And I was so looking forward to three-four weeks off, meaning enough time to visit friends do things go to movies go out to eat garden talk on the telephone stare at the ceiling read books ...

And I'd just enjoyed my first real day of after having done the dishes and moved the muck around, and had left early one morning to go into town and eat out with some friends, visit a museum, stare at books in a used book store, make a complete grocery store run, visit other friends --- you know --- normal things that normal people who are not also teachers do ...

And I'd just stopped on my way home to see the vet to make an appointment to get my lovely German Shepherd girl an exciting professional grooming (she does like to look her best) ...

And I'd gone home immediately after and had just walked in the door after an exciting day being a normal person instead of an insane teacher with so freakin' much grading that she appears to be a total antisocial agoraphobic madwoman ...

And the pups had run up to me excitedly, hoping I had carrots for them (their favorite treat) ...

And the lovely German Shepherd girl had pranced her way from the carrot hunt to her beloved water bowl, when suddenly, it was as if someone had picked her up and thrown her against the wall.

And she was down for the count for three weeks.

And there went my exciting three-four weeks off to pretend I'm a normal person with a normal life. Yes indeed, the powers that be have a funny way of reminding us the minute we're certain we have a little extra time.

You see, Old Dog Vestibular Disease isn't a permanent condition, but it does require near-constant nursing for the duration. And hooboy, the mess. What happens is, the doggie's inner ear apparatus goes completely bonkers and they lose all sense of balance and their eyes flit wildly back and forth and they can't eat or drink or walk or even move without putting themselves into profound danger because it usually hits the older dogs who are fragile anyway and you don't want older dogs to be falling down all over the place.

So I ended up moving all the furniture out of the living room area, where she originally went down for the count, and bunkering the entire area with pillows, towels, rugs, blankets, everything I could find.

Needless to say, she was also doing some peepeeing and pooing in place. Pobrecita!! So I was having to do a lot of hiney cleaning, not to mention laundry. Oy!!!!!

And trying to handfeed her and keep her hydrated.

Three. Weeks. Of. It.

And, once she began coming around, she required retraining walking because she also has dysplasia, meaning I was also doing range of motion exercises on her --- which helped. But boy did she lose a lot of muscle mass. Bad thing for a pup with dysplasia.

And once it was finally over ... the *&^%$#@* summer semester had begun. And I was scheduled, much to my dismay, to teach four days a week. Gawd.

So that was one thing.

In addition, I've been dieting. This is fairly new, only a few weeks at it --- South Beach style. And it works, although I have got to get my exercise levels up. I really packed it on over the summer because it was too freakin' hot to do anything. Lordy, what was that about?

Anyway, I've been bitching about not having a calorie counter, and then happened to find this extremely handy doodad on fellow dieter [and Okie] Sister Scorpion's blog.

And ooooh, she's right! It's fabulous! Works like a charm!

And while I haven't been posting here, I've been posting on that madhouse Daily Kos, where I've learned quite a bit actually, but I never really posted there with any intention of much coming from it I mean my god who would want that attention? But one day, fellow dKossian tvb got this wild idea to start a what's for dinner? series and I said yes, as did fellow dKossian Kate Petersen ...

... which kind of led me back into blogging because you have to pay more attention to your sepllgni hehe when you diary at dKos ...

... and so we started the series a couple of months ago and you can read them if you want to right here ...

... and I think that kind of gets you all caught up.

Oh yea, plus ... I HAVE A NEW JOB STARTING IN JANUARY WOOHOO MY LIFE IS PERFECT! well, not really, but I will have more time now!

And now ... I am off to garden.

Okay, I really am back

2006-10-28T08:49:00.000-05:00

I hope I am, at least. Way too much to do, way too little time!!

But here's a quick update: I gave notice at my job --- a job which has been eating me alive in every possible way (financially, time-wisely, etc.) --- and was hired by another university. I'm not finished with the old job til mid-December, but once that's over and done with, I will actually have time --- and more money! Because my new teaching job requires ALMOST NO COMMUTING!!! and reasonable hours!!

I can't wait.

So it might be a bit of a slow startup to getting back to blogging, but that's because I STILL DON'T HAVE ANY FREAKIN' TIME!!!

But I really am back!

Okay, I'm back

2006-10-06T15:10:00.000-05:00

It's going to take me some time to get back in the swing of things, but I'm back!

Well, maybe better to say I'm just kind of back --- I'm not terribly interested in spending too much time on the computer --- I already do that and really, really don't want to add to it. But I am sort of back and if I can think of anything to say, I'll be saying it.

In response to ...

2006-04-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

... Erishkigal's comment below and MJ's comment on her blog, I'm posting an update.

First, i don't know when I'll be back. I'm having a lot of fun not blogging. I've made some new friends and have been renewing some old friendships.

The two-dimensional world of the net is a good place, but I'd forgotten how great the three-dimensional world is. The goal is to be equally at home both places and eventually to meld two and three dimensional --- what do you think?

As for gardening, don't get me started! I can't believe I'm really seeing results, even though there's still so much to do.

I'm getting my first grapes this year. I can already see the little clusters on the vines.

I have butterflies everywhere. And it appears I had a mess of Monarch lay eggs here perhaps? because i was covered in Monarchs --- little ones --- for a week or so.

So my initial butterfly gardening attempts have worked.

I'm redoubling the efforts. New goal: to be certified as an official Monarch Watch site sometime in the next year or so.

I haven't yet planted fruit trees or nut trees, but I have just about finished my fruit plantings here. I now have blueberries, strawberries, elderberries, raspberries and something else ... ? ... going. The next step is to establish vegetable gardens. i have tomato and herb gardens going, but no real wonka wonka veggie gardens. So this is the next step.

Lots more, too.

In a month, I'll finally have a back porch. I've gone through tons of money --- my savings is nearly gone.

However --- and maybe the best news of all --- I might have another job.

So that's what I've been doing. I'm still watching you all and I will be back soon enough.

Hiatii

2006-03-30T15:54:00.000-06:00

This is my official announcement that I'm on an extended hiatus from blogging.

As if you hadn't already noticed.

I'm simply unable to write right now. I think I've gotten to the bottom of it --- it has to do with events over the past, mmm, 6 years, and really doesn't have much to do with being burnt out. More like several epic battles for my soul which I fought and managed to win, if winning is even an option in those matters.

It's taken me a while to get down to what's really going on and I'm in the middle of massive, massive cognitive processing. It's such a bad idea to have too many things going on at once for too long. But I did.

Oh well.

Besides, I'm trying to really cut down on my time on the internets --- not to mention, it's plantin' season!

I'll still be watching a few of you.

I'll also be looking for a new blogging home. One obstacle has been that, whenever I've felt a wild hair to do some writing, there have been problems with Blogger.com, and either i haven't been able to post or the post gets lost or my entire blog is gone or whatever. When I find that new home, I'll post the redirect link here.

Meantime, if you want to talk to me, leave a comment! :=D

There's nothing romantic about any of it

2006-03-21T09:09:00.000-06:00

It's all very down to earth and practical.

First, I spent much of the weekend meditating on the proper way to go about my job dilemma. I decided I needed to tell the administrator I simply can't work full time for three-quarter time pay. I was quite resolved --- a bit nervous, but determined to do it.

I smoked all the way to work yesterday in preparation. Calm thoughts, be calm, you can do this, the typical pep talk.

She freaked out.

So. So much for that. I should have gone with my original plan, which was to get another job and simply --- well, leave. But I didn't.

So tomorrow, I cut my hair off. It's insane look, wild and long, meaning it is not job hunt material.

And Sister Scorpion's blog is now missing. MJ's is still there, but Sister Scorpion's is missing. Which is somewhat of a relief --- I'm glad to know I'm not the only blog at Blogger which goes missing now and then. But it seriously interferes with my reading, which is now on a timer --- I've set my internet thing to ask me every ten minutes if I really want to be online. This is in the hopes of rehabilitating my fat ass.

Oh, and a student yelled at me yesterday. I basically told her to shove it. Well, okay, what I really said was don't like it? File a complaint against me, toots. Sans toots, but something like that.

And the tomatoes are coming up and the last I saw of the guineas, they were running as fast as they can the other way. No sign of them since.

Blogger ...

2006-03-18T11:46:00.000-06:00

... is driving me crazy. Today all my links are gone. Yesterday it was telling me my blog doesn't exist. Before that, it locked the blog because someone turned me in as a spam blog.

I think I might find someplace else to blog. Grrrr.

The guineas are back

2006-03-17T09:57:00.000-06:00

I had just overcome my grief over them running away, looked out --- and there they were.

?

The guineas are gone

2006-03-17T08:52:00.000-06:00

I looked out the front door just in time to see them running down the road as fast as their little legs could carry them.

I knew this would happen. Everyone warned me guineas never stay. And I'd just gotten attached to them, too, and was thinking how nice it was to have a little herd of them clucking around the place.

Darn.

Day Five? Six?

2006-03-16T10:18:00.000-06:00

I don't remember.

I am whooped. And it's great.

I planted two blueberries and a crepe myrtle yesterday, and did some other doodling around out there. I haven't gotten any more seeds started --- I'll do that today because I'm just too whooped to do much else.

The problem now is trying to figure out where to put the viburnum --- front or back?

There is so much sitting around here in pots just waiting to get planted. Butterfly bushes, more crepe myrtles I got on sale, another blueberry or two, some elderberries and grapes --- plus a ton of trees and more bushes which won't be ready to go in the ground for another year or so.

A lot of these plants I meant to get in the ground last year during the last part of my spring break. Then my brother died. I got the call just about 10 a.m. a year ago today.

I'm glad this past year is over. I did nothing in his memory today except live my life. Somehow that seems like the right thing to do. I think he'd like a meeting of his strange collection of friends --- they're all scientific types and very, very geeky. I mean, Kings and Queens of the Geeks and Nerds, which I consider an incredibly honorific designation. And I know they had just that.

But there was the other side of him which was naturalist. He could never do the outdoors like I can because his allergies were so bad, coupled with asthma. And in recent years, he was becoming progressively crippled by something unidentified which he pretended he didn't have. But he still did a fair amount, as much as he could, and he'd forgotten more than I'll ever know. So today I did normal outdoor things, in his honor. I bought straw for mulching and building more soil. I did a little mowing, to help ensure the insect population doesn't get a stronghold here. I poured coffee and tea and grounds and leaves over the strawberries and blueberries. I scattered peat and began planning where things are going to be planted.

I clucked at the guineas and took my dogs back there again, trying to acclimate them a bit more. I think the guineas are going to stay around. My brother would have scolded me over that because they make such horrible noise.. But he would have been secretly pleased because nothing can clear an area of lawn grubs and ticks and fleas faster than a herd of guineas. Not to mention, that good guinea poop.

Tonight, I start my second flat of seeds.

Yoohoo! Representative Balkman!!

2006-03-15T13:37:00.000-06:00

Why aren't you banning football or legislating the death penalty for people who work on Sundays? I mean, touching pigskin and working on the Sabbath are proscribed by the Bible, aren't they?

And why haven't you come up with similar provisions for store clerks to refuse to ring up factory produced meats and poultry because they object to Tyson and the hog farms poisoning our rivers and groundwater, and because they really aren't interesting in participating in the cycle which has helped to create Mad Cow Disease?

And while you're at it, maybe it's time you practiced some of that good ole fashioned Compassionate Conservatism. I think you and Inhofe ought to donate every dollar you've ever received from the oil and gas industries to the poor. Hmmm? What about you? You gonna be practicing some of those good old fashioned Christian values?

Right. I thought not. Typical lying hypocrital sleazebag extremist.

Day Four

2006-03-14T20:30:00.000-06:00

I remembered last night that Leila, who I nominated for a Koufax which I promptly forgot about because I got busy and sick so I didn't tell her but not for malicious reasons I was simply sick and miserable and it's not like she runs in those blog circles anyway after all she has her own blog circles and she's already won lots of awards I mean Sister Scorpion is famous in her own time really she is but I thought she ought to know I nominated her even if I did forget until like only a few hours before the end of voting ...

... but I forgot she's out of town this week.

So. So much for that.

A summary of today:

Seeds: I have started edible chrysanthemums, thyme (yes, more thyme), lion's ear. In addition to two tomato varieties, one of which is Sun Gold, not Red Gold. And I have Cathedral Bells (I think) and Marvel of Peru seeds soaking.

The Lawnmower: I got the lawnmower in my trunk and got in to the little small engine store where they have the most hilarious picture on their wall --- it's of three coonhounds with big old buck teeth and the caption reads Arkansas coonhounds for sale. I started laughing and couldn't stop. So I should get the lawnmower back in a day or so, which means I'm going to have to start mowing. Which is good news because ...

Diet: I'm going to have to go on a diet. I'm positively blossoming here but enough is enough but if I'm going to get a perfectly FABULOUS job I'm going to have to do something about the expansion which might explain why ...

Cigarettes: I bought a pack of cigarettes today and am smoking at this very moment. Damn.

As for ...

The Guineas: I bought some scratch for them today, went out and threw some their way which caused them extreme psychological conflict --- approach avoidance the old FOOD FOOD YUMMY IT'S GOOD OMG IT'S A PERSON RUN RUN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE BUT THERE'S FOOD OVER THERE AND IT'S YUMMY AND I WANT SOME so I decided to make it a little easier on them and I left.

Guineas aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, you know.

In any case, after sneaking back inside and over to the window to spy on them and watching them overcome with fright at the sight of OH MY GOD!!! the front of the shed yet again I snuck back outside with a pan of scratch which resulted in complete mayhem in the back yard THE MONSTER THE MONSTER IS BACK BUT OMG SHE'S GOT YUMMY YUMMY FOOD WE LOVE HER WE HATE HER MUST RUN THIS WAY NO THAT BUT I DON'T KNOW WHICH WAY TO RUN SO I'LL MAKE HORRIBLE NOISES!!! so i set the pan of scratch down and decided to make it a little easier on them yet again and I left ...

... which led them to parade around the shed once again and once again be overcome with complete horror at the sight of OMG THE FRONT OF THE SHED THERE'S STUFF IN THERE RUN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE WAIT I CAN FLY UP AND SIT ON THIS and it was quite a long time til they remembered there was a pan with scratch in it.

Really, a few bricks short of a load. But very very entertaining.

I didn't get too much else done today. I had to leave the house too much to be too productive.

Day Three, End

2006-03-13T19:22:00.000-06:00

I simply can't title post after post the same.

So it's come to the end of Day Three, and I've gotten a bit done.

I'm so terribly out of shape, though --- which I usually am at the end of winter, but especially this year, thanks to the sickness that went first in my right ear and then down.

And I have to find a new job. I spent the morning anxiety ridden.

And I wish there was less "I" in all this, but "I" is what it is right now.

So, for starters, the guineas (see picture below) are roosting at night in one of the oaks in my back yard. They don't like people a bit. Not a bit. And I don't know where they go mid-day, but they're here every morning and every afternoon, and are sleeping high in the trees at night.

And the treefrogs are singing at night. Their singing is still faint but they're definitely starting to come out of hibernation. But we're getting a freeze tonight --- fortunately not too hard a freeze, but a freeze nonetheless. I hope the redbuds and dogwoods survive. I forgot to put covering on one of my blueberries which has started leafing out.

I started two varieties of tomatoes today: Red Gold, which is supposedly a cult favorite heirloom, and a bush tomato called Celebrity. I also finished another bed (although not the one I intended) and adjusted one out back, so I can plant another grape there.

Tomorrow, I have to go into town to get peat and maybe a bit of soil, then some more straw. And get the lawn mower in. I'm going to have to mow by weekend.

Tornadoes struck about 40-50 miles north last night. I know some people in the communities that were hit. I'm hoping they're okay.

Meanwhile, the western part of the state is still in flames.

And BTW Leila ...

2006-03-13T11:25:00.000-06:00

I nominated you for best local blog for a Koufax ... and I forgot to tell you. Sorry, the last month or so has been kind of insane.

You have until 11:59 tonight to vote for yourself.

I have to get a new job

2006-03-13T10:31:00.000-06:00

This is really bad. I really really hate my job, and none of my psychological backflips are helping.

I've tried from "at least I have a job" to "oh don't take it so seriously" to "there's nothing better out there" and back again, and none of it is helping.

I've pondered whether I have commitment issues, which is somewhat of a given about a lot of things.

I've fretted over whether I'm just terribly selfish, and this selfishness is why I'm unable to sacrifice myself for the next generation of little heathens.

I've worried that I'm just flatout lazy.

None of it is working. I have simply come to hate the job. Too little money for way too much work, and the commute is a bitch.

My mind is thoroughly clouded by thinking about it.

Visitors

2006-03-12T18:51:00.000-06:00

Gardening Journal, 2006, Day Two

2006-03-12T08:58:00.000-06:00

It's not my brother. Despite my convoluted rationalizations, my funk is because I hate my job. I know because I'm on break, and I woke up this morning in a glorious mood because I don't have to grade, don't have to prepare anything, don't have to worry about standing in front of rooms full of students, most of whom (like me) would rather be anywhere but there.

Damn. So I'm back at square one.

Despite the funk, the gardening chores are starting to come along. I got the front bed about 3/4 of the way built yesterday. Then storms started moving through, fortunately going just northeast because they were whoppers. But their winds could be felt all the way here, and the sky was a very nasty black. So I got interrupted and didn't finish. Besides, carting those cinder blocks around was a real chore and I hadn't eaten enough, so didn't have quite the energy needed. Not to mention, it's the beginning of the season, and I did spend a month flat on my back, except when I was teaching. Kind of out of shape!

This storm produced tornados, too, touching down just east of the Arkansas line, or about 15-20 miles from me.

One of the most amazing things about living out here is that you can hear the storms for miles and miles. Last night, I watched lightning from about 30-40 miles south of me. I'm not sure what this is about. We're mountainous here and heavily forested. I assume the mountains and forests are somehow different kinds of "obstacles" than large buildings and the like. More interesting is that the mountains and forests really do dissipate the storms, while buildings don't. Even though we can hear and see the storms here. Maybe it has something to do with heat retention? Solidity? I have no idea.

Well, whatever.

I got seed flats prepared, and will be starting tomatoes, thyme (yes, more thyme), lion's ears, Pride of Gibaltar, and Cathedral Bells tonight. I also put a mess of seeds in the freezer --- meant to do that a while back, but --- well, but didn't get around to it.

The best part of the day was that two guineas showed up and humiliated one of my dogs by honking and cackling at him. They're very handsome fellows and were really chowing down on the bugs --- much preferable to the damned armadillo who's been digging holes everywhere. But I haven't seen (or heard) the guineas yet today. Maybe they went home.

I got very, very grubby yesterday. It was heavenly.

Gardening Journal, 2006, Day One

2006-03-11T12:43:00.000-06:00

Well, I think I've gotten to the bottom of my funk. It's not simply that I spent a month sick or that my job is trying to Wal-Mart me (a situation I'm far from alone in --- virtually everybody I know here is being Wal-Marted).

It's that it's coming on the first year anniversary of my brother's death. And I am still far from resolved.

My phone bills this year have been humongous, as have the phone bills for most of my remaining relatives. We've developed a bizarre --- well, maybe not so bizarre --- need to stay in almost constant contact, lest one of us drop dead.

As for coming to any kind of emotional resolution about it, I'm finding it somewhat difficult. I simply can't believe he would be so idiotic not to take care of himself, especially given he had some fairly significant health issues. He had deadly allergies to eggs and had even been hospitalized several times in his life for going into anaphylactic shock. He definitely had some kind of auto-immune thing going on --- this had started some years ago, sometime in 1999-2000. But he wouldn't go to a doctor about it, even though we suspected he was developing lupus or rheumatoid arthritis or something.

He just wouldn't deal with it. And he was some kind of brainy guy, too.

The only reasonable explanation I've come up with is that he was in such complete denial about what was happening to him that he'd managed to convince himself it wasn't really happening, while simultaneously deciding sheer willpower could overcome

Not. Unfortunately.

So there it is.

On the flip side, I have actually started my gardening chores. I've torn off the remaining plastic from the greenhouse --- it had been ripped to shreds by the winds that devilled our area over the last year (thank goodness that's over with). I'm leaving the framework up and am building a raised bed with cinder blocks in the greenhouse a la Sister Scorpion style.

Mine aren't nearly as pretty, though. A hazard of rocky ground.

The frame will be used for bird netting and shadecloth and tying up plants.

I'll be building another one out back, too, but sans frame.

I haven't started seeds yet. Too busy carting cinder blocks around, as I will be for a few days. I got my income tax refund and promptly ordered a mess of them last night. They were delivered this morning --- !!!

Next step: emptying the composter into the bed out front and starting all over again.

The thyme has come back, the sage is starting up, the iris and pinks from my grandmother's gardens are taking off, I have fabulous Italian parsley going on its second year and it's just going crazy. Most everything survived the winter.

And it's been raining. Like mad. Looks like the drought's over. Woohoo!!!!

If I can just get over this funk and get my seeds started, looks like it's going to be a great gardening year.

Among other things ...

2006-03-10T09:38:00.000-06:00

My blog got locked for a few days --- apparently reported as a spam blog. While it was locked, Blogger was featuring a genuine spam blog on its front page. ?

Well, whatever. I still hate my job and I'm still unable to write, but at least I got out of having to sit here and write for days on end over the next few weeks.

And because I'm on break, not having to write over the next few weeks means I can finally start seeds and get outside and get grimey.

I don't know at this point if I'm ahead of the game or behind, although I think I'm behind. But I'm a bit more organized this year. I've sterilized the seed flats and pots, and separated seeds into those which need to get a good freeze on them and those which are fine without it.

Whew.

The Cherokee Freedmen ...

2006-03-09T21:37:00.000-06:00

... are now Cherokee Nation tribal members.

This news is so far beyond huge. In these parts, it eclipses anything the idiot Chimperor and any of the usual suspects could even think of doing.

You see, the Freedmen are the descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees, as well descendents of original Dawes enrollees. And the requirement for enrollment in the Cherokee Nation is limited to direct descent from a Dawes enrollee --- yet the Freedmen were unceremoniously given the boot not only because they're Black (as are, in fact, most Cherokees, if you get right down to it) (or at least those Cherokees who have remained in the Cherokee Nation), but to ensure certain less than savory folk would be placed into office in the Cherokee Nation.

You see, the Freedmen would never have voted for most of the bozos who've served as chief in recent years. But their full voting rights have just been restored.

And there's a mess of them, too. Which means the entire power structure of the Cherokee Nation has just been tipped in an entirely new direction.

Which is absolutely the best thing that could have happened. Because, you see, the current elected officials care about themselves --- they care about their news jets and Mercedes Benzes and weekend trips to spas in New Mexico and dinners in Washington, D. C.

But they could give a shit about their own people.

David Cornsilk, one of the most brilliant guys I have ever had the honor of meeting in my life, is one of the primary movers and shakers on this. I always knew he would go down in history --- he's simply that brilliant and that ethical. And he just proved me right.

This is a very, very, very bright spot in an increasingly grim lamdscape. And it's the best news I've heard in a very long time.

testing testing testing ....

2006-03-09T21:33:00.000-06:00

I still hate my job

2006-03-07T14:24:00.000-06:00

But I'm becoming a little more --- um --- accepting of the fact that I hate my job. See, despite my wild eyed visions last week of tearing screaming off the job, I tallied my expenses and realized I can't quit my job unless I'm handed an even better job.

So good sense has overwhelmed the instinct to LIVE PLEASE I JUST WANT TO LIVE.

A more immediate problem is that I've managed to bamboozle myself into the especially uncomfortable position of having to do almost nothing but sit on my duff and write for weeks and weeks on end.

And not fun writing either.

Plus, if you read the post immediately preceding this one, you'll note that I quite clearly stated in there I'm now unable to write. So how the hell am I going to perform at top form in writing if I'm already so burnt out, I can't write worth a damn?

Plus, hello! It's spring! I'm supposed to be starting seeds and planting trees, not sitting on my fat ass writing stuff I don't even want to be writing.

Is this like some kind of evil convergence of the planets?

I hate my job

2006-03-02T11:23:00.000-06:00

And I'm not at all convinced the situation can be rehabilitated.

The tipping point came when, on Monday, I was given my schedule for Fall, only to discover they have essentially scheduled me full time, but will only be paying me three-quarter time. Yet they tell me they don't want to lose me. Yet I had ceased my preparations for job hunting a month or so ago because they told me they were putting me full time.

Education has been Wal-Martized.

I said nothing at the time --- I only nodded and grunted uh huh. But when I got home, months of suppressed frustration and burn out and annoyance came bubbling to the top, and I decided no more.

I've come to realize there is no possible way I can turn around a lifetime of educational neglect in a single semester. I've come to realize I'm not the least interested in classroom power struggles with 20 year olds. I've come to realize the occasional flashes of brilliance and hope I see in one or two students a semester doesn't make up for the 50+ who've been passed on their entire lives.

I can't even write anymore.

So I'm making some decisions. The first is do I teach over the summer, or do I bail early? The only thing I know at this point is, come fall, I won't be teaching.

I'm getting ready to start seeds again

2006-02-27T15:23:00.000-06:00

I'm still operating at quarter speed --- fortunately, I'm no longer sick but the whole thing really wiped me out.

However, today I purchased bleach to sterilize my seed starting flats and containers. Which is a sign that it's all getting ready to start all over again.

I'm also spending my entire income tax refund on trees --- as of now, it looks like I'll be planting two windbreaks of slash pines and a couple of pecans.

I have some smaller trees going which I hope are big enough to plant next year, including a bur oak sitting in a pot in the bathroolm which is producing leaves.

I also may quit my job after summer semester. Every time I sit down to grade, I --- I --- I just can't stand it anymore. It's sucking the life out of me and I'm not being paid enough to compensate for what I'm losing. So --- well, I don't know. It's not looking good, however.

I Piss People Off

2006-02-20T13:54:00.000-06:00

You know I'm starting to feel better when I can dive into self-examination.

I've been thinking about this for a while now. It used to be quite a sore spot for me. Lately, however, I've been viewng it with a more detached, critical eye.

It isn't a matter of people pleasing --- not at all. I'm legitimately quite capable of pissing people off on my own without reference to lame pop psychologies.

And yes, there are certain classes of people I tend to piss off regularly.

Alpha females, for one. They really don't like me. But not all alpha females, not by a long shot.

I tend to get on very well with alpha females who have achieved their status through brainpower or exceptional kindness or a true "liking" of other people --- say, someone with great social skills emerging from their genuine interest in other people. But especially brainy females. I really like brainy people. It's as simple as that. And brainy alpha females (and males) have all the respect from me they could ever ask for --- except they're usually not the ones demanding it because they're so brainy, they don't need to.

Otherwise ---- social climbers, bullies, females too enchanted with themselves or who thieve somehow from others, I almost invariably really piss off and often turn into enemies. It tends to turn into a debacle, probably because I'm not particularly adept at recognizing power relationships.

I'm also fairly gifted at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Hehehe. Really quite unintentionally, but always with disastrous results which are amusing from this vantage point --- but weren't at the time.

Men, bleh. Alpha or not, I don't give a shit. It's a different set of dynamics, but the same kinds of things tend to hold true, although my disagreements with them rarely (if ever) have to do with alpha status. There's not nearly as many of them who hate me as there are women.

Sometimes, I just pop a cork and piss people off. I did this recently with a friend who kept sending me those FW: FW: MUST READ!! FW: FW: OMG!!! rightwing emails.

She finally sent one too many and I blew a cork, Googled the smear, proved it wrong and sent the facts (complete with links and an apology from the source of the smear) not just to her, but to the originator and all the people she'd spammed with it.

She hasn't been emailing me so regularly since then and has stopped trying to fix me up with her brother. I think she decided she didn't want someone who isn't bothered by gay people as a sister-in-law.

I actually like her, despite her strange --- well, whatever. Not too sure she feels that way anymore, however.

I've also done stupid things to piss people off. Really stupid things. There have been times I've felt like I was an alien dropped in this world, and my behavior has proceeded accordingly. Not much you can do about that but mea culpa and move on.

And of course, there have been times I've been evilly awful. I admit it. But those aren't the times that troubled me for so many years. When you're evilly awful, you deserve whatever backlash you get. And I haven't been such an angel. I know that.

Will I be better in the future? I don't know.

I look like death warmed over ...

2006-02-20T11:33:00.000-06:00

... but I'm definitely getting better.

How can I tell?

I haven't been able to get it together to clean the house in weeks --- literally. 3 weeks, maybe longer.

And I'm actually starting to clean the house.

And, even better, I've slept so much that now, I have like a sleep savings account going, and was up half the night putzing around. And I'm not even tired now. Woohoo!

I have a residual cough but I didn't get pneumonia, which I was kind of scared was happening a day or so ago. So that's good. And I just feel better. A bit lively. All that.

I haven't been this sick in years. Since I last got the flu, which was 1994-95, I think. I literally lost 1-2 days that go-round. It's really no fun.

So it looks like I'm on my way back to good health --- and blogging. And Leila, I'll email you as soon as my brains clear up enough for me to figure my way through all my email. :=D That's an even scarier sight than my house right now (which resembles --- well, you don't even want to know).

Still sick

2006-02-19T09:26:00.000-06:00

... but I think I'm getting better.

I haven't been able to talk since Thursday and my sides ache from coughing. I really did think I was going to end up in the hospital. But I think I've turned a corner.

So really, I'm not ignoring you --- I've really been that sick.

Whatever this stuff is, it's squirrely!

Here's the deal, MJ

2006-02-16T10:23:00.000-06:00

I've been suffering under a convergence of absurdities.

It began over a month ago --- or some time thereabouts --- when allergies gone mad went into my ear and gave me the ear infection from hell.

There was green stuff coming out! I honestly thought my head was going to explode and got so desperate, I was smearing Anbesol on that side of my head.

Then, the ear infection settled down, but I stupidly switched antihistamines, thinking Dimetapp was better than Benadryl. But in fact Benadryl was doing the job and the Dimetapp didn't stand a chance against these evil allergens.

I finally realized a day or so ago, when not only my ear but everything from my ear down to my upper chest was dancing in a histamine frenzy, that maybe I should have stuck to the Benadryl. I was right. So I knocked myself out on them yesterday and am beginning to feel much better.

Except now I can't talk because I have laryngitis like everyone else in this part of the state.

Then, sometime in the middle of all this, I spilled chicken soup all over my keyboard. I'm still waiting for the new keyboard to arrive and, in the meantime, have to do funny things to get spaces between things, which makes writing anything take 2-3 times longer. Especially anything online because my browser doesn't appreciate me using the Apple control key for anything, and it crashes everytime I get close to the fearful key.

And of course, there's been the grade protest from one of the most gawd awful students I've ever had. That finally seems to have settled down, but it required hours and hours of writing, and hours and hours of considering whether I ought to just break down and tell her you were lucky to pass at all because I saw absolutely no evidence you're capable of college level work. Which I finally broke down and did, even though I'm now certain I'm going to be fired.

It hasn't all been bad. For one, I've begun a supermarket garden on my kitchen table. This garden consists of things I've bought at the grocery and whimsically stuck in pots with dirt. So far, I have scallions, lemon grass and ginger growing. And they're really growing.

I've also decided to become a Buddhist, except the meat thing has me worried. I'm doing this not only because Buddhism really does intuitively and intellectually make complete sense to me, but because I think the materialists are as crazy as the rightwing Christians, and I just don't feel like playing in their backyard anymore.

So that's what's been going on. I was too embarrassed to come on here and say why I wasn't here because it's seemed I'm always making excuses here. So I decided to wait til I had a keyboard and a brain again.

Dinner

2006-01-24T15:59:00.000-06:00

I'm getting ready to eat at my kitchen table for the first time since I moved here.

I haven't been able to eat at the table til now because it's always been covered with --- with whatever. Seeds during seed buying, seed sorting and seed planting time. Screws and nails. Paint and brushes. Books. Material. Etc.

Dinner will be nice fat boiled shrimp, avocado with fresh squeezed lime and cilantro, and fresh squeezed Texas Ruby Red grapefruit.

On my next post, I'll tell you about the interesting birds that are now living here because I'm watering so much and there's a drought. There's a new little woodpecker --- he's not a Downy (got them), not a red-headed (got them, too) and definitely not a Pileated (definitely have them --- it's a bit like living with Woody the Woodpecker). There's also an interesting little cross between some kind of a jay and some kind of a titmice. Smaller than a jay, larger than a titmice, sits differenty than both. Never seen one before. House wrens have also moved in --- I've never had wrens before. :-)

Off to make dinner. Now this is progress.

Bubba gets the job done

2006-01-20T13:10:00.000-06:00

Now say what you will about the Bubbas. But when push comes to shove, they get the job done.

I wish I had hours to sit and write this and I know it won't make much sense, but between everything going on and teaching again and me becoming a reading addict once again, there just isn't the time.

But I have to blog the fire that almost ate my place and pay tribute to the Bubbas who saved the day.

Bear in mind, I just got off work and back home and am turning around and leaving again in a few minutes to run up to Tahlequah to meet some friends and eat shrimp --- cold boiled shrimp. Mmmm. Also bear in mind I can't quite figure out how I used to have the time to blog --- what happened? I mean, nothing's really changed. But I don't have a spare moment these days except to read whatever I can put my mitts on.

So here's what happened. Eye witness account, my eye witness account, taken from an email I sent shortly after the finally got all the power back on.

Monday night: Several hours ago, my power went off and back on and off again, which isn't completely unusual for out here. Then, I started hearing this crazy noise every time it started to kick back on, and I thought it was coming from the whole house surge protector I put on a while back. So I headed out to check and coincidentally heard tiny teenaged girl screaming from the herd of teenage girls who were running down the road to the top of the hill there.

I decided this deserved investigation. I also thought it meant my surge protectors were exploding.

I went outside and everything looked normal but I heard this tiny teenaged girl screaming from the top of the hill "it's there, it's there, it's in the corner!" then a big KABLOOOM again. So I walked up to where they were and just as I got there, I saw the transformer exploding!!!!! Which wouldn't be such a big deal except we're in a record breaking drought and a transformer exploding means one thing: fire!!!

So I said to the girls we have to call the fire department now but my phone got blown out when the electric went! So one of the girls (in between screaming) said I have a mobile phone! So I said call the fire dept! and she said I don't know the number!! so I said call 911!! and she really did say but I don't know the number! I mean, we were all kind of freaked out because that thing was exploding and sending off sparks maybe every 1-2 minutes.

So she called 911, then just like what happened when a big wind blew through and knocked my big hickory into the road thus causing the first traffic jam (9 whole cars) in the history of the community, pickup trucks started showing up everywhere filled with every manner of Bubba and every manner of possibly useful equipment.

The most entertaining aspect of it all was the guy across the road had to open his cattle gates because that's how emergency vehicles would have to gain access ---- and his cows were thrilled by the explosions and even happier to see open gates and he was herding them with this big old tractor. It was hilarious. You could practically see little cartoon bubbles over the cows' heads reading "FREE!! FREE AT LAST!! WE'RE BUSTING OUT OF HERE!!!"

In any case, sure enough, the ground caught fire before the volunteer fire department got here, and right across from my place!!!, so I went into my memorized emergency plan mode and loaded up the dogs and turned on the hose which is still running.

And the Bubbas went crazy when the fire started and started stomping on it and throwing dirt at it and one guy pulled out his chainsaw and was threatening the fire with it and the guy on the tractor had even worse problems on his hands because his cows were flatout stampeding and looking happy about it even --- I mean, they were frolicking!

And finally the volunteer fire department (the same one which burned down a couple years ago) showed up and it took them an hour but they got it out.

And this year, they're getting a gigantic donation from me.

Whew.

More things you learn when you're not blogging

2006-01-15T12:01:00.000-06:00

If you're awoken at 2 in the morning by something that sounds like three teenagers attacking your mailbox --- especially if your mailbox has been the victim of three such attacks in the previous months --- don't say to yourself ah, it's just some bozo whose muffler's falling off and fall back to sleep because something sounding like three teenagers attacking your mailbox really does mean your mailbox is being attacked by three teenagers.

Some of the things I've learned while not blogging

2006-01-14T13:23:00.000-06:00

1. Benadryl can cause gout. I've been dealing with this one for three years now, and no one ever bothered to tell me Benadryl may be responsible. It all began the December after the summer when I fell asleep on the sofa after opening all the windows, and woke up going into anaphylactic shock. Then, the following October, this entire community was flattened by some strange allergic substance and we were all told to keep our Benadryl handy. I made a solemn vow then to never stop taking Benadryl until after the last killing frost.

That December, I got my first round of gout in the toes on my left foot. Needless to say, I was horrified. There are kidney problems in my family and I was certain this was a sign I was well into kidney failure. I completely changed my diet --- although I refused to take the evil anti-gout pills --- and immediately blew up like a balloon because I began eating very few meats and concentrated my diet almost entirely on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Low purine whole grains, but still.

I went through one more bout of gout (?), then nothing --- until this December. When it came back with a vengeance and for reasons I couldn't explain. What the hell was going on?

Well, I'll tell you what was going on. I'd been taking Benadryl off and on because the drought and the unseasonably warm weather have been kicking up all kinds of allergens. It wasn't until a day or so ago when I was looking up various substances which might trigger gout, and in particular niacin, that I discovered diphenhydramine --- which is Benadryl --- can trigger gout in some people.

I was totally bollocksed. Or is that bolluxed? Whatever, I stopped the Benadryl. And voila! The gout was gone within three days.

2. If you cancel your long distance service to take a deal with another long distance service, the original long distance service will make you an even better deal.

3. If you cancel your internet service to take a better deal with another internet service, the original internet service will make you an even better offer.

4. Strong tea is an even more effective transport mechanism for caffeine than coffee.

5. There are some very, very young people posting at Daily Kos. They have not yet lived enough to have anything resembling a clue.

6. I strongly disagree with most current theories concerning education in America, although I also think NCLB is a joke.

7. eBay is not a good place to purchase pottery items. The seller never remembers to purchase insurance and the items always get broken and you have a freaking hassle on your hands.

8. It may not be the best idea to spend so much money on new clothes, but if it's been 5-6 years since you've really had anything decent to wear (as a consequence of the inevitable bankruptcy of grad school), it certainly seems like just the right thing to do.

9. Sometimes it just isn't in you to answer comments or emails because your brain is all tied up.

10. A Midwive's Tale really is a good book.

11. People who claim to be Wiccans are usually kind of odd.

Hiatii

2006-01-06T10:21:00.000-06:00

It isn't enough to call it a hiatus, but there's no plural. So hiatii will have to do.

I've been getting my brains back, I think for the first time since I bailed out of grad school. I've been dreaming of becoming a wildlife biologist, and saving the frogs and toads and skinks. I've been buried in books and movies, learning about Roman history and feral children and capoiera and the olive oil in Aix and how to build Asian gardens and the advantages of lemongrass and leaf amaranth --- a kind of beckoning to old ways. See, before my foolish grad school experience, no one was even sure what I looked like because I spent so much time buried in books --- okay, that's an exaggeration. But not really.

Yes, I went on wild tangents where I pretended to have some idea of the game plan. There were several fashionable descents which were pretty rummy and a couple of unexpected plummets up the social ladder. I even spent a little time with British nobility --- gawd, they're worms. But I was always able to escape the inevitable disasters these social expeditions inevitably became by making a nice stew and finding a few good books and hunkering down beneath the covers and feeding myself.

I completely lost that somewhere around my third year of grad school. I remember someone once told me you could tell a good department from bad by how completely the grad students were drug into the petty warfare of deans and faculty. If my experience was any measure, I was in the worst department ever. And even though my advisor tried to allay my fears by telling me (repeatedly) that he loved graduate school, that even when faculty and students were bitch-slapping and fist fighting in the hallways (which was apparently a constant), he was always so lost in his studies that he didn't notice and didn't care.

I'm not that tough. I have permeable boundaries, which is generally an advantage. But I'm also dangerously curious, which leads me into trouble each and every time. And I'm stubborn, although less so these days. And, worst of all, I'm basically a very simple person --- give me a nice strong cup of coffee in the morning and a thick piece of homemade bread and some time to doodle in the dirt, and I'm happy.

All in all, a very bad combination for a very bad department.

So somewhere around my third year of grad school, I basically blew my brain circuits. I even lost my impeccable sense of color. I couldn't for the life of me sit down and read like I used to. And painting the house was a nightmare --- where once I would just know just the right colors, suddenly every choice was a gruesome mistake.

I was certain I must have had a small stroke or something which caused very specific damage to my neurology. I panicked at first, then learned to accept it. Okay, so the bookwormy colored part of my life is over, I told myself. I will become instead a woman of action and spend all my time digging.

Then, a week or so before Christmas, a package arrived in the mail, sent by one of my brainier friends --- a real live linguist, somewhat infamous but in the best of ways. A true pioneer and a true scholar.

The package was wrapped in a dark green tissue and contained a small book. The moment I opened it, I decided to read it. So I poured myself a big glass of wine, pulled out my giant bright green comforter, crawled onto the sofa and started reading. I didn't stop until the next morning, when I suddenly realized that for the first time in a very long time, I had completely lost myself in a book.

My brain had begun to heal itself, it seemed. But I wasn't convinced.

The next evening, I decided to try it again, just to see. I went to my shelves, located a thin, colorful book on Asian gardening and started reading. I spent hours completely lost --- I even made notes --- and was incredibly sad when the book was over.

I was stunned. It appeared the brain damage from grad school was gone! I immediately ran to a little shed out back, pulled out a couple of ancient metal art class chairs someone had given me years and years ago (they were sitting next to the smokey blackened folding chairs from the local volunteer fire department which burned down a year or so ago --- one of my most prized possessions, given to me by an elderly neighbor as a housewarming present).

I drug the chairs inside, scrubbed them from top to bottom and painted them an electric blue. It was perfect! My brain was healed! I wasn't imagining things!

I immediately got online and ordered a huge pile of books.

And I've been reading ever since.

So that's where I've been. Of course, there was the giant white rabbit which showed up here a week or so ago, right after the runaway turkeys. And I took the car to the mechanic who only takes payment in cash and under the table, and he performed a miracle on my car, like he always does, and for less than $200. And the two guys hired to come out and do some work under the place --- I told them that when I first moved in, I discovered a pack rat was living here, under one of the bathtubs. Not a human pack rat, but the real live four legged furry kind who like to steal things and leave you little presents, like acorns and tiny bits of colored plastic, as thanks. They laighed and told me they could tell, that they'd pulled out any number of tiny bottles and bits of colorful plastic and printed napkins and acorns and stones out from one of the cubbyholes down there --- the telltale signs of pack rat habitation. Etc.

So okay, it hasn't all been books, but close. I think have my brains back enough to return to work on Monday and maybe even start blogging again.

But we'll see.

Runaway Guard Turkeys

2005-12-21T09:02:00.000-06:00

And I don't mean Bush and Co.

These lovely girls have been causing a racket and raising all kinds of cain out front. Don't know where they came from --- don't care. Maybe if I feed them well enough, they'll take over guard duties here so my pups can claim their rightful place as permanent fixtures on the divan.

2006 Garden

2005-12-18T12:42:00.000-06:00

Despite the hell that is grading, I managed to start planning next year's garden. Come spring, I'll finally be getting the elderberries in the ground, meaning those skirting about half my land can be left entirely to the birds and beasts of the forest. I'll also be putting another grape in, bring the total to six in the grape arbor area which will --- fingers crossed --- finally have a brick patio area completed by summer.

I'll also be planting clumping bamboo over in that area for a privacy screen. That's my favorite part of the yard --- shaded by a huge oak, cool in the summer, peaceful and quiet. I have twin oaks on the other side of the yard area, but I haven't quite figured that out yet, although I do know many of the echinacea will be moved to that area next year.

Hopefully, the trees will be ready to plant, as well --- but I don't think so. I have a volunteer oak and a volunteer hickory that I'm nursing along --- they're about five inches tall and I spend a lot of time praying nothing gets to them first. I also have two pecans and three hickories (both 3 years old), a catalpa, a bur oak and a red maple. I think they might need another year or so before I officially plant them --- but we'll see. Maybe. My goal is to have all the weed trees out of here in ten years (yea, it's going to take that long) and replaced by "good" native trees --- hickories, pecans, a variety of oaks. I'm debating whether to plant a live oak --- they are native, but rare.

Lots of shrubs --- especially lots of lilac.

The rest:

Loofah, of course, but this year, for eating. I have enough scrubbies to last for years and everyone is getting a nice one for Christmas. I've been collecting loofah recipes for months and am excited about finally spending the summer chowing down on them. It'll be a feast for not only the bees and hummingbirds, but me.

Lemon grass in a container. Never tried it before but I have to have it. I don't think it will do very well when temps go below 40, though, so it will have to stay in a container.

Italian parsley again. I plan to make it a permanent crop, as it certainly looks like it's a perennial in this climate. Woah. Fresh picked parsley mid-winter is a definite treat.

Basil, of course.

Edible nasturtiums.

Patio tomatoes and Cherokee purples. I'm tempted to do the heirloom Romas again --- they have no taste mid-summer. But they're prolific and seem to get a good taste at the end of the season. I'm still feasting on some I picked green before the first freeze, and they're very, very good.

More echinacea and thyme. And birdhouse gourds again and Lion's Ear, of course, despite what a monstrosity they are. But the hummingbirds are crazy for them.

The trash dude is giving me a bunch of raspberries. Unbelievable, but he's got some variety which loves the heat. That's extraordinary --- so, in exchange for giving him a bunch of loofah last year, he's giving me raspberry bushes. Nice trade, huh?

Leaf amaranth --- I've never tried it before, but am very interested.

I have a kit from Monarch Watch with milkweed and interesting goodies. I haven't figured out where all of it will go, but I'm working on it.

And that's all I know so far. I haven't decided which flowers to go with. The Indian Peace Pipe was pretty good, but the bees and hummingbirds just weren't THAT crazy about it. Moonflowers, definitely and, of course, wild poinsettia.

But this is where I'm starting. We'll see where it goes from here.

mmerghpfl

2005-12-18T11:15:00.000-06:00

The graing was over Friday. I managed to get it done and get the grades turned in.

And some were frighteningly horrible and awful and some were better than my wildest expectations and the plagiarist was the only one thank god because this year I spent nearly two weeks warning them although one other person came close.

So I got the grades turned in Friday afternoon --- then got sick as a dog late Friday night, which is how I spent most of yesterday. Very very woozy.

So I crashed out last night and didn't wake up until just a few minutes ago. I was having the best dream, too --- about beatniks and wild 1950's style art and big city downtowns and hepcats.

I also had the best idea when waking up about where to move the bed and what to put on top of it and how to get around the fact that it already stands like 4' tall.

In any case, this was the worst grading yet. I spent from Wednesday night until Friday straight grading and I'm paying for it now.

First plagiarized paper down

2005-12-14T19:05:00.000-06:00

Not even thirty minutes into grading. Jeebus.

Here goes

2005-12-14T18:24:00.000-06:00

I just returned home with a mountain of final papers.

I've had my dinner (a truly sumptious mix of organic greens which were on sale at the grocery --- unbelievable, i cleaned them out for nothing!) (which reminds me, I tried sprinkling them with a few coriander seeds and, oh. my. GOD., was it good) and downed a large glass of primitivo wine to calm me sufficiently ...

... and I am now off to the races. I have to be done by Friday morning. Imbelievable! They changed when our grades are due, which means I may not be getting a wink of sleep until Saturday.

So here I go ...

An Osage Christmas Greeting

2005-12-13T19:17:00.000-06:00

Courtesy Carl Hasthay.

It must be good luck because the minute it arrived in my email box, it began raining here. A good thing during a record breaking drought.

Let the drinking commence

2005-12-13T14:54:00.000-06:00

I'm on the last leg of tabulating final grades. I pick up the last batch of papers tomorrow --- I plan to have them graded by Thursday and all grades tabulated shortly after. No monkeying around or cogitating on them this time around. They get what they get, and I get my sanity in return.

The Gumbo Diaspora, con't: Movement and Revival

2005-12-13T10:26:00.000-06:00

Shortly after Katrina, I began seeing Louisiana license plates everywhere here, in part because so many evacuees were being housed locally at Camp Gruber, Cookson and Fort Smith.

And despite my better self, horribly selfish thoughts began bubbling up --- in particular, I suddenly realized this meant a potential migration of Cajun and Creole foods to this area. Sure, there's a Cajun butcher who's been working up at the little store down the road. Which has meant real gumbo every Tuesday since I first discovered the store. However, we can't live on gumbo alone now, can we?

So I've been patiently watching and waiting for that first sign of the first Cajun or Creole restaurant. And my efforts have been rewarded.

Some evacuees have just opened their doors in Tahlequah, officially moving their restaurant from New Orleans to Tahlequah. A group I work with will be having their annual dinner there in the next week or so. I can't wait.

But food isn't all that's migrated to this area. We're now getting editorials in the local newspaper written not just by an evacuee --- but a trombone player. And not just a trombone player --- the organizer of Tahlequah's first ever second-line parade. And not just a trombone player and organizer of Tahleqyah's first ever second-line parade --- but a wonderfully savvy and straight shootin' writer.

Now, I don't know if this is Chris Lewis' first editorial in our paper. I suspect it isn't --- I've seen a number of New Orleans related editorials at the paper but, to be honest, just couldn't bring myself to read them. My feelings of helplessness and outrage have been almost mind numbing. And truth is, I haven't felt as if it is my place to speak words for the victims. They have to find their own words and not allow me --- or anyone else, for that matter --- muffle them with our speculations and rage and horror.

And Mr. Lewis has proven to me my instincts to keep my yap shut were right. He's kicking a few asses around, he is, and doing it with style.

So here it is. I'm copying it in full because the paper it's in only keeps articles in its archives for a week or so. Mr. Lewis, kick some ass!

New Orleans, Katrina and racism: A Superdome survivor's take

Was it racism? Racism has become so cloaked in political correctness in this country that it becomes hard to tell. Some might argue this point, but I believe there existed a simpler time in this country when racists called you a “nigger,” and there! It was out there. You knew where you stood, they knew where they stood - oftentimes rope, tree, mob and all.

But today, in our new politically correct, affirmative action, rope-free reality, where separate but equal has given way to equal but separate; where a black man can live next door and share tools with you but he can't date your daughter; where a black man still can't get a cab in New York City; where in the papers, pictures can be shown of hurricane victims leaving stores with goods to survive, and the whites are called victims and the blacks looters, the line has become more veiled.

In today's world, it appears lynch mobs don't form. They use acts of nature and inefficiency to do their work. Take New Orleans as a prime example.

As a former resident of not only New Orleans, but Jefferson Parish and the Superdome (during Katrina), I can honestly say ignorance existed on both sides. But while ignorance on the black side of things basically constituted crimes of pettiness (theft, vandalism, inconsideration, grift, public drunkenness, drug abuse, assault and just being a general ass about things), on the white, or authoritative, side of things, people died - by the hundreds. Levies were blown, neighborhoods were lost, a city was brought to its knees and struggles still to rise.

At present (not to the credit of its citizens but because Louisiana needs the cash), even now, bodies washed out to sea, hundreds missing and unaccounted for, bodies yet to be discovered, a Mardi Gras is being planned. And though I, myself, and my bandmates (Of the Second Chance Second Line Brass Band From New Orleans), paid homage to the lost in Tahlequah a few months ago, New Orleans itself has yet to do so. I find that objectionable - intrinsically wrong. There have been those who've called New Orleans a “haunted city.” I feel it could never be said truer than it can be now, with so many souls yet to be laid to rest.

Was it racism? Not in the traditional sense. I think it was inefficiency allowed to run amok due to the apathy toward those left behind. Many of those considered less than intelligent for having stayed were, in fact, simply too sick, too old, and too poor - myself included - to have motive, means or opportunity to leave. Those who rendered those judgments never thought to ask why someone might stay behind in a disaster zone, aside from ascribing such behavior to either simple stupidity or stubbornness.

That same apathy allowed those who controlled mass transit - on an urban, suburban and national level - to move the transports out of harm's way but to allow those who pay for transit almost daily to remain stranded. The same apathy allowed the leaders of those municipalities to suspend bus service in outlying areas, while offering free bus service at the last minute to anyone who could make it to only certain locations, to the relative shelter of the Superdome.

But I can't just blame the politicians, especially the locals. I've met Ray Nagin on two occasions, once at a funeral for a mutual friend and again at the Superdome on Day 3, after the storm, when FEMA first appeared and disappeared in little over an hour, not to be seen again until well after we reached out of state shelters. He was a man coming to grips with his new reality. He didn't have the National Weather Service, NASA, the Hubbell telescope and whatever else the federal government had at its disposal. All he had was his experience, which, in this case, was nil, and the governor and the president to back him up. He got screwed, like we did. He listened to Gov. Blanco, who listened to President Bush, and (as the saying goes) “hilarity ensued.” But what followed and continues to follow people like me is far from funny. And now, as the holidays approach, families - still splintered with members still lost, displaced and with members missing in action - have only what our federal government has bestowed, which in some cases, amounts to naught.

In most respects, I was lucky. I was in the middle of a move; I took the most important stuff and sealed it in a closet in my second-floor walkup and duct-taped the door. I salvaged it a month or so later, and my family is safe. I found myself drafted into a band with men I think of as the brothers I never had by blood, and gained a certain amount of notoriety from that, and helped the Red Cross help others of my evacuated brothers and sisters along the way. I met good people, like Chuck Cissel, curator of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall Of Fame (thereby discovering there was indeed a Oklahoma Jazz Hall Of Fame - which I was completely unaware of), and the mayor of Tulsa, Bill LaFortune, (who, by the way, is a pretty cool guy, for a Republican). The good people of Oklahoma, mostly white folk, took me in and gave me a place to stay. I found a job, and I've even started my own fledgling business, Flights Of Fancy LLC. In all things I have been truly blessed.

So where, might you ask, does my outrage come from? The ones who got left behind (both actually and metaphorically). Tragedy does a lot of things, most of them bad, but the one positive thing it does is shake loose apathy. It breeds compassion - ironically enough, mostly in the uninvolved. While in Louisiana, it was almost as if we were stripped of our citizenship, and in a very true sense, declared outlaws. It wasn't until we crossed the state line that it seemed to be restored. And as we crossed the distance, that reaffirmation became more acute. Make no mistakes, however, for every person uninvolved who helped us up after, there were those in the ‘Dome: gang bangers, drug dealers, Joe Schmoes, and John Q. Publics, anonymous in the crowd. People upstanding folks would consider either beneath them socially or would escape their notice entirely actually stood up where other more “upright” citizens became what they previously abhorred. I know this to be true, because I was both. The aloof, “upstanding” type, and in time, one who found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with people whom I previously shared no commonality, or bond. Indeed, people I felt an inherent need to avoid throughout my life, to save the lives of those fallen because, again, ironically, they were the ones who stood up while others fell morally and socially by the wayside.

This point in human history was truly a remarkable place to be stranded in. And while I personally am glad it's over, I know in many ways, for many of us - because of the trauma; the unrecoverable loss of irreplaceable loved ones and items of sentiment and true value; the surrounding ambiance of death; the memories of incompetence, injustice, callousness, fear and despair that still claw at the sleep, hearts, minds and souls of many of us - it can never be over.

Was it racism? Was it apathy? Was it incompetence? I think, be it one, two, none or all of those things to you as an individual reader, what it should be to us all, as a people, is a wake-up call.

- - - - -

Chris Lewis is a New Orleans evacuee who stayed for a time at Camp Gruber. He played the trombone in Tahlequah's “second-line parade,” and currently lives in Tulsa.

There's a bee in the house

2005-12-12T16:04:00.000-06:00

It's the middle of December and there's a bee in the house.

As for our current political state of mind ...

2005-12-11T12:52:00.000-06:00

I dunno ...

Part of it is burnout, I know.

Part of it is the simple need for survival --- I have a lot of things I want to do, so I need to live a very long time and I have to find ways to do that without becoming yet another booted to the street scraggly grey haired old lady living in a cardboard box. So much of my energy is going to that.

But part of it is also some disenchantment with many progressives.

It comes as no surprise to me, for example, that progressives would rather listen to dolled up fellow progressives speaking in terms they understand than to real live Indians. The Ward Churchill matter was proof enough for me, but I've run into it in even more noxious terms in recent months.

That strikes me as emblematic of many of the problens with liberalism in today's world. It's also a key reason why so many Indian people I know consider themselves totally unrepresented --- and have no love for liberals.

This has really turned me off. If progressives can't get the simple message that they need to listen to the actual people, be they poor, Indian, whatever, instead of clownish knockoffs of the real thing, what's the point really?

And isn't this proof that while Republicans have come to be representative of only the wealthy, then Dems and progressives have become representative only of well educated suburban whites? The Latte Drinking charge?

In other words, I find myself finding myself with less and less in common with many progressives.

But I still hold progressive values and still believe a liberal agenda is much less texic to our wellbeing than the extremist Republican agenda.

But I'm still cogitating on it all. So that's why I just don't have a lot to say about it all right now.

Admission: I haven't taken a bath since last Tuesday night

2005-12-11T10:13:00.000-06:00

And I've been sleeping in the same clothes --- an ancient velour black turtleneck which I've always favored because it makes me feel like a beatnik and the quasi-fashionable grey running pants --- , in other words, my beloved threadbare painting clothes.

It has nothing to do with depression, although that's the typical reaction I get whenever I do this.

It has to do with the mission quality of my life right now. Everything Is A Mission. Every Move I Make Is Purposeful.

On Wednesday, I canceled all my Friday classes, floored the car home and put my painting clothes on. I then began painting, determined to finish before classes begin again in January. I moved furniture from one side of the room to the other then back again then to the middle then to the kitchen then to the hallways. I've been teetering on ladders, pulling cans of beets and tart red cherries (unsweetened) off shelves, slapping paint here and there and everywhere and back again.

I've been painting to Kurosawa's Ran and Seven Samurai, as well as Supersize Me!, Igby Goes Down and the first I, Claudius.

Now the noxious pink walls which had infected my life, which had overstimulated my exhausted neurons and stem cells with all their red redness, which had created a horrible hellish "hotness" to my entire home --- now, nearly all of it has disappeared under layers of sedate, neutral, appropriate, pedestrian Navajo White.

I'll admit, I was sorely tempted by the color schemes in Meet The Fockers. I even have cans and cans of shocking pinks, darings blues, glaring greens, sueded oranges and worse, all purchased for $3 over the last year off the reject paint shelves of the local Lowes.

But the pink was so bad, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I settled for painting the kitchen cabinets a pleasant palish blue-green, a very old fashioned color which if you look closely enough, you can see in various rooms throughout the original Peyton Place.

The movies are the only place to find great color schemes.

The rest of the wild paints will go to painting much of the extremely pedestrian but functional furniture I've acquired in recent years. Most of it prefab and functional, but dullsville, man, seriously dullsville. So the steel topped cabinet which I use to make coffee and tea and to chop garlic and squeeze lemons and oranges and when they're in season ruby reds from Texas is fixing to be transformed from the silliest faux wood (except its steel top) to dashing red and bright blue and screaming yellow and some pink and green, too.

But that's not all. Even better, the heavy drapes I got for energy conservation which looked so good in the store and are made of a gorgeous almost Turkish kind of woven fabric but which acquired an almost imperial quality once up have been replaced by handsewn barkcloth curtains made with fabric I've been purchasing for two years now, just because. Because I really liked this fabric. You see, some of that student loan repayment money I've been putting aside has actually been going to one of my secret passions: cool fabrics.

Today in celebration of only having two more rooms to paint, including a tiny bathroom which I will go ahead and paint wildly maybe although I'll probably repaint again maybe --- today, I'm taking a bath and washing my painting clothes.

And tomorrow, I start it all over again.

I'm still really and truthfully not ignoring you and your comments

2005-12-10T07:58:00.000-06:00

I seem to be going through some kind of an invasion of the bodysnatchers thing.

For example, everything that I once held holy seems to be falling to the wayside, with little to no effort on my part.

Where I once considered a nice big bowl of beef stew to be the ultimate in healthy eating, I've become one of those scary women who actually lunches on a salad and a glass of wine, and calls herself done.

This has been happening out of the blue.

I've also been becoming management, although I've always considered it my highest duty to Merry Prankster the world.

Suddenly, I spend hours on the phone with my sister, explaining to her why her administrator (in a hospital) is doing the things he's doing and why he's right to do them.

Worse, while one of my greatest strengths as a teacher has been my ability to empathize with troubled students, I have become a bitch. The latest is, I've invoked what I call the 70% solution: if a paper is unreadable due to bad grammar and/or organization, the highest grade it can get is 70%. Of course, given those kinds of papers are usually ripe with logical errors, etc., and fail to address an assignment at all meaningfully, this really means the highest grade a student can get is maybe a 60% or even 50. IOW, the big fat F,

The scariest of all: I've been faithfully paying back my student loans instead of spending all my time and effort trying to get out of them. This one actually started months ago, maybe two years ago or shortly after I bailed on grad school, but it's accelerated into a virtual mission. Even though I qualify for all kinds of deferments and whatnot, I've been bucking it up and slashing the budget to the bone and paying the highest possible amount I can, while simultaneously putting anything extra into a high interest savings account.

In fact, it's this that's triggered the rest. It began when I stopped buying any significant amount of meat because meat cut too deeply into my student loan payment money. I still buy it, but in absurdly small amounts which then become part of other meals composed primarily of vegetables.

Then, a year ago, I realized (which I already secretly knew but refused to acknowledge) that, if I got another job in addition to the one I have, I could pay them off in no time flat. About that time, the university where I teach asked me to apply for a fulltime position --- but I didn't because I hate meetings too much. If they were to ask today, though, I'd go for it. I'd just have to suck it up for the meetings.

Now this has fed the body snatcher phenomenon. I've always reveled in my eccentric raison d'etre and beingness, my inner Merry Prankster, and all that has certainly contributed to my popularity as a teacher (have you seen how she throws her hands around? her arms are always flapping in the wind! did you know she uses nohtyP ytnoM to teach logic??!!). However, all that distracts from my ability to obtain other employment. I'm not very good lumber store material, IOW, and I would definitely scare patients in doctors' offices --- in fact, they would probably boot me for unwittingly reading Tibetan Book of the Dead in front of terminal patients.

So, in sum ... where I once resented paying the student loans back, I now find it to be one of the most gratifying experiences in my life. Every month, I relish the time spent figuring how much the balances (because there are three) are dropping.

And this enjoyment has taken over everything else. It's like being a sex addict. It's my mission.

So I need to make more money, meaning I have to become more mainstream, which requires more clothes which also requires I slash the budget even more and which means every time I get a good coupon (40% off your highest priced item!!), I take that coupon and search for the perfect little shirt or whatever --- just one whatever, though, because the good coupons are always only for the single --- one highest priced item.

I even bought a coat, the first I've had in six years. Well, sure, you don't really need them here, given in a normal year, it's only really cold for a couple of days. But still --- I now own a coat, purchased at half price with another 40% off (the savings which then either went into my high interest savings account or toward student loans) --- another signpost along the way.

I'm even considering a fashionable haircut, as that will make me a for sure desirable hire for any position.

All this interferes with blogging. The hours i could spend blogging are now being spent cutting hundreds of dollars off my car insurance, money which then goes for well you know the drill. I spent three days trying to cut my ISP payments in half. I succeeded. Next came long distance: down from over $30 a month to $5. Of course, I can't call anyone anymore, but who cares?

Etc.

I have to do all these things, but it does cause problems for blogging. When your mind is obsessed with how to make more money, it's hard to focus on the blog.

But I'm still trying. I love my blog and I refuse to give it up. I just have to get myself through this bodysnatchers thing.

By the way ...

2005-12-04T14:38:00.000-06:00

I'm not ignoring your comments.

My latest Blogspot conundrum is that I have become unable to post comments. I really have no idea anymore.

The good news is ...

2005-12-03T15:36:00.000-06:00

About a month ago, when the weather cooled down, I began adding Concern Compost Activator to my composter. I went out earlier today to add some kitchen goodies and decided to turn everything --- and much to my surprise, nearly everything in there has completely composted.

At this rate, by next spring, I'll have fifty cubic yards of nice dirt and compost. Although I might go ahead and pull what's in there out and screen it, in order to get the uncomposted stuff back in the composter. Which would mean even more dirt and compost, come spring.

Wildfires

2005-12-02T16:50:00.000-06:00

There have been wildfires here since last Sunday, due to record breaking drought and high winds. Today, I came home to find burnt paper in one of my garden beds. I'm assuming it blew over here from one of the fires just south of me --- 11 square miles of a wildlife refuge burnt to a crisp. Or perhaps it came from the mountain just southwest of me which burnt Sunday night and into Monday.

I certainly hope it isn't yet another sign of the arsonist(s) who set fire to the refuge.

It's been pretty nerve-wracking, although I don't know if I'm more concerned about the fires or the drought.

I think I'm more worried about the drought. If my place gets burned to a crisp, at least I have a minimum of three routes out of here, and things can be replaced. But I'm extremely worried about my ancient trees and gardens and birds and frogs and other critters.

On Tuesday, I began setting the hose out to drench the areas right around my home. I keep a timer going --- I allow the hose to run fullblast (which, until today, wasn't much, due to the fires and drought) for 20 minutes a spot, then move it. I'll keep doing that until I feel some certainty that I'm not completely surrounded by not simply dry ground and foilage, but fuel for fires.

The drought, as far as I know, has already surpassed the one which led to the Dust Bowl. The difference is that farmers are using different agricultural methods and much of the land has been turned over to grazing, which, done properly, is actually good for the land.

The good news is, fire and drought kill ticks and other vermin. It also promotes nice, new growth and helps clear out overgrown forest areas. So it's, in fact, desperately needed here and a part of a natural cycle.

The bad news is, fire is indiscriminate in what it destroys. So homes are destroyed, along with overgrown forest, hay bales, fields, animals.

It's not nearly so bad today as it's been the past few days. Sunday, I slept in my clothes because I was unable to locate the fires and was relatively certain I should evacuate. And that fire was close --- a mountain literally two-three miles just southwest of me went up in flames. It took two days to put it out. Some time on Monday, the refuge began burning.

On my drive to work Monday, visibility was horrible because of all of the smoke and many of my students (and fellow teachers) were in a panic because their homes were threatened. Roads were blocked by fire crews, power was off, people were leaving early to help parents and brothers and sisters and friends hold off the fires with hoses.

Wednesday, I got about twenty miles from home and the smoke was thick. I stopped at the grocery and asked where the fires were. They mentioned a hill on the river, not knowing that hill was only a mile or so from my home. I floored it back here in a panic and was relieved to find clear blue skies and no smoke because the winds had changed. But I was saddened to hear how much of the refuge was burned --- 11 square miles, with the flames reaching all the way to a certain small town I have a soft spot in my heart for.

I understand why this is happening and a little part of me is glad --- I know the fires will kill off much of our most malignant insect and vermin population.Still, it's scary and I really wish the rains would return.

Cultural Icon Ruth Siems Dies

2005-11-23T13:55:00.000-06:00

Although truth be known, I was never a fan of Stovetop Stuffing. And it was rarely, if ever used, while I was growing up.

I prefer cornbread stuffings made with sausage and lots of homegrown sage. And I grew up on wild rice stuffing. The wild rice was always cooked with the giblets and neck, then blended with old breads, celery, onion, sage and that secret Mother Ingredient which she never revealed.

But turkey was never a given in our family. One Thanksgiving, the centerpiece for the meal was prairie chicken stuffed with hominy. Mmmm. That was a memorable meal.

The elk chili incident is probably best forgotten, although i suppose it was good --- for elk.

My sister's been put in charge of the cooking this year and will be making wild rice dressing. I consdered making a casserole of cornbread dressing, but decided hey --- she's the one who's volunteered and she's determined to make wild rice dressing, so I'll just let her. I'm not sure yet what my contribution will be, although I'm leaning toward cranberry orange relish --- it's so easy to make and so yummy. Just put the cranberries through the grinder, and chill with lots of fresh orange juice and sugar.

It's a shame Ms. Siems died before this year's national celebration of her life's accomplishment.

Projects

2005-11-22T11:03:00.000-06:00

While my hands are recovering, I'm plotting on and beginning still more projects.

First, I'm repainting my entire place. That lovely sand color with a bit of rose in it that I was so certain was the right color, if I would just finish painting the place has turnd out to be pink. Really pink. It feels like a bordello in here. And it's got so much red in it that it's interrupting my REM sleep. So I've chosen a neutral Navajo white. Let's hope it works.

I haven't gotten my gutters yet, but that will happen in the spring. i've already hired someone. They'll also be helping me put up the back porch (finally).

And the plumber will be by to divert my laundry and bath water to a container in the backyard, for use in watering.

Then, of course, there's all my solar projects. Ah, the joys of no building codes! I'll begin by geting the computer completely solar powered. Next, I hope by next summer to run the air conditioner completely off solar. Once I've accomplised those two projects (although I may go with getting the refrigerator and DVD off solar, as well), I'll start trying to figure out hot water. I'm undecided whether to go solar or tankless.

And finally, of course, there are the gardens. I gave the trash dude some seeds last year from heirloom plants. He's so excited about them that he's giving me raspberry plants this year. !!! So in addition to a blueberry patch, I'll be getting a raspberry patch going. I'm also building new beds for elderberries (which never got planted this year), beans and gourds.

And trees. Always with the trees. A privacy screen or two will also go in, come spring --- I already have the trees and bushes for them, but haven't yet figured out the exact placement.

At least my thumbs have been cooperating in the planning. :=D

Well, this is annoying

2005-11-20T12:50:00.000-06:00

I've developed a kind of arthritis in both my hands which causes my thumbs to pop out of joint whenever they feel like it. It's from overuse and I suppose I should be grateful I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome, but this is absurd. If I try to pick up something heavy --- which I've always done with no real problems --- my thumb will pop out of joint. If I don't pay attention to what I'm doing with my hands, a thumb (or two) will pop out of joint. If I'm not careful how I sleep, my thumbs pop out of joint.

I posted several weeks ago that I'd injured my hand careening over one of my pups late one night when I tried to sneak into the kitchen for a snack. I assumed I'd pulled a tendon or whatever. But noooooo, it couldn't be that simple, could it? Instead, after nursing that hand for days and days, I realized I was having a hard time keeping that thumb in the joint --- and then the same thing started to happen on the other hand!

I can't tell you the bizarre scenarios which have come to mind in recent days. I suddenly became quite certain that somehow this was only the beginning, that within a matter of weeks, I wouldn't be able to keep anyting in the proper joint. I wouldn't be able to walk because everything would be merrily popping out of joint. I would have to join the circus or give up and live on the sofa watching Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. I'd have to apply for disability, citing my inability to keep anything in the joint.

However, looks like it's just the hands. Treatment? Splints (yea, right, like that's going to happen) and anti-inflammatories.

Well, it really could be worse. But still, this is the stupidest thing I ever heard of.

Vine Deloria

2005-11-19T07:24:00.000-06:00

When I heard that Vine Deloria had passed, I felt not only sadness but a deeply physical sense that his death is yet another bellwether of the end. Oh sure, there are all those people in their academic shrouds who insist that there are so, so many others to carry on and that there's life, the Indian People are Survivors and They Will Survive. But there aren't and they won't.

This is the sad truth of Indian Country. It is something I came to terms with years ago --- all the chest thumping in the world cannot and will not erase hundreds of years of oppression and devastation.

It's probably not a coincidence that the day after Deloria's death, I sat with several Indian women listening to their tales of meth use and child abuse and molestation and prison and commitment to psychiatric hospitals. I looked into their black eyes and wondered if they would ever come to see that the circumstances of their lives signal that the process of colonization is nearly complete --- and that, without a miracle, the only possible outcome of this process is the complete destruction and assimilation of all Indian peoples. It's an intentional outcome neatly foreseen over 200 years ago. It mirrors the fragmentation and chaos of Africa, and is no different, except that Indians have been spatially and intellectually confined to small areas of land, which means the larger society can deny the reality and mythologize them for their own convenience. Not a one really wants to know.

I remember when I was still all hope and determination about it all --- I remember a young girl in a community I was working with who had clear signs of fetal alcohol syndrome, as did her mother. And I remember how furiously I denied this to myself, just as I denied the significance when I was told about the 15 year old pregnant at the same time as her mother and by the same man. Just as I denied the significance of being jumped by a men in the community I worked in --- and all of his sisters didn't bat an eye when they saw because this is just the way it is.

On the outside, everyone talks about the honor and the traditions and the deep faith and the courage of the Indian peoples, their spiritual fortitude, their complex and subtle beliefs, their connection to Mother Earth. But these people don't see the elders living back in the woods in delapidated trailer homes with rotting floors and peeling roofs, forced to cohabit with drugged children and grandchildren because there is no one else to care for them. They don't hear the stories of 75 year olds freezing to death in winter because they fell when they went out at 3 a.m. to get more wood for the stove. They don't see the seven year olds living on Snickers and wandering around without shoes because their father is who knows where and their mother is drugged up. They don't sit in line at the grocery behind Indian families and see carts full of exactly the foods which will kill them with deadly precision.

They know nothing of the corruption and ineptitude of tribal governments which are nothing more than the final hammers, instruments of the United States government which will insure that, in 50 years time, there will be no more Indians --- there will only be people pretending to be Indians and perpetuating the mythologies.

Vine was such a bright spot. I remember sitting in archaeology and physical anthropology courses, watching smoke spitting out of the ears of my professors and fellow students. He really pissed them off. They couldn't see the contradictions and gaps in their philosophies, yet accused accused and accused again Vine of their very own sins. The more they hated him, the more I loved him.

I remember sitting in an office with a Native professor as she told me about something she was writing with Vine --- how the spread of Judeo-Christian traditions intentionally created the false divisions between space and time, and how the medicine men go to that place to do their work.

I remember the sheer intellectual excitement of his work, the sense of recognition when I first read him so many years ago.

And there is no one to replace him.

And I wish that I could see a sign for him. Bob Thomas' son wrote of his father's passing, describing driving his body frm Oklahoma to Arizona and how in the last hours of their journey, the clan animals could be seen running alongside their car to take his father home. I sat once at a stomp dance and heard someone next to me mention that the ground's chief had been in the hospital. I remember looking up and seeing him dancing around the fire and thinking to myself what a tough guy he was and how much he must love his stomp grounds to be there so soon after his deadly illness. It was only two days later I was told he had died in the hospital about the time I saw him.

This is the reality of the Indian people. This is what the Westerners must kill.

And now Vine has been enfolded by it. I hope that his journey has been a good one.

I think I've just entered the not drunk, but tipsy phase of my life

2005-11-14T19:23:00.000-06:00

Tonight, after returning from a community organization meeting (where I announced that I spent yesterday half drunk), I made myself a lovely salad of mixed greens and beets --- always with the beets --- doused with some Braggs Liquid Aminos, a healthy sprinkle of Braggs Seasoning and some homemade blue cheese dressing. I then pulled the chicken from the stock and set into a separate bowl for nibbling.

Then I poured a nice big glass of Zinfandel (Toad Hollow) and sat down to eat.

With healthy slugs of wine between bites.

And when I was finished, I found myself thinking that when I die, I will really miss wine.

I never before realized just how much I like wine. I've hardly drunken any since I moved out here, for fear of being labelled that odd woman who runs around half drunk planting odd plants. But that was all tossed into the air yesterday when sme guy who lives down the road recognized my car at the liquor store in town (and it's an amazing little liquor store, too --- great, great wine selection and they ordered me a mess of primitivo wine --- A Mano, which I'm very interesting in trying) ran into the store while i was there on some bogus excuse, then followed me home and tore off fast as lightning to tell everyone I'm a drinkin' woman.

So much for that cleancut reputation I've got going. Well, except that they all think I'm a pothead. But who the hell cares? Now they're sure I'm drunk all the time. And so I am.

It's easier to do chores when you're a bit drunk

2005-11-14T16:37:00.000-06:00

I discovered this simple fact today, after stopping on my way home after work and purchasing a nice bottle of wine. Of course, when I got here, I had to sample it, just to make sure. So I poured a fair sized shot into a drinking glass decorated with bumble bees.

Then, just to really make sure, I had another fair sized glass with lunch: a buffalo burger (sans bun) and some beets.

I think I have never had such an enjoyable time doing chores.

Tulsa school system is disguising the number of assaults on teachers

2005-11-13T08:18:00.000-06:00

Ar least according to KTUL, a local television station.

It doesn't surprise me at all. I'm quite sure, however, that the Republican extremists who've taken over the city are blaming it on "those" people. You know --- the ones who lack lily white skin, perfect good ole boy diction and requisite local pedigree (<--- read: healthy bank account or descent from the local "good" families). The Mexicans and Blacks, in other words.

And while it is true that the number of Hispanics in the city has skyrocketed in recent years and gangs have become a very real problem, I've had enough runins with the products of these schools to know ethnicity has nothing to do with it. With the exception of one, every student I have had serious problems with has been white. And more than a few have come from so-called "prominent" families.

The moneybags in Tulsa, the local leaders, will not acknowledge that the real problem is the culture these kids are coming from. For one, most of the schools in Tulsa really suck. They suck because the powers that be pay lip service to the importance of education, but are really more concerned with funding the high school football teams. Teachers are paid an unbelievably bad wage. And there is little incentive for students to read or work math problems or wonder about Orion.

Instead, the people who've taken over Tulsa shove religion down everyone's throat, believing that their punitive God is adequate to the task of child rearin'.

I'm sorry, but their punitive God exists only in their fantasies, only in their dreams of being the superior breed. These local leaders and their minions deserve their punitive God because they are, at heart, sociopaths. They share among their ranks those who shove under the rug that they're descendants of the men who burned Greenwood, who lynched unknown numbers of their fellow Black citizens, who decimated America's Black Wall Street. They share in the brotherhood of those who sit in the local fine dinin' establishments whispering about "the Jews" and worse.

You can't rell me it doesn't happen because I've heard them. I've sat with them listening to their whispers about "the Jews". I've even had them brand me a Jew.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they're counting their money and slipping drinks --- or crank --- on the side or pretending their children aren't huffing. They threaten the teachers who catch their children plagiarizing and cheating.

And then they blame the teachers, who they expect to clean up their messes.

Is it any wonder that their children are out of control?

I am more back ...

2005-11-12T19:34:00.000-06:00

... than I have been in weeks. Too much has gone on --- too much! But I think I've turned a corner, knock on wood.

I feel better than I have for a long time. I still have way too much (including grading) to do, but the students have backed down and the country seems to be catching on to Bush and his evil empire. So that's good.

The bad news is, they've caught on after the Republicans got put into office, which has meant the deaths of how many thousands of people? the bankrupting of the country, the stripping of any kind of safety net for anyone but the rich (and the corporations), and etc.

I am so very tired of all of it. It leaves me feeling really quite passionless anymore. The face of evil will do that, you know --- strip you of any feeling and leave you empty.

So the news is somewhat mixed this week. The big news for me is that the treefrogs in the composter have finally gone into hibernation. It's still much too warm for mid-November, but I was starting to worry about their ability to stay okay in the composter. It's been three days now since I've seen them.

One of the treefrogs was getting to be downright personable, too. He's the most monstrous of the bunch and always up to some kind of hijinx. I learned to be very careful lifting the lid because he was usually barely hanging off the inside rim --- if you've never seen a treefrog hanging on for dear life by the front and back legs on only one side, you've missed out. He used to try to hide and peek out at me, sure i couldn't see him.

Here he is as a young fellow.

He looks a bit like a tiny dinosaur, doesn't he? Very different from the other treefrogs in the composter, who have almost Buddha-like presences.

I once caught him right after he'd eaten too much and was looking positively obese,just blown up like a balloon. If I'm not mistaken, he must have either burped or backwards-burped (if you catch my drift), as his huge pot belly suddenly expanded in size, then went back to normal. My my, a gassy little fellow!

The leopard frogs meanwhile are trying to hibernate right under the leaves. I keep moving them to safer spots, but it's not working! Oh well, looks like i won't be raking til next summer.

Meanwhile, I have maybe five cardinal pairs setting up camp for the winter. And after a very strange month or so after Katrina where ALL the birds here disappeared, things are finally back to normal and the birds are once again everywhere preparing to hunker down for the winter.

I just want normal life. That's all.

OMG!!!

2005-11-11T13:42:00.000-06:00

It works! Blogger support did some kind of doodling around so Safari can work, and it worked!!!

OMG! Okay, I have to go cut down some trees (read: take my loppers out back and whop down some skinny old things), but I'll be back later and maybe even post!

I'm so excited!

So here's a little something to hold you til I'm back: I just ordered the Dalai Lama's Universe in an Atom and Shaft (the movie). Woah ....

me after days of stressing over my inability to post a blog entry ---- > !

Testing again

2005-11-11T13:39:00.000-06:00

testing testing testing ....

And again

2005-11-10T10:15:00.000-06:00

Testing yet again

2005-11-10T10:02:00.000-06:00

Testing again

2005-11-10T09:57:00.000-06:00

testing testing

You just don't even want to know

2005-11-02T21:01:00.000-06:00

And it's not even that it's so dramatic or anything.

It's just that I've somehow managed to come up with a crop of the most ... AWFUL ... students imaginable. I'll manage to rise above one eruption, only to have another even more bizarre one bubble up.

Today it was the four nurse wannabes having snitfits in class because they're barely literate, they can't follow instructions, but they want As anyway because they're so sure they deserve it besides which I don't know what the hell I'm talking about because nursing school is easy!

< me banging head on the floor because I don't even have the strength anymore to crawl onto the nearest sofa and drink myself into a stupor>

The members of the Gang of Four, to a person, have already purchased their extremely expensive SUVs in anticipation of the $90,000+ or so they're sure they're going to make as soon as they become nurses which they assume is a certainty because hey it's easy, right?

WRONG.

These people are wearing me out. But see, that's the point. The Gang of Four is composed of adults, no less, so they know EXACTLY what they're doing. They're quite certain if they just go after me from all angles, I'll finally give up and present them with As for their trouble for not even bothering to follow the instructions half the time not to mention their complete inability to write a single comprehensible sentence with absolute no indication of anything even beginning to resemble clearly demarcated end of sentence punctuation.

So their writing look kind of like this it go on and on and on the sentence never end and there are no subject verb agreement and quite often not even a clearly discernible subject and/or verb {your choice which is missing} but they want A anyway.

Or maybe they think I should give them As for their creative uses of the semicolon.; Get; thepicture;.

< considering the peace awaiting me after I fling myself out the window>

As for the job --- I have never been so completely unqualified for any job in my life. The salary was absolutely fabulous, however, so --- much like my little nurse wannabes --- I actually considered doing everything possible to get the job because I figured it would take them at least a year to figure out how completely unqualified I was for it, and by then I would have stashed thousands into a nice savings account with high interest and i could spend the rest of my life being a hobby farmer!

Oh woohoo!

An ethical dilemma indeed! And one which I narrowly avoided plummeting into the abyss of - mmm, of - of let's say SATAN! :=D (I mean, this IS Oklahoma!). So after half a day of considering whether I could get away with such blatant lying on my resume and actually fool them long enough to get a nice bank account going ... I decided no way I could pull it off.

Which made the hellions I'm currently dealing with look even more horrible.

Really. They make me fear for the future of this planet.

I'm trying to write ...

2005-10-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

... a resume for a job that I have absolutely no qualifications for. Despite this, there are people quite certain I will not only land the job, but will do better in it than anyone ever has in the entire history of that job's existence.

I'm not so sure, however. I mean, I just spent two weeks thinking my digicam was broken because I kept forgetting to take the lens cap off. Yes, I'm exhausted, but --- ? That's lame, man, lame, and doesn't speak well of my ability to take on this high powered job requiring nonstop multitasking and decision-making and lean mean cognitive mental power machine capavilities.

But i have to do something. My current job is plum wearing me out. The kicker came when an insane female student who has been causing me trouble since the beginning of the semester, when this student basically threatened me. The whole thing has turned into this huge thing which is now fortunately completely out of my hands. But good gawd, people.

It totally exhausted my little brain.

So I don't know. My last computer crashed before I had time to print out my most recent resumes. And I can't even quite remember what I was doing five years ago. So that's not helping any.

But I'm doing the resume anyway and applying for this job I have absolutely no qualifications for and by gawd we'll just see now, won't we.

Gawd, let this semester be over!

You see, it's like this

2005-10-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

My right hand is wrapped up in an ACE bandage. No, I still don't know what I did to it, although I'm kind of suspicious that getting up in the middle of the night, charging into the kitchen for a snack, tripping over the Moose Dog and flying across the room with the dog wrapped around one of my legs probably had something to do with it.

I've had the bandage on a week or so, and it IS getting better. But not enough that I can type my little heart away like I usually do.

The good news is, thanks to the incident with the bicycle chain when I was five (you really don't want to know about that), I was forced to use my left hand for about half a year --- coming from ambidextrous people anyway, the result is I'm pretty darned good with both hands. Although I can no longer do mirror writing.

The bad news is, it takes me so long to write anything, I get bored about a sentence or two into it and say ah shoot, let's go (fill in the blank).

It is getting better though.

Or maybe I'm just a very lazy blogger right now.

Although ...

2005-10-07T15:18:00.000-05:00

Good for you for your vote today, Congressman Boren.

Dan Boren, how could you?

2005-10-07T13:55:00.000-05:00

I know i'm a week late in this, but say what? What was the point of voting against it?

Will you be showing support for Tyson next and helping say bye bye to the Illinois and our groundwater?

Good hair

2005-10-07T12:58:00.000-05:00

This weekend is the annual family reunion with the good hair side of the family: the Cherokee Pentecostal Holinesses. The hair on these women is to die for! My sister and I go every year, and spend our time eyes agog in jealousy and disbelief: thick, lustrous, bone-straight hair to the knees. Gorgeous and healthy, unimpeded and unsavaged by all the modern solutions. Really quite enough to make me go religious. Well, not really, but still.

In any case, I do apologize for my continuing silence. There's simply so much going on, added to the ongoing chaos that the students are causing. I am really having to kick their butts this year, which is kicking mine in turn.

So please be patient --- I will be back babbling on about just anything, because this no extra minute stuff simply can't continue.

I've just spent ...

2005-10-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

... 7 hours straight writing schedules and assignment guidelines for my classes.

This comes after days of doing --- well, almost exatly the same.

Add to that, Blogger has been eating my posts --- I swear, I get them posted and POOF, they disappear. And it just hasn't been in the cards to post, although I have mountains of news. But most of it is old now.

In any case, hopefully I've just laid out the rest of the semester for all my classes and I can get back to blogging! Fingers crossed.

Oh to hell with politics

2005-10-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

And a bigger to hell with gardening, Peak Oil and TEOTWAWKI.

This is the best dish I've read in months. Get 'em, go get 'em!!!!

Fall is here

2005-09-29T16:52:00.000-05:00

The storms yesterday were caused by a cold front colliding with our absurdly hot weather. Temps last night dropped into the 50s.

But that's not how i know fall's here.

I know fall's here because the fellow who pastures his horses here showed up after the storms yesterday to brushhog my place. And i know fall's here because I pulled the air conditioner out of the window and spread straw all around the baby trees and bushes. And I started digging up all the iris. And I pulled the heater out of the closet.

It's been summer here since February. Bout time it was over.

A bit of advice

2005-09-28T15:45:00.000-05:00

Should you decide Day After Tomorrow is just the DVD you want to see, make sure you don't start watching it a few minutes before a giant thunderstorm with torrential rains and straightline winds moves through.

Let me tell you, I about had a heart attack.

If you've always suspected the wingnuts are --- well, nuts

2005-09-28T05:44:00.000-05:00

... here's your proof

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developing democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

The White House, FEMA and Homeland Security take care of business

2005-09-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

Gleefully kyped from Progressive Blog Digest, who got it from someone else.

Monarchs are here

2005-09-27T08:37:00.000-05:00

They began showing up last week, but it now appears official, at least t my amateur eyes --- the migration is on! I'm trying to get pictures of them.

It's such a trite thing to say, but those monarchs are just the cheeriest creatures!

Hummers!

2005-09-25T09:01:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it --- I finally got pics of a hummingbird! They're not the best, but they're a start.

Mind you, this also convinces me to plant lion's ear next year. I'd pretty well decided against it --- the plants are just huge, with one or two nearly 9'. Ridiculous! But I've never seen the hummingbirds so crazy for any flower. They're positively bonkers. So the lion's ear stays.

Look for the blur. :-) Not only is the hummer frantically winging, it's quite windy out, so the plants are swaying. The blur is the giveaway.

I’d never seen a man so broken. He had watched his wife drown and then floated for 14 hours in polluted floodwaters on a piece of driftwood.

2005-09-25T07:42:00.000-05:00

The extraordinary Times Picayune put New York Times and the rest of the bunch to shame.

Via Making Light:

The Saturday after Hurricane Katrina drowned my city, I sat alone in a rented Jeep in front of the latest headquarters of the Times-Picayune’s “New Orleans bureau”—our fifth in as many days—pounding furiously on a laptop, taking belts of Johnnie Walker Red to beat back tears. I was locked out of the staff’s uptown house, awaiting the return of the tiny team of colleagues that now represented the entirety of the paper’s presence in the city we once dominated. …

[...]

My crying bout that morning had been hardly unique, for myself or for the rest of the New Orleans-based crew. I had watched a woman die on the street. Arkansas National Guardsmen had carted her body away to put with the others inside the food service entrance at the rear of the Convention Center. They’d been murdered, or they’d perished, like the woman in front of me, from simple lack of food, water and medicine—here in America, here in my hometown.

What broke me wasn’t the horror but the beauty of the sight just a few feet away, of refugee Anita Roach defiantly belting out gospel standards, leading a chorus of family members and complete strangers. We locked eyes, a poor black woman who had barely escaped death in the Lower 9th Ward and a relatively well-fed white reporter with a dry Uptown house and a rented SUV.

I lost it. My notebook and pen fell to my sides in my limp arms. I mouthed the words “Thank you” as she finished. She smiled and nodded. I walked to her through the filth, and she wrapped me in a bear hug. I sat her down and bled her and her family of the details of their suffering and the strength that now poured out of them in song. I knew then I’d never forget the privilege.

[...]

Even before we’d stared the devil in the face, we knew Katrina had unleashed hell when Publisher Ashton Phelps, clearly distraught, announced the evacuation Tuesday morning.

Normally unshakably composed, Phelps, from the old-money family that has run the Picayune for generations, bounced from department to department in the three-story building shouting: “Get out of the building—now! You can not stay in the building!”

[...]

A few of us started grumbling immediately. We can’t just leave the world’s biggest story in our own hometown, we griped in hushed conversations. Sports Editor David Meeks, formerly the suburban editor and the man who hired me in 1998, harnessed the unrest. He made the pitch to Editor Jim Amoss: Give me a delivery truck and a small group of writers. We’ll go back.

“How are you going to eat?” Amoss asked him. “How are you going to file?”

I love that part.

It’s a long piece. I’m going to have to skip over the part about the Wal-Mart. Other stuff, too. This is an amazing story. Onward to:

[...]

McCusker, Pompilio and I pulled up to the St. Claude Avenue Bridge in our truck, stinking of swamp water and the cigarettes I had been chain-smoking. The bridge over the Industrial Canal marked the dividing line between deluged and merely flooded.

[...]

Returning from St. Bernard with a deadline looming, we rode on a boat full of rescued people, a dog and a duffel bag full of cats one woman had smuggled onto the boat without the captain’s knowledge. The memory that sticks out most: We had to duck to avoid hitting stoplights that had towered over the street.

Now on Tuesday, refugees, many elderly and handicapped, hobbled and wheeled themselves across the bridge to the corner of Poland and St. Claude Avenues, the dry side of the bridge that had become a rescue boat launch. We found hundreds of people who had been rescued, then abandoned into a whole new struggle for survival. Filthy, soaked and stinking, they lined up behind three National Guard trucks that couldn’t begin to make a dent in the growing crowd. Those that did get taken out would end up in the Superdome or at the Convention Center downtown, which would become their own dark scenes of terror and suffering.

People mobbed us, competing to tell us their stories, hoping to let relatives know they were alive and authorities know they might still die without help. Pompilio and I interviewed a weeping Daniel Weber, a rotund man perched on a black barrel in the muck. I’d never seen a man so broken. He had watched his wife drown and then floated for 14 hours in polluted floodwaters on a piece of driftwood.

“I’m not going to make it,” he told us. “I know I’m not.”

2005-09-25T07:16:00.000-05:00

Click on photo to see larger size and read captions.

All's well ...

2005-09-25T06:29:00.000-05:00

... family safe from Rita --- in fact, I probably got more rain from Rita than they did. And I am hugely relieved and now just want everyone to leave the coasts and move here, where they only have to deal with tornadoes and Tom Coburn. Although Inhofe might be reason to just leave the country. Gad, could anyone be more corrupt? In any case, thanks to you worryworts out there. It's a tremendous relief to know I'm not the only person who gets nervous about these things.

Now, for news from the Cookie Ranch: there isn't much. We began getting the remnants of Rita yesterday around four or five p.m., and she moved out maybe three a.m. We desperately needed the rain. Now, though, I fear we're back to square one atmospherically speaking --- it's six a.m. and already a heaty muggy swamp out there.

Come on, weather gods, cut this shit out! It's almost October! Enough of the 90+, almost 100 degree nonsense! Enough already!

I began ordering trees yesterday. I got three small shagbark hickories, an Indian currant and some more lilac. Found this great place just a few miles northwest of me which sells a huge variety of oaks, including live oaks --- Imagine backyard Trees. See, I have the remnants of oak-hickory forest here and there are some areas around me which are still relatively pristine oak-hickory forest. So I'm trying to plant, keeping that in mind. I've got some ornamentals going, mostly crepe myrtles I get on sale, and i will be putting up maybe two privacy/windbreaks. For the most part, though, I'm trying to restrict my tree planting to good native trees. Specifically oak and hickory. Although I'll also be planting pecan. Which is also native.

The fall garden is a joke. I'm having to really hammer the students this semester, and it's taking up all my time and energy. So I've gotten nothing but some more basil planted, although I do still have tomatoes coming in. Some other things are finally coming in, though ...

like the loofah ...

and the lion's ear ...

and the moonflowers ...

It's amazing that with all this, it's still such a huge mess here. I wish I would have had the good sense to take pictures when I first moved here. The place was completely trashed. I mean, a foot or so of trash everywhere. So the improvement here is enormous. Still, I look around sometimes and think that this is impossible. But I just have to keep at it, I suppose.

I really wish i would have taken pics before I got started, though. Then I could go back to them and see how very different it already looks here. This is a downright rural reclamation project.

Bullseye

2005-09-23T11:05:00.000-05:00

I likely won't be posting a lot until Rita is gone. I have family right in the path on the Gulf coast, and all over Texas --- and I'm on my last nerve about it.

So until this is all over and we know everyone is (or isn't) okay, i just can't muster up the concentration necessary to write posts.

Ayeee!

I'm back (kind of)

2005-09-21T14:52:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my absence, but I've just been through a heck of a couple of weeks with this year's batch of students.

Good gawd, where do these people come from?

I've had to literally fight them tooth and nail, and not just the young ones. Some of the older ones have been running real trips on me, bad enough that today, I let one of them have it in class. Actually, two of them. I had to do the same thing Monday.

It's really really exhausting, but hopefully, this time, I knocked some sense into them.

Gawd, if anyone doubts we're falling to Third World status, come spend a few hours with my students. Scary.

Why so many of us are so skeptical

2005-09-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

Kate Moss has finally admits what we already knew: she's a coke head.

The question is, how many other rail thin celebrities are? That is, the ones who haven't had everything sucked out by lipo.

And this, my dear, is one reason so many of us are so very skeptical about the current imperative that we all must fit into size 2 jeans, in order to call ourselves healthy.

It's also one way in which we country folk got you city slickers beat by a mile. We've known for years now that kind of thin comes from drugs or debilitating illness. True, there is a small minority who are naturally so thin --- but not many.

We really need to start getting realistic about what is and is not a normal human body.

Blaargh

2005-09-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

I just followed my nose and found a dead snake under my digs. It had been dead long enough that half of him had liquified.

Blegh. I'm not usually very OCD, but I keep having to wash my hands and the smell is in my mouth.

Troubling rumor

2005-09-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

True? Or false?

" ... a member of the Louisiana National Gaurd leaked that 500 looters were shot during all of the caos,but the govt. does not want the media to let this get out!"

I have to say, I can certainly see how this might be true. Anyone who followed the events immediately after the hurricane is well aware how chaotic things got and how wild the rumors coming out of New Orleans were. It doesn't much matter how many people now state that many of the looters, for example, were European tourists or things weren't nearly as crazy as some made out. All that matters is some people very well may have preyed upon this as an opportunity to do a little target practice.

Whether this is one reason they don't want bodies shown, I don't know, though. Although it could be.

Harvesting skin for cosmetic products

2005-09-15T15:43:00.000-05:00

Beware skin treatments from China.

Gack!

It's gloriously beautiful here today

2005-09-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

It finally began raining a day ago, and just in time. It's been over 80 degrees here since last February, and over 90 since the end of April. And there's been almost no rain.

So everything has been getting browner and browner and crinklier and crinklier. I was actually planning on watering the edges of the yard area because it's obvious we're going to have a heck of a fire problem here, come fall.

But it finally began raining. And it even cooled off a bit.

I'm skipping out on a meeting tonight in celebration. Maybe it will stay this way all weekend.

Fingers crossed, this horrid prolonged heat and this even worse drought are finally over.

Oh my god

2005-09-14T20:48:00.000-05:00

Every day it gets worse. Via Majikthise:

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL EDUCATION for the children of Katrina evacuees.

Coupled with this bscene story out of Braggs, and --- well, I honestly don't know what to say anymore. My highest levels of outrage were surpassed months ago.

I think we're seeing the end of America. I still can't quite believe it --- but what else can it be?

Aunt Sally's Pralines

2005-09-14T15:23:00.000-05:00

Omigod, my dad used to go into Louisiana all the time to go fishing and hunting, and he and my mom always took any vacation they could get away from us to New Orleans, and we kids were always thrilled when my dad --- or both my dad and mom --- would go, not only because it meant a bit of respite from parental discipline, but because ...

... it meant little frozen crawfish pies and pralines from Aunt Sally's,

Which are truly the best pralines in the world. Once you've had Aunt Sally's, nothing else will do.

Sitting on a shelf here, in fact, is an ancient box from Aunt Sally's which still has some smaller cardboard boxes inside, each of which once held a praline.

Mmmmm. I know what I'll be getting everyone for the holidays, once they're up and running again. No one should go thrugh an entire life without relishing a real live praline.

The Gumbo-Crawfish Pie Diaspora

2005-09-14T14:51:00.000-05:00

I am positively absolutely ashamed of myself, but just a while ago, the most evil selfish thought entered my mind: "evacuees from New Orleans" means Cajun or Creole food joints springing up everywhere.

The thought first occurred to me when I stopped at the Reasor's in Tahlequah to stock up on --- well, on whatever. And I noticed some "not from heres" in there. I mean, it's so easy to spot the locals in these parts. Either they're fullbloods, mixed-bloods and/or farmers, except during the summer when most of Los Angeles shows up trying to get tribal membership on the basis of --- well, whatever. Who knows what. And of course everyone who works at Cherokee Nation or the Keetopwah looks like they just walked out of some Rodeo Drive boutique because they're all taking all that federal money and ... okay, let's not go there. Yes, our tribal officials are absolutely the most honest and trustworthy officials anywhere, really they are!

In any case, it's no longer summer and the Cherokee Nation Holidays are long over, but these people didn't look like they were here for the holidays anyway and they certainly weren't employed by any tribe around here.

And they definitely weren't Okies.

Then, upon leaving the store, here come Green Berets.

Huh? Green. Berets.

I tried not to stare --- I mean, huh? What, they rounding up the Indians? Again?? Reinforcements called in to shut down the bingo halls?? What's this shit? Green freaking Berets?

So I did the not at all discrete sidelong glance and saw them with a package that said Katrina Relief.

Okay, fine, whatEVer.

I mean, I'm sure they're nice people, but I have to admit I felt like they looked a little trigger happy. Okay, maybe they didn't but --- Green Berets?

Then, in the parking lot, I saw a little truck with Louisiana license plates. Then I stopped off at Bank of Cherokee County to pay a bill, and there's two more Louisiana cars. Then, I turn onto Highway 82 to go home and get behind another Louisiana car.

And I suddenly remember the fabulous little Cajun butcher up at the little store down the road from me who makes gumbo --- REAL gumbo --- every Wednesday during the winter.

And I found myself thinking the most evil thoughts, namely PLEASE LET THEM SETTLE RIGHT HERE AND OPEN CAJUN RESTAURANTS AND LITTLE SMOKY CREOLE JOINTS EVERYWHERE!! OH PLEASE! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

And I feel so incredibly guilty for preying on the tragedy these people have been through. But oh my --- the possibilities!

And truth be known, I soooo hope it happens.

They're lying

2005-09-13T14:59:00.001-05:00

Gretna's police chief Arthur Lawson claims ... racism had no part in the decision to stop evacuees on the bridge with guns and shotguns.

I don't believe him. For one, his own citizens paint a very different picture.

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:07 pm cheryl21 wrote: THEY ARE BOTH WESTBANK AND EASTBANK ANIMALS..THEY ARE MARCHING OVER THE CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION TO OUR SIDE AND RUINING US......CAN WE KNOCK THE BRIDGE DOWN??????? MAYOR NAGUIN NEEDS TO STOP THIS MARCHING TO THE WESTBANK......I DONT HAVE A NUMBER FOR THE EASTBANK YET BUT IF YOU HAVE ONE FOR THE MAYORS OFFICE CALL AND POST THE NUMBER.....WE NEED IT TO STOP...WE THOUGHT KATRINA WAS BAD THIS IS 100 TIMES WORSE...THEY DONT GO AWAY IN 5 HOURS....
Back to top

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:09 pm   cheryl21 wrote: CALL 1-866-366-1121....THIS IS TO THE GOVERNOR....TELL THEM SEND THE NATIONAL GUARD IN TO THE WESTBANK/GRETNA....

I just spoke with someone from the Governor's office. I stressed to them that the WestBank is the only dry area of town and that they must do something to protect it. It would be a shame to lose through human destruction what wasn't destroyed by Katrina.

All of you who have phone service - call this number NOW

1-866-366-1121

Thanks Cheryl

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:43 pm   WHEN YOU CALL YOU CAN ALSO EXPLAIN THAT SINCE THERE IS NO FOOD AT THE CONVENTION CENTER THEN ALL THE PEOPLE ARE BEING SENT TO US

SO GET FOOD FOR THEM ALSO...

[...]

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:02 pm   We just heard that looters are in the neighborhoods up and down General Degaulle looting. We were told they have guns and are going into houses. They also have stolen some vans and are driving around robbing people that they see.

Please call for the National Guard at the above number!

[...]

2:35 am    cheryl... thank you for all the info.... i know i for one i really appreciate you for this.... don;t know your dad... but when things are over... i want to shake his hand and kiss his cheeks.... i want my friends on the police dept in Gretna to know how proud of them and the firefighters and many other... i live on adonis... when i got on here i was wanting to find out about my home.... but all this looting is worst... and i figure i was one of the first to get looter-ed ... Adonis is one of the first streets.... i just hope they did not hurt my pets.... other stuff can be replaced...we have lived there 16 years... but... you know what... god will build us a new home...if it was badly damaged... i hope everyone will stop and think... we are so lucky not to be in the shoes of the people who are left there... be it friend or foe....
_________________
hugs gigi

[...]

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 10:16 am    I agree with Gigi! I want to hug and kiss your dad and all of the Gretna police/fire.
Cheryl, I know you don't want to take the credit for it, but you have helped so many of us. I know you said you live in Garden Park. I am supposed to be there for Thanksgiving. My mother in law and sister in law live in Garden Park. I want to meet you and hug you! You are awesome

nimals? Looters? Poor??

Subtext: BLACK.

And you people wonder why I love Oklahoma so much

2005-09-13T11:05:00.000-05:00

I bet your senators aren't blubbering on television. No-o-o-ho! No, you're beleaguered with relatively sane and stable public figures who actually conduct themselves with a degree of decorum in public --- either that or they're drunk (or drugged) enough to at least appear composed.

But around these here parts, we got Jimmy Swaggart and Tammy Faye governance, and we're damned proud of it! Tell it, Brother Coburn, tell it!!

Thank you to Nick at Progressive Blog Digest who was kind enough to point me to a pic of this. I mean, the event's not exactly being heavily covered in Oklahoma, and I'm too cheap to pay for cable. Nick, I might add, is traveling, the fiend. I am so jealous. It may only be three weeks into the semester, but I'd volunteer for the Foreign Legion at this point to get out of grading.

Fall gardens

2005-09-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

I'd like to point out that Redneck Mother already has her fall gardens going.

I'm embarrassed to say, I haven't even started mine. Oh sure, I got some basil sprouting --- actually, at this point, it's desperate to be transplanted. And I've managed to drag some cinderblocks over to the site of one of the new beds.

Beyond that, though, I haven't done a thing. And I may not, if only because we're having a horrible drought. It's worse a little south of me, but we're in pretty bad shape here.

I hope this doesn't last through the winter.

"This is an accurate account of things."

2005-09-12T19:08:00.000-05:00

Personal narrative and the stories of eight people as told by Robert LeBlanc --- who, according to Interdictor, ... didn't run from the hurricane, but instead stayed behind and began plucking people out of the water with his boat for like a week or 10 days now.

Read it.

Moons, Frogs

2005-09-12T06:47:00.000-05:00

There have been red crescent moons not just here, but in Alabama as well, at least according to grammydeb. And grammydeb, much to my relief, has said what I've been unwilling to say --- that these red crescent moons appear to be a sign, since New Orleans is the Crescent City.

Or is it that Mother Nature is trying to convey a more general point, her artistic inclinations perhaps, specifically for those who object to crescents and similar shapes in American public life? In particular, the 9/11 Memorial. Because of Islam and whatnot.

Well, what-EV-er. In these parts, The Cookie Flag has been unfurled, adorned with a treefrog tucked neatly into the faucet of my frostfree water thingie outside. I'm not sure I even want to know how much more absurd the arguments will become.

Ramos Gin Fizz

2005-09-11T19:08:00.000-05:00

2 ounces gin
3 drops orange flower water
1 egg white
1 teaspoon sugar
1 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
1 ounce cream
Soda water
Shake very vigorously for at least one minute. Strain into a tall thin glass, or a very large old fashioned glass, and top with some soda water. Stir.

My father used to make pitchers of Gin Fizzes which all of us, even us kids, would drown in. So good!

It was only a moment ago i remembered with a shock that I may not be able to get my Peychaud's anymore. I don't even drink, not really. But I love a splash of Peychaud's in cold water. And it really does help a lackluster sauce.

Somehow, it makes perfect sense that the lightbulb is missing from the lamp in the kitchen. I didn't take it out. I was using the light just a while ago, in fact.

But the bulb is now gone.

Student Vampire

2005-09-10T07:30:00.000-05:00

One of my students is sucking the lifeblood out of everything around him. He's completely spoiled, lazy, a liar, ah gosh charming, self centered --- verging on psychopathic. His parents (predictably) are wealthy and have never demanded he suffer consequences, at least according to a friend whose mother has been their cleaing lady for the last ten years. It's one calamity after another, all paid for in cash. Republican, I might add. His only comment about Katrina has been "Aren't all those people, uh, bla- uh, wel- uh, poor?" Junior Bush.

He plagiarized last spring and harassed me most of the summer over it. I was shocked to see him in my classes this fall. But he apologized for his behavior, and I thought perhaps he'd turned a corner.

I. WAS. WRONG. For starters, I've already caught him cheating on a test, lying to get credit for something and explicitly ignoring classroom policy concerning late work because he doesn't think it applies to him --- and he assumes he's smarter than me.

And I let him have it yesterday. I let him have it in front of the entire class. Best of all, I let him have it with the blessing of the administration.

I called him a vampire. I said you're a vampire, you steal all of my energy amd demand all of my time and want the attention of the entire class and everyone around you, yet you do nothing to deserve our attention or evern acknowledgement. You're a thief.

It didn't even phase him. Yet another product of rich Republicans. Yet another Bush.

We're this close

2005-09-09T06:50:00.000-05:00

Via Steve Gilliard:

The thin veneer of civilization.

The basic point is the same: Remove the elementary staples of organized, civilized life — food, shelter, drinkable water, minimal personal security — and we go back within hours to a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all. Some people, some of the time, behave with heroic solidarity; most people, most of the time, engage in a ruthless fight for individual and genetic survival. A few become temporary angels; most revert to being apes.

[...]

There are intimations of this even in normal, everyday life. Road rage is a good example. Or think what it's like waiting for a late-night flight that is delayed or canceled. At first, those carefully guarded cocoons of personal space we carry around with us in airport waiting areas break down into flickerings of solidarity. The glance of mutual sympathy over the newspaper or laptop screen. A few words of shared frustration or irony. Often this grows into a stronger manifestation of group solidarity, perhaps directed against the hapless check-in staff. (To find a common enemy is the only sure way to human solidarity.) But then a rumor creeps out that there are a few seats left on another flight at Gate 37. Instant collapse of solidarity. Angels become apes. The sick, infirm, elderly, women and children are left behind in the stampede. Dark-suited men, with advanced degrees and impeccable table manners, elbow aside the competition, get their boarding passes and then retreat into a corner, avoiding other people's gaze — the gorilla who got the banana. All this just to avoid a night at the Holiday Inn in Des Moines.

Obviously, the decivilization in New Orleans was 1,000 times worse. I can't avoid the feeling that there will be more of this, much more of it, as we go deeper into the 21st century. There are just too many big problems looming that could push humanity back. The most obvious threat is more natural disasters as a result of climate change. If this cataclysm is interpreted by politicians as — to use the hackneyed phrase that they will themselves undoubtedly use — a "wake-up call" to alert Americans to the consequences of the United States continuing to pump out carbon dioxide as if there were no tomorrow, then the Katrina hurricane cloud will have a silver lining. But it may already be too late. We may be launched on an unstoppable downward spiral. If so, if large parts of the world were tormented by unpredictable storms, flooding and temperature changes, then what happened in New Orleans would seem like a tea party.

The moon is red again tonight

2005-09-08T21:25:00.000-05:00

This is the third night in a row. It's behind trees now and I can't seem to grab pics of any kind. But it's red again tonight.

Very odd.

Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.

2005-09-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

Via Majikthise: Majikthise also has a link to corroboration.

The "partisan" EMS workers < /snark> tell their story.

Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradsahw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790.[California]

[...]

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans.

[...]

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

[...]

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

[...]

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope.

[...]

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

[...]

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

[...]

The Real Disaster

2005-09-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

Charmaine Neville transcript

2005-09-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

From here:

Charmaine: I was in my house when everything first started. I was in my house. Yes, I live in the [unintelligible] area at the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. When, when, when, when the hurricane came, it blew over the left side of my house from the north side of [unintelligible], and I -- the water was coming in the house in torrents. I had my neighbor, an elderly man who's my neighbor and myself in the house, and with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water but the water was coming in too fast, so we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door open on the roof of the school to help people to get them up onto the roof of the school. Later on we found a flat boat and we went around in the neighborhood in the flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school. We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad. By the second day, the people that were there that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food, no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming into our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters go across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us, "Hi," and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food, any water, nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kind of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water. We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people, people that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old folks' homes. I tried to get the police to help us but I realized we rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the district police station. The boat, the guy who was driving the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to get to places where they could be saved. We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them, but they never would stop and help us.

Finally, it got to be too much. I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs that I rolled them from down there at Ninth Ward to the French Quarters, and I went back and I got more people. There were groups of us, you know, there was about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarters since we heard that there was phones in the French Quarters and that there wasn't any water. And they were right. There was phones but we couldn't get through. I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys who had come [inaudible] the neighborhood where we were that were helping us to save people, but other men, and they came and they started raping women and [inaudible], and they started killing them. And I don't know who these people were. I'm not going to tell you I know who they were because I don't, but what I want people to understand is that if we had not been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened.

People are trying to say that we stayed in the city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this. We didn't have resources to get out. We had NO WAY TO LEAVE. When they gave the evacuation order, if we could have left, we would have left. There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in the homes down in the down, in the downtown area. When we finally did get to --

Priest: Downtown or the Ninth Ward?

Charmaine: The Ninth Ward. In the Ninth Ward, and not just in my neighborhood but in other neighborhoods in the Ninth Ward, there are a lot of people who are still trapped down there. Old people, young people, babies, pregnant women, I mean, nobody's helping them. And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so that we could steal and loot and, and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We'd do SOS on the flashlights. We took everything. And it came to a point, it really did come to a point where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters. They figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire, they would stop then, but that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally I got to Canal Street with all of my people that I had saved from back there. There was a whole group of us. I -- I don't want them arresting nobody else -- I broke the window in an RTA bus. I've never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and then everything else into that bus [rising hysteria, sobs] and we drove and we drove and we drove. And millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus with them.

Priest: [Inaudible].

Charmaine: All I did was what He gave me about the willpower to do.

[END OF INTERVIEW]