Summer Time and the Living Is Easy

97 degrees here today. Not nearly as productive today since all morning people kept coming by for this that and other, mostly dealing with the House. el V didn't even get out of here unti 11:30, and then was back-and-forth all day. Things are a bit confused with the start of the academic year, so there you are. But we have the key to the Center. And, did I mention it was 97 degrees today.

I'm in a state of happiness that can only be attained when you're starting a piece of work you've been wanting to do for a very long time and all the tools you need to do it are right at hand, and are first class tools, while you are being provided all the support in every way necessary to pull off the work.  Already I'm seeing a pattern of conflict among the writer-historians of Virginia in telling their own story, in the era I call the revisionist era, that goes from the post Civil War period all the way up to what is called the post Civil Rights era (post? after the shenanigans pulled by GB Saturday?); the poster boy for which is Woodrow Wilson. The dismantling of this revisionism only began in the last decades, though still so many adhere to the Wilsonian propaganda, if only because they learned it long ago and haven't bothered to stay au courant with what has been going on in this area for these last decades regarding Reconstruction, President Grant, Jim Crow, etc .

I cannot tell you how this feels to someone like me / us, who are always working with everything stacked against us, starting with having nowhere to do the work even, not really. And then there is the living to make while doing it. How can I describe how I'm feeling today? It's some combination of feeling all one's synapses firing in sync, on point and to the point with giddyness. Fizzy, while grounded, simultaneously.

All right. The Center shares the Custom House digs with the College's Environmental program (thus the gardens in the back). The environment people held a start-of-the-new-academic-year luncheon today. Much was left over. So one of the Center's people filled up a huge plate of the most delicious food and brought it to me here at the House. Just when I realized that breakfast at 8 this AM was 6 hours ago. To make things even more wonderful, another Center person brought us pear-apples from her orchard. Another one brought me an ENTIRE BASKET of basil, rosemary and other herbs, tomatoes and corn from her garden, which she said was infinitely superior to the Center garden's. (People here go home for lunch! When was the last time you lived somewhere that was the case?)

I don't have a blender so I don't think I can make pesto with the basil, though I DO have a lot of olive oil and parmesean, which I brought down with us from Raffetto's (est. 1905). Hmmmmm. I also have several lbs. of pasta, which I also brought down from Raffetto's.

We hooked up a printer to the New Thing. I also hooked up my dvd player to New Thing, since the television upstairs, though huge, doesn't have a usb port, and that's how I do. I suppose a dvd player can be had for the television without much cost though.

Can I, can I, sit prettier than this?

Well, there is this warning about hurricane Earl hitting at least as far up the Atlantic coast as the Carolinas by this weekend. We may forced to stay in the House by rain and wind then, accompanied by the fragrance of basil.

The UK Guardian Rates Our Friends' B&B One of Ten Best in NYC

These are the people with whom we spent our last social occasion before coming down here, who gifted us with Eat Drink and Be Merry in Maryland. Thus I can vouch this place is all and more claimed for it.

Review here for Jumel Terrace Books B&B, Hamilton Heights, Manhattan.

What a day! So many people in and out all morning, I got started late on my work, and so did V. He finally left about 11:30. But I have to go to the Center at 2:30 for a little reception so this doesn't seem like much a productive day.

OTOH, among those in-and-out this AM, was somebody who brought us pear-apples from their own orchard.

A New Lifestyle

I. Have. A. Study.


With big desk the right height for typing on the New Thing, because it's an old style desk top tilted to create a writing surface for long days' of writing work before typewriters. It has drawers. It is very wide. With this the armed leather chair that matches the desk. This chair is exactly the right height for me, and my back loves it, though, alas, it is not wheeled, not doubt to protect the carpet and the floor boards. These are post Civil War U.S., I'm almost certain (furniture dating isn't one of my strong points).

There are many bookshelves filled with variety of books from abstruse scholarly / academic works to popular fiction, such as Edith Wharton. However, there are many EMPTY books shelves for my own books and papers, as well as a printer.

Behind me is a huge leather couch. On the other side of the room is a matching huge leather wing chair and ottoman. A small end table and reading lamp.

The door of the study leads into the kitchen, which I also love (and am in the midst of changing the location of the things in the cupboards). I'm currently roasting a chicken with mushrooms. I've made rice and a pot of red beans already. There is a half bathroom in the kitchen. So we have toothbrushes and things of that nature here and upstairs (where there are two full baths; the bathroom that goes with the master bedroom also has a dressing room where the Sotweed Factor's body slave was able to help the master put on his riding boots).

Even with the improvements, the stairs are a pain, for each of us, in a different way. El V is so tall that if he hadn't been wearing his cowboy hat all day he would have cracked himself in the head several times, but each time the hat protected him. We need to tape something at each of these doorways to remind him to duck. El V isn't naturally the ducking sort. We catch on fast, thus, of course, doubling everything like toothbrushes. I brought enough of this sort of item that we didn't need to go to a drugstore, a habit acquired when I lived where it was possible to have guests.The one problem is that this region is the least serviced by T-Mobile, our phone service provider. There's only one spot in the house where we can, sometimes, get connected. Connection in other parts of town is also iffy, particularly indoors. This is a major suckeroo. We don't want to change to Verizon, as everybody has our numbers. It will be worked out, eventually. So right now it's e-mail all the way.
Now that a whole lotta cooking has been gotten out of the way, dinner eaten and all cleared, washed and stored away, time to read some history in The Old Dominion: Her Making. Then a walk to the river, bed and Polk, early rising and off to the Starr Center and then the college for our i.d.s and our introduction to the library staff.

First Post From Chestertown

We got here about 2, and hour and a half later than planned. This is because we got lost in New Jersey where we always get lost, and because the traffic was fairly horrid in a few spots. Fortunately though that horridness was only in New Jersey. Once we got over the line to Delaware -- a piece of cake.
We brought enough with us that it took 10 minutes to load the car and 10 minutes to unload.
We sped to the Superfresh Supermarket and dropped more money on groceries than we've ever spent at one go before. It took us much longer to load the groceries into the car and unload them in the House than it did with our belongings.
The cable guy who I adore because he has me online without a wait was waiting for us.

It's very pretty, quite bucolic. Things are going to go well, if this little jaunt to get here is any indication. We couldn't have had a nicer day. When we got up at 7 it was 63 degrees, pure blue above and that slant of light we've come to call 9/11 Sky. By the time we got to the House -- which took J all of 60 seconds to show up with the keys -- it had gotten hot. But inside the House it was so cool as to be almost too cool.

They've put in the handrails on the dangerous stairs. Everything is clean and waiting for me to make the traditional pasta for Saturday night. But that may be a bit. I'm tired. We have all the clothes and towels and sheets and things for upstairs to deal with.

The book collection in here is unbelieveable and the new collection coming is will make it even more so. It's all materials that apply to our project.
I think we'll eat our pasta in the pretty little back yard tonight. Which we'll appreciate as we have not eaten today yet.

However, I don't believe in any of this.  It's all a dream.  Haven't been here long enough, am very short on sleep and not eaten, so it will take a bit for this to be reality.

Sign of the Times

Returned my borrowed materials to the library.

I did not take out anything else in their place.

I sent out a mass e-mail with change of address.

We poofed our landline phone number, the number we've had for all the time we've lived here.

Maryland, Land of Superb Eating

This is Maryland's reputation since at least the 1600's. It is based in very real resources and the achievements of what the region's variety of people accomplished with these resources.  You find salivating descriptions of how people ate there in novels like Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722), for instance.*

When we made our farewell-for-now visit uptown one of our friends made me a housewarming gift for our 1735 house in C'town: Eat, Drink & Be Merry: An Anthology From A Great Tradition, compiled by Frederick Philip Stieff, illustrated by Edwin Tunis, published in 1932 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, is an historical compilation of Maryland cookery. The b&3w illos are of the state's great families' great houses where these foods were eaten. It has quotes from a variety of Maryland's favorite sons, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Funny, though, since the recipes come from women, and women of color staffed so many, if not all, of the kitchens, there are no quotations about Maryland's food by women of color or otherwise. The colored illos, however, are all of men and women of color, and, to be charitable in description, lean toward the all too common caricature of until very recent times, and that in certain quarters has been enthusiastically resurrected with Barack Obama's residence in the Oval Office.

C understands me well -- this volume is a window that reveals a vivid display of history that until relatively recently hasn't been written into the historical narratives of the state.

For instance, the official Maryland Historical Society history of Maryland (in association with the Johns Hopkins University Press) still remains the 1988 Maryland: A Middle Temperament 1634 - 1980. As the title indicates, the approach is that Maryland and her history are the mediating history of the United States, more balanced and less extreme than either the "North or the South." Funny that. Because you have to read hundreds of pages to find even a single oblique reference to the historical fact that Maryland provided, with the port of Baltimore as their point of departure,  large numbers of slaves to the interstate slave trade, whose labor was demanded for opening the the fertile, virgin regions of the Louisiana Territory to the plantation form of agricultural economy.

IOW, the presentation of this cookery anthology is idyllic, a rich land filled with slow moving, happy co-inhabitants of white and black, where everyone ate well and enjoyed each other's company in gracious hospitality and convivality. The illustrations tell a different story, but the illustrator, the author and the publisher didn't realize they were displaying a disregard and contempt for the very people who did so much to bring this good eating to the tables.  Rather they are devising a sentimental, fairytale of historical nostalgia  by leaving out the foundation of the foods' raising and preparation and what that meant. It's perceived through the gauzy sheer curtains of the white folks' summer living room or the screens on their columned verandas.

I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition of documented historicl fact and gauzy nostalgia in terms of historical study. Without it, you can't get to the full truth of things -- not that it's ever 100% possible of course. The past is the past and the amount that is forgotten and the rapidity with which that happens has always been the case, even before the acceleration of the process by the digital technology era switch.

Thus the ever growing historical value of artifacts like Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland.

We are looking forward to our culinary adventures in the next 10 months in Maryland, Land of the Best Eating.

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* The detailed, enthusiastic listing of what Moll and her family ate on their plantations in and Maryland -- with 50 'servants' to do the work -- is my most vivid memory of the novel, which is interesting in light of how my life turned out. She ends the book in Maryland. I haven't read Moll Flanders for at least 30 years, and I still recall this.

"There are in this world only two earthly Paradises ...

" ... . . . Provence . . . and the Reading Room of the British Museum."

The world according to Ford Maddox Ford:

Provence was not only itself, but also the absence of the north, where most human vices accumulated. The north meant aggression, the gothic, the "sadically mad cruelties of the Northern Middle Ages" and the "Northern tortures of ennui and indigestion".

The So-Called Xtian Nutters Are Trying to Force the POTUS to Pray in Public

The son of Billy Graham strongly suggests that the POTUS is a Muslim, but if he's not, this is what he should do:

Well, you know, you can be born a Muslim, you can be born a Jew, but you can't be born a Christian," said Graham. "The only way you can become a Christian is by confessing your sins to God, asking his forgiveness, and by receiving Jesus Christ by faith into your heart, that Christ died for your sins, shed his blood on Calvary's Cross, and that God raised him to life. If you're willing to accept that and believe that, and let Jesus Christ be the lord of your life, God will forgive your sins, he will heal your heart, and that's the only way you can become a Christian. And so if the President has done that, then I would say he's a Christian, if that's what he has done."

When they succeed, how much longer before everyone is going to have to pray in public, followed by eating pork in public*?

This is why we are so concerned with the crazies beating on the Park51 Cultural Center and using it to go after the POTUS.

Because they 'git' him, they are going after all the rest of us, no matter what we are: wiccan, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Santería, atheist, agonistic, wanting to be just left alone in terms of religion. These ilks NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE.

So I say to these ilks: Stay the f outta my town and its affairs. You hate NYC anyway, so why have you suddenly found it matters to you? Ah, yes. Politics.
____________________

I am a pork eater from the time I could eat solid food. We raised our own on our family farm (though I don't eat much now, because I eat very little meat now -- but el V does, so I make various forms of it for meals frequently). Back in the days of the first Reconquista of Al-Andalus, first the converso Muslims would be sure to be seen eating pork, and then the Jewish conversos also -- because the Christians saw it as a sure sign that secret Muslims and Jews wouldn't eat dishes including pork. Then things got really ugly in parts of Europe, particularly around Easter, in which Jews and Muslims were 'ritually' mistreated (excuse for the Jews: they killed our Lord; for Muslims: they killed us) as part of the holiday fun. Part of this was forcing the local Jews and Muslim to eat pork.

The Manufactured Park51 Cultural Center (Was Cordoba House) Controversy

It's clear as can be now, what is the function of this 'controversy' manufactured by the rethugz and the nutters. It is to bolster and expand the perception of underinformed voter that the POTUS is a muslim, and not a citizen, and that he's part and parcel of the enemy that highjacked the jets and flew them into the Towers. Just in time for midterm elections.
It's another of their perfect storms of irrational hysteria. They always seem to work too.

I wonder where this polling figure comes from, the one that says 68% of New Yorkers are against the building of Park51 Cultural Center. I'm surrounded by New Yorkers, particularly New Yorkers who live and work within some kind of range of Ground Zero -- most of us long prior to the 9/11 attack. I'm not encountering anyone who is against it, or even thinks it should be moved to a different location. But then I don't live on the upper east side of the obscenely wealthy and powerful, and I don't know many of those people to talk to either.

This moving location thing? The reason the Center was locating at 51 Park was BECAUSE they could afford the property. They got it dirt cheap because NOBODY wanted it. You go anywhere else and the price is going to be more like 40 million than 4 million, yanno? and easily, depending on where you go, a lot more than 40 million too.
___________________

They tell us we are now pulled out of combat in Iraq. Ha. What we have is a bag left being held by the Secretary of State, namely Hillary, who has to run a private army of contractors. Train Iraqi police? Nobody in the history of the world has been able to do that successfully.

We are also left with at least 50,000 combat troops still in Iraq, though they've been re-labeled as something else.

... The remaining 50,000 troops are viewed as trainers and logistics support to the Iraqi government. But they include special operations units, helicopter gunship crews, and other war fighters who are still going to be engaged in combat but will not be categorized as being in Iraq for that purpose. Iraq has no air force to speak of, and the US will be providing the air support until at least 2018.

Juan Cole, as so often, speaks most clearly to what this pull out means.

... the true significance of Thursday’s last convoy. It is a symbol of a turnaround in US policy, a repudiation of the Bush administration doctrine of preemptive war. “Preemptive war” is a euphemism for the rehabilitation of aggressive war, which the world community attempted to abolish in the United Nations charter. While many blame Obama for escalating the Afghanistan War, that war at least grew out of the al-Qaeda attack on US soil, which was planned out in Khost and Qandahar, and it has the backing of the UN and of NATO, which invoked article 5 of its charter (an attack on one is an attack on all).

In contrast, the Iraq War was virtually without legal foundation. In the United Nations order, there are only two legitimate preconditions for going to war. One is clear self-defense, in response to an aggressive attack. (The Gulf War, responding to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, is a case in point). The other is authorization by the UN Security Council. But W. had neither precondition on his side when he invaded Iraq, and so he acted lawlessly, as Obama saw clearly at the time.

Living The Scholar's Life

The library that was to be moved into our C'Town House this summer belonged to this scholar, J.A. Leo Lemay, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of English, who died in 2008. He is best known for his work with Benjamin Franklin.

The workmen are still building the bookshelves for The House, for this collection. Imagine, living with this!  I mean the collection. The bookshelves will be installed the first weekend we're away.

I've been e-mailed an itemized list of what the house has in terms of kitchen, cleaning, bathroom and so on necessities. It's pretty complete.


What we are advised to bring with us are: sheets, blankets, towels, radio, stereo, telephone, hangers, teapot, favorite kitchenware such as scissors, etc. I queried speficially about all these things. There is even a toolbox -- I asked about hammer, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.

I've been exporting my e-ddress book to my various online e-mail venues, in preparation for sending out the (temporary) change of address, and adding Microsoft Live for the new e-mail manager.

Whorehouses Or Cultural Centers -- YOU Decide!

It's really too bad mayor mikey didn't respond this way.

Many thanks to amigo Citizen K's "Viva Las Vegas!"

Advisory #1:  Very witty
Advisory #2:  Lots of videos
Advisory #3:  K has lots of widgets and utilizes many videos on his blog, so it will load rather slowly.

One must wonder if the entire nation is so outraged at potential outrage committed upon honored dead by a building, why are they not equally outraged by the very real outrages committed upon the honored dead in Arlington Cemetery?

Shall Gov. Richardson Pardon Billy the Kid?

Pat Garret's descendants are against it.  Gov Richardson's possible justification for this pardon rest upon past history such as this:


"Historical documents show that Mr. Wallace struck a deal with the Kid that if he would testify before a grand jury about a killing he had witnessed, the governor would grant him a pardon for his many crimes. Billy the Kid did testify but the pardon never came, something the outlaw grumbled about as he managed to escape the law, get caught and then escape again, only to be gunned down in the dark by the frontier lawman in 1881."
This is former governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallace, who also is the author of the enormously popular novel, at least for many decades in the past, Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ.  Which is how we came to have still famous Charleton Heston chariot race in the Colisseum.

History lives, yay history!

"The Dog Days of Summer" - Are We In Them?

"Dog Days of Summer" seems quaint, doesn't it, here in this August of the twenty-first century?

As a farm child the 'dog days'  meant the particular time of summer in August that initiated harvest of the grains in the part of the world where I grew up. The second haying was in progress.  In the garden strawberries, raspberries, rubarb, string beans and peas were long over. The first tiny 'new' potatoes could be dug, the first cantalopes and watermelons were ripe. We gorged on fresh corn and froze gallons of it by the pint and quart. Tomatoes were on the table at every meal and lunch / snack except breakfast.  As were cucumbers with dill (our own dill, from the garden, carefully deadheaded and trimmed to keep tender and aromatic enough for our own dill pickles), cream and vinegar. Pickling time was also upon us. We were freezing peaches and canning pears (cherries had been accomplished back in June with the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries).  Second butchering and freezing of the chickens was in progress.  The kitchen was always hot even though we utilized the attached car garage and the basement for the hot water tubs in which we scalded the chickens for plucking the feathers, and for blow torches with which we singed the pinfeathers. (Actually that was my mom and sometimes grandmothers who did that -- I didn't have to do that, at least!)  I was part of the continuous mowing chores of the colossal pieces of ground that were our lawn and the yard.  Flower beds had to be weeded and watered, as was the garden, not to mention the picking.  Cattle, pigs and chickens had to be watered and fed.

Hard, constant work all day, everyday, until long after dark, often even Sundays because harvest and hay don't wait even for God, so no Sunday School after church, or catechism instruction during the week.  Hard, constant play too, for the kids (mothers taking turns to drive the kids to the lake, swimming lessons, 4-H and church activities), and at night for us adolescents, and for the adults too, on Friday and Saturday nights -- if the flax, wheat and hay allowed. And hot. At least in the summers when things went right, and the rain had come earlier when it should and stopped for harvest.  Dances on the weekend were hot, sticky, wet affairs -- I am speaking of the temperature and humidity in the vast spaces the dances took place -- no a/c, no fans even, except in the more expensive spots that our parents and their friends went, not us!  Church was hot at 8 AM service, with all the windows open to the smells of the flowers planted below, where we went every Sunday morning, no matter how late we adolescents and our parents went to bed the night before, no matter how hung over our parents might be.* The weeks and churchless Sundays spent at the lake cabin in the slower days of July were already long behind us, as were my dad's fun as the local crop spray plane pilot.

As an undergraduate I assumed the Dog Days had been invented by newspapers and magazines -- another way of saying the silly season, because presumably, with D.C. shut down for summer break there wasn't anything worth covering in the news.  Thus the silly.  As well as harvest season, so everyone was focused on that, and nobody was bothering with either newspapers or, later, television.  When I was still home in my high school years, the only time the television was turned on during this period was after dinner was cleared away (meaning what non-farmers were calling 'lunch'), dishes done and I returned to the week's ironing, which took my Monday and Tuesday and some Wednesday early afternoon hours.  This is how I first heard the names of  Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Chekhov, Strindberg, Pirandello -- the educational programs ran during that time segment.  It wasn't until the spring of my sophomore year that we got both the ABC network and a public television station out there in Small Family Farmlandia.  Until then it was NBC and CBS only.  That's how far out of the mainstream of the rest of the country our location still was, even then, leaning toward the end of the twentieth century.

Now?  It seems Dog Days because I'm so busy I can't think much -- just like August back when I was growing up.  But so different -- I'm not ironing or freezing or canning, for one thing.

Most of all it seems the Dog Days because it is a month of natural catastrophe all over the world. Extreme weather and weather disasters, signature of global climate change and the global warming that is, among other factors, including deforestation, causing it.  The pariah dog, slinking starved, sunken-ribbed through debris and rubble of disasters and war detritus.  A third of Pakistan is under water.  Ames, Iowa has no drinking water.  The Gulf of Mexico is horribly poisoned. China is flooded and broken by earthquake.  Russia wheat is burning in fires caused by prolonged firey temperatures and drought, same as my part of the world, sans the wildfires, for which I'm supremely grateful.

However, I lnow that neither the newspapers nor the twentieth invented 'Dog Days.'  You can find the origin here, which I didn't discover until a class in English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.

How are you doing in this year's Days of the Dog?
__________________

* Parents hung over, yes, but not us, at least not us Good Girls, of which I was smart enough to be one of, because my eye was firmly fixed on getting the hell outta this Dodge, the moment I graduated from high school, and as ignorant as I was I had no idea how not to get pregnant, and also I didn't want the boys to Talk About Me. I broke rules all the time of my community and family, but I was very careful as to which rules were broken -- such as 'forgetting' it was Monday morning -- clothes washing day -- and taking off on my bicycle with a friend and riding all over the township -- o was Mom furious that I was nowhere to be found. The joys of wine, beer and other such things were still far in my future.

The Littlest Postmamboist Celebrity Model!

M & K Home, Finally

They were ensconced in the - St. loft by 10 PM. K bouncy and confident, whizzing around, shouting Aibobo! at all moments, to all and sundry, not in the least intimidated by people speaking English. She hardly saw a white person or anyone not speaking Kreyole all her life until she got to the airport.

M, how can I describe? Her confident, pleased, curious, healthy daughter says it best. K is very much her warrior mother's soul and character. In the meantime though, M. may have one hell of a crash, now that she's where they are safe. The first thing M. says is, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," to everyone. But we all know, that in the end it was her, and Mz, who actually DID it. She is ill with a mild form of malaria. She is tired. She'd gotten little sleep for weeks in the heat, humidity, mosquitoes and other dangers, and then none at all the last two days, with getting to the U.S. Embassy so early two days in a row because the U.S. Embassy and the INS f*ed up.

We are discussing family therapy, which is available to members of the Haitian community here affected by the earthquake. Who knows entirely what K saw and experienced before M was able to get there and take custody?

They are home, they really are home! It was the shock of the familiar so long absent, to hear her voice again on the cell. It was the unique, unmistakable voice of our friend. I did not burst into tears upon hearing M's voice.

I seldom cry these days, for if I did weep over whatever is worthy to weep over, I'd never not be crying.

HBO *Treme* Brings Postmamboism to Instanbul and Turkey

HBO Treme's Music Supervisor in Instanbul.  He is now returned to the U.S. and working on the music for Season 2.

Boysssss 'n Girls, We Can Scream BP AND Government BullShyte!

"U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk"

WASHINGTON — The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.

Only about 26 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak is still in the water or onshore, and most of it is diluted and breaking down rapidly, officials say.

How farkin' DARE THEY???????? When satellite photos show the mess in the Gulf the size of Massachusetts? How stupid do they think we are? Wait, don't answer that. They just look at faux noose #####s and birthers and the tbaggers, and that's how stupid they know we are. 

Nothing to see here folks, just move along.  Out of sight out of mind.  This isn't just me.  There are at this time nearly 400 comments in response.  It tear-jerkingly easy to see the difference among those who are paid propagandists for bp, the gummit, etc.  Most of the comments notice this as well.  This one, for instance:

Two hundred million gallons of oil mixed with a million gallons of Corexit, and there is no risk.
What do you expect them to say? It's like the air at Ground Zero. No problem.

Just say there is no problem, and by magic it will disappear.

I guess the "authorities" know in their heart of hearts that if they admit something very big and very important is beyond their control, everyone will see that the emperor has no clothes, and of course the danger there is maybe we will start thinking about whether there is a better way for the human race to be doing business.

"Just say there is no problem, and by magic it will disappear."  This is what every institution from the federal gummit to the local level, from banks and financial global corps, to the military, to you name it, has been doing since the first moments of the first day of the reagan regime and its gut motivated faith-based government.  Change the words = equals change of perception > make it Alllllllll Better!  But bullshit is still bullshit and this is bullshit.

Kind Of Overwhelmed

With the ever worse news out of the Gulf, all that has to be accomplished here before going there, i.e. C'town.  I find myself wishing we were there already -- so tired am I have of my neighborhoods in which you can't walk anywhere anymore because of the density of out-of-towners, out-of-neighborhooders, tourists, etc.  It's just farkin' miserable.  I have these fantasies of this small, picturesque town, with so few people around, if only because it is a car culture and nobody walks.  While, I, on the other hand, living so close to the river, can walk there easily whenever I want to.

AND, far more cheering, on my other tail -- it is certain, as far as these things can be, that M and her daughter are arriving at JFK tomorrow!

Do not forget, it's not only the Louis Armstrong festival in New Orleans, but the second celebration of Pops' birthday starts at midnight, edst here on the east coast, on WKCR Radio out of Columbia University.